Ascended Fan Nickname

As we know, fans love to give nicknames to various aspects of a work. Sometimes it's to characters, sometimes it's to plot twists, sometimes it's the title of the work itself. Fans love it.

On the odd occasion, this nickname is given official use. In some cases, it's only semi-official; in others, it's full-on. But whatever the case, this happens from time to time.

A Sub-Trope of Ascended Fanon, where Fanon becomes official. It's also a sub-trope of both Fan Nickname and, if used in the work itself, In-Series Nickname.

See also Fandom Nod.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: The "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" transformation introduced in Resurrection "F" was shortened by fans into the much snappier "Super Saiyan Blue". Eventually in Dragon Ball Super, characters acknowledge how unwieldly the name is and just start referring to it as that. Merchandise and video games still tend to use the original name, though.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: When Greed first possessed Ling, the fans started calling him Greedling to differentiate him from the original. In the manga, when Ed discovers this, he starts using that nickname to refer to them.
• In The Legendary Hero Is Dead!, there is a horse that up until the final chapter^*His grandmother came from a universe where horses are the dominant species, and she somehow randomly wondered into the universe of the main story. was Inexplicably Awesome. Fighting demons, jumping up walls, dodging powerful necromancers, blocking a direct attack from the The Chosen One (both the current and his predecessor) and doing a fist pump. Fans have elected to call him Horsebro, and eventually that's what the main cast began to call him as well.
• In reference to his Playing with Fire/An Ice Person Quirk, fans of My Hero Academia sometimes refer to Shoto Todoroki as "Icyhot". The English dub references this by having Bakugo calling him this.
• Reborn! (2004): "Hibird" was the fan nickname for Hibari's unnamed pet bird. Upon hearing this, Akira Amano just made it canonical, finding the nickname cute.
• Sonic X:
  • The official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter used the Fan Nickname "Dark Sonic".
  • TMS used the Fan Nickname "Dark Super Sonic".

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The titular Two Beings, One Body protagonist of this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction earned a couple Fan Nicknames from a relatively early point, and one such nickname eventually became an actual Red Baron in the story towards the end.

Films — Animation

• The Super Mario Bros. Movie uses "Blue Shell", the nickname for the Spiny Shell from the Mario Kart series, when the Koopa General tucks into his shell and initiates an attack on Mario and Donkey Kong by turning into a Spiny Shell; he yells the name before he does it.

Film — Live-Action

• Hellraiser: Pinhead was originally known as the Hell Priest, or simply the "Lead Cenobite". The production crew on the first film nicknamed him Pinhead for his distinctive appearance, and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth marked the first time that a character referred to him by that name. Ironically, Clive Barker never liked the name, thinking it undignified; notably, it's only human characters who call him Pinhead, barring a scene in Hellraiser: Judgement where Jophiel, a representative of God, calls him that as a dismissive insult and promptly gets ripped apart.

Literature

• Catarina Claes, the Idiot Heroine of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, is understandably referred by fans to as Bakarina. J-Novel Club, the licensed publisher for the novels in the U.S., would eventually use "Bakarina" as a shorthand reference to the series, especially on their official forums.
• Warrior Cats: When the fifth series, a prequel, was announced, it didn't have a working title yet. Vicky simply described it as "We'll be going back in time to the dawn of the forest Clans." From this description, fans nicknamed it "Dawn of the Clans", and that ended up becoming the official title of the arc.

Live-Action TV

• During the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who, fans started referring to the Doctor and companions as "Team TARDIS". During the subsequent Chris Chibnall era, the Thirteenth Doctor herself started using the term.
• Glee: The show loves using fanon shipping names. They mention Finchel, Furt, Klaine, Brittana, Wemma, Faberry, and many more.
• The main antagonist of Star Trek: Enterprise is a shadowy figure that was quickly dubbed "Future Guy" by the fans. The creators didn't have a real name for him, just "Humanoid Figure", but they quickly adopted "Future Guy" as well (not in dialogue of course, but in production documents, etc.).
• In the Supernatural fandom, Megstiel became the Portmanteau Couple Name for Castiel and Meg shipping. A Season 8 episode nods to this when Dean refers to the two of them as "Megstiel".
• Survivor: In the early days of the series, a popular blog post established various archetypes, named for animals, describing everyone left in the final four. "Goats," specifically, referred to players who were drawing dead because they weren't respected enough to win a jury vote. While the other terms, "fox, bear, and bunny," are rarely used, "goat" became a standard part of the show's lexicon, with a broader application referring to any player unlikely to receive many jury votes.

