Compound Title

A Compound Title is when the titles of parts of a larger work can be strung together to form a meaningful phrase. The Compound Title may also be used to set off a few related episodes of a series, levels of a game, or similar. Those titles would also be Cross-Referenced Titles.

Compare Episode Finishes the Title, where the title of each episode is compounded, seperately, with the overall title of the work.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Sweet Guilty Love Bites made up of the three chapters, Sweet Guilty, Guilty Love and Love Bites.

Comic Book

• Largo Winch has the two-parter See Venice... and ...And Die.
• Sergio Aragonés' Actions Speak and Louder Than Words.

Fanfic

• Adjacency: The first two chapters, Nothing Ventured... ... Something Gained
• The Palaververse: The Tempest's chapters fuse to make a long phrase string of sentences: You Never Appreciate the Laws of Physics Till They're Gone At Least Their Absence Can Sometimes Bring Others Closer Together Or Maybe All it Does is Forment All Manner of Fankles Really, You're Just Better Off Waiting For It All To Blow Over. Just Be Sure To Steady Yourself Afterwards.

Film

• Supposedly, the Disney Channel movie Now You See It... was intended to have a sequel titled ...Now You Don't but some of the higher ups forced Alyson Michalka to choose between that and Cow Belles.

Literature

• Isaac Asimov:
  • The Gods Themselves is a novel in three parts; "Against Stupidity...", "...The Gods Themselves...", "...Contend In Vain?". The titles are a reference to Friedrich Von Schiller's quote.
  • "Search by the Mule" and its sequel "Search by the Foundation" were originally published with the titles "Now You See It..." and "...And Now You Don't".
• Harry Turtledove's Counting Up, Counting Down anthology features two stories at the beginning and at the end, titled "Counting Up..." and "...Counting Down." Both are actually the same story told from different perspectives.
• The chapter titles of Italo Calvino's If on a winter’s night a traveler form a poem.
• Two short works by Jack Williamson: "With Folded Hands" "...And Searching Mind."
• A Two-part Nancy Drew story had the two books titled "Lights, Camera..." and "Action!"
• The Pyat Quartet by Michael Moorcock - Byzantium Endures, The Laughter of Carthage, Jerusalem Commands, The Vengeance of Rome. The four titles together can be read as a sentence.
• The Ordinary Princess: The four chapters are: Lavender's Blue, Rosemary's Green, When You Are King, I Shall Be Queen, which is a condensed and slightly altered version of the nursery rhyme, "Lavender's Blue", as the version listed on The Other Wiki with the latter two lines uses "Lavender's green" instead of "Rosemary", and the version that has "Rosemary's green" does not have the latter two lines. The poem also appears on the back cover as:
  Lavender's blue
  Rosemary's green -
  When you are King
  I shall be Queen

Live Action TV

• Bugs had episodes "What Goes Up..." and "Must Come Down" about a space mission.
• Castle had the episodes "Tick, Tick, Tick..." and subsequent "Boom!"
• When TWW (a Welsh TV broadcaster) lost its broadcasting licence, its last two programmes were "All Good Things" and "Come to an End".
• Dawson's Creek used the same compound title for its two part series finale "All Good Things Must Come to An End".
• Grey's Anatomy used "It's the End of the World" & "As We Know It".
• NCIS did this with the season 6 episodes "Cloak" and "Dagger".
• Criminal Minds:
  • "To Hell..." and "...And Back"
  • "Hit" and "Run"
• Breaking Bad had "Cat's in the Bag..." "...and the Bag's in the River" in the first season. There were four (non-consecutive) episode titles in season two that together delivered a spoiler for the season's climax: "737 Down Over ABQ"
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has Season 9 episodes "19 Down..." "...One to Go"
• Everwood: Season 3 première's title is "For Every Action...", while the following episode is called "...There Is a Reaction".
• Space: Above and Beyond's last two episodes: "And If They Lay Us Down To Rest..." and "...Tell Our Moms We Done Our Best."
• On Life two sequential episodes are entitled "Dig A Hole" and "Fill It Up", forming the teaching of the Zen master murdered in the first one.
• Jeopardy! often does this with the category names, where two or more will form a sentence when the host Alex Trebek reads them.
• Once Upon a Time has the last two episodes of the second season titled "Second Star to the Right" and "And Straight on 'Til Morning".
• How I Met Your Mother did this with four episodes. The two-parter at the end of season 2, in which Marshall and Lily get married, have the titles "Something Borrowed" and "Something Blue". Six years later, the two-part finale of season 8, focusing on the lead-up to Robin and Barney's wedding, have the titles "Something Old" and "Something New". The four, when re-arranged, make up a common wedding expression about how a bride should have those four items on her at her wedding for good luck.
• The Somewhere Between premiere and finale are called "For One to Live" and "One Must Die."
• Star Trek: Voyager had two sequenced episodes titled "Hunters" and "Prey". Although the episodes didn't form a two-parter, there was a loose story arc over the two which introduced the Hirogen species to the series.