Music

• Peter Gabriel had four self titled albums (the last was released in the US as "Security"). The fans labeled the first three based on the cover art — Car, ¹Gabriel driving a big car Scratch, ²Gabriel looking like he's scratching big gouges into the cover and Melt. ³It looks like Gabriel's face is half-melted Gabriel doesn't seem to use the names, but official music publications do.
• Starflyer 59's first two albums were officially self-titled, and both had monochromatic covers (silver and gold, respectively), so fans almost immediately began referring to the albums as Silver and Gold to distinguish them. The band and record label followed suit, even officially titling the 10th anniversary reissues as Silver [Extended Edition] and Gold [Extended Edition].

Tabletop Games

• In Magic: The Gathering, one common ability on cards causes players to put the top card of their library (deck) into their graveyard (discard pile). For years, this ability was known informally by fans as "milling," after the card Millstone, which does exactly that. However, the game's creators struggled to find an official name for the ability; they didn't want to call it "milling" on the grounds that it didn't make a lot of sense from a flavor perspective and thus that made it hard for newer players to understand what "milling" meant. (Reportedly, designers favored calling it "forgetting.") However, in 2020, they decided to just make "mill" the official name for the ability. They reasoned that "milling" was one of the most widely used pieces of terminology in the game, understood by the vast majority of players, and that most new players either learned the game from a friend who already played (and thus likely knew the term) or from a digital program (which could easily explain it to them).
• The mascot of Monopoly was originally named Uncle Pennybags but since people called him "Mr. Monopoly", it has become his new official name.

Toys

• The Little People toys from Fisher-Price have this two-fold.
  • The series used to be called Play Family, but people called them "those little people" so much that Fisher-Price registered and trademarked the name in 1985.
  • Lucky the dog, one of the characters from the pre-rebrand Little People franchise, was called Snoopy or Fido at certain points. It wasn't until Fisher-Price noticed that children usually called the dog Lucky that they ran with it.

Video Games

• In Angry Birds Seasons, a Distaff Counterpart to Red was officialy given the fan name "Ruby" in a poll on YouTube.
• Deltarune: A small example, the game officially uses the pet name "Azzy" to refer to Asriel. Before that, it was solely used in Undertale fanfiction.
• Devil May Cry 2: Originally, Dante's secret Devil Trigger transformation now commonly known as "Majin Form" had no official English name as opposed to being called the "Ultimate Devil Mode" (真魔人モード, Shin Majin mōdo) in Japanese materials, leading to the corresponding Fan Nickname of Desperation/Desperate Devil Trigger (or DDT for short). A member of the Devil May Cry Wiki would be the first person to coin the term "Majin Form" in 2007, and despite "Majin" (魔人) being the terminology used for a character who has transformed using Devil Trigger, this name would see wide use throughout the fandom. When the English version of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook was released in 2015, the name would be canonized, made more noticeable by how the same "Ultimate Devil Mode" terminology was used to describe a scrapped second transformation for Dante in Devil May Cry 4 yet was translated as "Ultimate Devil Trigger" for that section.
• Doom:
  • The protagonist was never called by any name in the original game series, so the fans and journalists settled for "Doomguy" (sometimes spelled "Doom Guy"). He has been given many names in various Doom media but in 2020, John Romero confirmed that he was officially called Doomguy, and the name was directly used in Doom Eternal to refer to the character before he became the Slayer.
  • The demon enemy had long been called the Pinkie in order to distinguish it from the game's other monsters, as the name "demon" made it difficult to distinguish from all the other demons in the game. In the 2016 game, Pinkie was officially adopted as the in-game name of this specific creature.
• Jeanne d'Arc Alter from Fate/Grand Order has been called Jalter by the fans. It ended up being used in the actual game in the third Summer event when Blackbeard called her that.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, "2P" was originally a Fan Nickname given to 2B's Palette Swap for the latter's appearance as a Guest Fighter in Soulcalibur VI. The YoRHa raids officially name her that and make her a distinct character — specifically, a Machine Lifeform-made Evil Knockoff of 2B.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • The "Phone Guy" was nicknamed as such since he lacks a proper name. Scott Cawthon ended up using the name in various blog posts and it eventually ended up appearing in an actual game in Ultimate Custom Night.
  • The term "Golden Freddy" was actually unofficial at first. His name is never stated in the first game and he is called "Yellow Bear" in the game files. Fans started calling him that, and the name was officially adopted in the sequel.
  • The Withered Animatronics in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 were simply nicknamed as such until Scott Cawthon made them official.
• Fortnite: In Chapter 5, a mysterious giant purple cube appeared on the island. The fans took to calling it Kevin, a name Epic Games has apparently adopted. A backbling item later added to the game that resembled a smaller version of the cube with googly eyes had the official name "Lil Kev". During Season 2 Chapter 8, when more of the cubes appeared on the island, one of the cubes crashed into a building, causing letters from a sign to fall onto the ground spelling out the words "Kev Out".
• Hatred: The trailer showed the main character introducing himself by saying "My name is not important...", which lead to players jokingly using "Not Important" as his name, sometimes spelling it as "Notim Portant". Destructive Creations has since made it his official name.
• Hotline Miami: The nameless protagonist was nicknamed "Jacket" by fans in reference to his iconic varsity jacket. Dennaton, the team behind the game, adopted it, and the name is officially used in the Level Editor of the sequel, as well as in the Pay Day 2 appearance of the character.
• Before the Kirby franchise made Bandana Waddle Dee's name canon in Kirby: Triple Deluxe, he was simply known as a Waddle Dee with a bandana.
• The Spiny Shell from Mario Kart is often called the "Blue Shell" by fans, a name that would be officially be used in the patch notes for the 1.3.0 update for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
• The Marvel Database fan-wiki has a system of Temporary Reality Numbers assigned sequentially to refer to universes that haven't been given official Reality Numbers yet, but in a few cases, those Temporary Reality Numbers have been adapted into their official Reality Number. One such case is Earth-517, formerly Earth-TRN517, the setting of Marvel: Contest of Champions.
• Mass Effect:
  • A throwaway line in the first game revealed that krogan have four testicles. Fans immediately started referring to it as a quad. When Mass Effect 2 was released, "quad" was a widely used term for krogan junk.
  • A joke name for a potential Prothean squadmate was "Prothy the Prothean". When you got a Prothean squadmate, Joker wanted to call him that. Javik was not amused.
• Pokémon:
  • "Eeveelution" at first was just a term fans used to describe the evolutions of Eevee, but became official in the guidebook for Pokémon Stadium 2 and was eventually used in the games proper starting with Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia.
  • Shiny Pokémon are just a Palette Swap of regular Pokémon, except much rarer. However, the term "shiny" was first created by fans due to the sparkles that appear when the shiny Pokémon show up on the screen. The term became official during the fourth generation in promotional material.
  • Pokémon Masters finally canonized that the female Player Character from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen is named "Leaf" and The Rival from Pokémon Gold and Silver is named "Silver". Those were just one of their default names in the main games, and they previously had no Canon Name.
• The original Resident Evil saw Brad Vickers, the helicopter pilot who takes off and leaves the team stranded at the first sign of danger, be dubbed "Chickenheart" by the fans. A file found in the original's Director's Cut edition reveals that his S*T*A*R*S squadmates call him exactly that.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The Sol Dimension seen in Sonic Rush and its sequel was originally coined as such by an unknown editor at Sonic News Network — officially, it was only generically known as Blaze's world, contrasting Sonic's world. It was picked up by the Sonic the Hedgehog Sticker Collection.
  • A few US-centric manuals and some supplementary materials tend to refer to Miles "Tails" Prower as "Tails the Fox", which is otherwise a fandom-exclusive term.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Title 1 “Sonic 1” is used in the 2013 remaster.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2: When Hidden Palace Zone was restored in the 2013, Effexor from Sonic Retro coined the term "Brass Eggman" for the unnamed boss, in reference to the original Japanese naming scheme ([name] Eggman), which was given a nod of approval in 2021's Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia.
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles: The infamous barrel in Carnival Night Zone Act 2 was humorously nicknamed the "Barrel of Doom" by the fandom. Sega caught on to the nickname when a mug of the barrel displaying the same name was made for the Sega Shop.
  • Sonic Unleashed: Sega adopted the Fan Nickname for Sonic's lycanthrope form, the Werehog.
• Several unofficial English names used by the Super Mario Wiki for unlocalized Super Mario Bros. characters and enemies were later used in the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia and certain newer games. This led to a minor controversy from fans who accused the Encyclopedia of plagiarism, resulting in it becoming a banned source on the wiki.
• In The Binding of Isaac there is an unlockable character who is simply a dead version of Isaac so was never given a name apart from ???. Fans started referring to them as Blue Baby because of blue baby syndrome, a condition which would cause Isaac to look like ???. This name has been referenced by Edmund McMillan and while it is still called ??? in-game, its file names and Steam card now refer to it as Blue Baby.
• One of the final bosses of Terraria Calamity grew so powerful it became known as the devourer of gods. Many fans abbreviated it to dog to save time, which later became Doggo through a Memetic Mutation. While not an official name for the character, a summon dropped by them later had its file name changed to Chibi Doggo.
• Taiko no Tatsujin players had referred to themselves as "Donders" from the start of the series, with Bandai Namco taking it into note when the latest title in the series for the Nintendo Switch, Rhythm Festival, released, with the game officially naming players as such.
• Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: The Stage 2 and Stage 4 mid-bosses never debuted with official names, but fans nonetheless gave them Fan Nicknames based on direct translations of their species; Daiyousei (meaning "Great Fairy") for the former, and Koakuma (meaning "Little Devil") for the latter. Several years later in an interview, ZUN acknowledged their names when answering fan questions.
• WolfQuest: Fans often used to call bears (especially the one that spawned near the starting point in Amethyst Mountain 2.5) "Bob the Bear". For a while, a figurine labeled "Bob the Bear Toy" was offered in the WolfQuest online store.