Music

• American hard rock band Great White wrote an album Once Bitten and followed it up with Twice Shy.
• Sasha's first two albums were Dedicated to and You.
• On the Panic! at the Disco album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, there are tracks "Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off", "But It's Better If You Do". However, the tracks are further separated by "Intermission".
• The song titles on Side Two of Bob Dylan's album Nashville Skyline: "Lay Lady Lay", "One More Night", "Tell Me It Isn't True", "Country Pie", "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You".
• The first song on Heavenly's album Dust to Dust is called "Ashes to Ashes...", and the last is called "...Dust to Dust".
• Dark Tranquillity: "Mine is the Grandeur" "Of Melancholy Burning".
• Nanowar of Steel has the song "Burger" (which is really a short skit rather than a song) and the song immediately following it, "King".
• Five Iron Frenzy has "Fahrenheit" followed immediately by "Four-Fifty-One".
• Dr. Israel's album Inna City Pressure has the back-to-back songs "Inna City" and "Pressure".
• Project 86's Truthless Heroes has four instrumental interlude tracks: "A Word from Our Sponsors", "To Brighten Your Day", "And Help You Sleep", "With Regards, T.H."
• Woven Hand's album Refractory Obdurate gets its title from two songs, "The Refractory" and "Obdurate Obscura".
• The Rush instrumental "Where's My Thing" was paired on a live album with a drum solo called "Here It Is!"
• Venezuelan indie rock band La Vida Bohème has released three albums so far: "Nuestra" (Ours), "Será" (Will be) and "La Lucha" (The struggle).
• Anathallo's debut mini-album Luminous Luminescence in the Atlas Position has the last two songs titled "...in the Atlas Position" and "Luminous Luminescence..." (yes, in reverse order).
• Stress Fractures' debut album has two consecutive tracks: "It Could Be Better," and "but It's Good Enough." Comma and period included.
• Billie Eilish: WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? ends on three tracks meant to be read as a final message: "listen before i go", "i love you", and "goodbye".

Podcasts

• Episode 11 and 12 of Sequinox are titled "The Trouble With Dames..." and "Is That Dames Are Trouble", respectively.
• Wolf 359 has "Knock Knock" and "Who's There?", "Desperate Times" and "Desperate Measures", and three-parter "Pan-Pan"^note Distress call, vessel in danger, no immediate threat to life or integrity of vessel (minor injuries, engine failure, unsure of location, etc.), "Mayday"^note Distress call, vessel in danger, immediate threat to life or integrity of vessel (collision, fire, major injuries/death, etc.) and "Sécurité"^note Important call informing vessels at sea of potentially dangerous situations (lightning storms, tsunamis, etc.).

TV Tropes Wiki

• All Just a Dream Or Was It a Dream?
• Hello!, My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die
• With Friends Like These... Who Needs Enemies?

Video Games

• Bloons Tower Defense 6 has a map that looks like a brick wall, titled "Another Brick". Bloons TD Battles 2 has a similar map called "In the Wall". Combined, this is "Another Brick in the Wall".
• Pathways into Darkness had level "They May Be Slow...", followed by "...But They're Hungry."
• The Binding of Isaac's soundtrack has two songs called "Thine Wrath..." and "...Be Done".
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Used for working titles of card sets. Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, and New Phyrexia were called Lights, Camera, and Action in memos, for instance.
  • Split Cards have two cards on them, and if you string them together with "and", you get a complete phrase. For example, Protect and Serve.
• Saints Row: The 360 version of Saints Row 2 gives you an achievement called "A Brighter Future" for completing the last mission, which is called "...And A Better Life". Combined, they form the Ultor Corporation motto.
• FreeSpace 2 had two consecutive missions named "Love the Treason..." and "...But Hate the Traitor".
• Jasper Byrne's two music tracks in Hotline Miami are named "Hotline" and "Miami". (The official soundtrack release puts them next to each other, but with "Miami" first and "Hotline" second.)
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown: The achievement for constructing your first laboratory is "Theory...", then you get "... and Practice." for constructing a workshop.
• The 360/PS3 video games for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen have two achievements/trophies. One is titled "One Shall Stand" (after beating the Autobot story mode). The other is titled "One Shall Fall" (after beating the Decepticon story mode). Both are used together very often in various Transformers continuities.

Webcomic

• El Goonish Shive
  • A pair of strips titled Nerves Touched... and ...And a Nerve Stabbed.
  • An earlier pair of strips titled If You Were To Ask She Would Say You Already Know Her and This Wouldn't Be True, But She Would Not Be Lying.
• Roommates gave us pages 184-185 "Challenge..." "...Accepted"; and pages 187-188 "Reflexes..." "...Checked".

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation has SCP-2615-J and SCP-2615, titled Clap Your Hands and If You Believe respectively.
• Mentioned on Harmontown, when Dan Hermon has a Rant about the fact that the sequel to Now You See Me was titled... Now You See Me 2.
  "The movie was named after the first part of a well-known phrase! In an honest world, it would be called NOW YOU DON'T!"
• Season 16 of Red vs. Blue opened with "The Shisno" and ended with "Paradox", making up the title of the season. Also, Season 11 had the episode "Ready, Aim..." followed by "Fire", and Season 15 had "Red vs. Red" followed by "Blue vs. Blue".

Western Animation

• South Park had this: "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and "Probably".
• Robot Chicken had an entire season's worth of this, forming two entire letters.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The last two episodes of season three are "Divide" and "Conquer".
• DC Animated Universe: Kyle Rayner's introductory episode "In Brightest Day" and John Stewart's first solo episode "In Blackest Night" form the first part of the Green Lantern oath.

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