Web Animation

• The second episode of Helluva Boss has Blitzo address Moxxie and Millie as M&M, a popular ship name for them.
• Madness Combat: "Doc", the nickname for 2BDamned, has been used as his name in MADNESS: Project Nexus 2 and Word of God referred to him as such a few times (while remarking that he's not an actual doctor).
• In the second season of RWBY, the various shipping names of Team RWBY were canonized by turning them as combos between two of its members.
• SMG4: During the Super Meme Genesis arc, the Big Bad after having possessed Axol originally didn't have a name in this form (besides from being known as Zero), but fans took to calling it Ax0l, which wound up becoming the official name for the merged entity later on.
• Homestar Runner: The Brothers Chaps have been known to use the Homestar Runner Wiki as reference material, and have even used character names from there, such as the Visor Robot.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: A reader used the name "Silverfish" to refer to Starfish's grotesque reanimated corpse, which others quickly adopted. Ashley revealed she was using the same term for the monster in the script.

Web Original

• Critical Role: The NPC Essek Thelyss quickly gained the nickname "Hot Boi" among fans. Later in Campaign 2, characters started calling him "hot boy" in-universe.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a whole bunch of background ponies that fans have latched onto and even gave them names. Some of the more notable/popular ones like Octavia, DJ Pon-3, Doctor Whooves, and Derpy Hooves were canonized by either the show or merchandise.
• Phineas and Ferb: The song "What Might Have Been" from "Act Your Age" has Isabella use the term "Phinabella", a popular name for the Phineas/Isabella pairing.
• Rick and Morty: The eyepatch-wearing Morty who debuted in "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind" was dubbed Evil Morty by fans, due to his working relationship with Evil Rick (who actually is named in the episode) and general status as an Evil Counterpart to Morty. This became so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget it was ever a Fan Nickname at all, but Season 5's "Rickamurai Jack" is actually the first time it's ever said on the show itself. His prior appearances had either left him unnamed or referred to him as "Candidate Morty" and "President Morty".
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series is officially just titled "Spider-Man", with the nickname being a nod to Batman: The Animated Series. On iTunes, it's referred to by the TAS-inspired title.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Season 13 episode "The Big Bad Bubble Bass" has a scene where Bubble Bass angrily refers to SpongeBob as "ScumBob", a fan nickname that is generally used in a negative way towards episodes hated by most SpongeBob fans, such as "One Coarse Meal" and "A Pal for Gary".
• Total Drama: Supplementary materials for World Tour have several characters use the popular ship name for Duncan and Gwen, Gwuncan, when addressing the idea of them as a couple.
• Transformers: Fans of G1 would often refer to Starscream and his fellow jets as "Seekers". This term was made official by the Dreamwave comics, and used regularly since then.
• X-Men: The Animated Series is officially called just X-Men, but adopted the Animated Series moniker from fans distinguishing it and bringing it in line with Batman: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: The Animated Series.

Other

• Hunan TV, a Chinese television station, came to be known by the general public as "Mango TV" because of their logo, which is supposed to be a white fish and golden grain but is often thought to look like a mango. Eventually, the Hunan network made Mango TV an official alternate name for the channel.
• The residence of the President of the United States was nicknamed the White House as early as 1811, but officially named the Executive Mansion until 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt had "White House–Washington" engraved on the stationary.

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