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alternative title(s): REALLY Self Explanatory; Aptly Named; Exactly What It Sounds Like; What It Says On The Tin; Exactly What They Say On The Tins
Exactly What It Says on the Tin
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Maybe it's a light romantic comedy?
"Moviegoers who knowingly buy a ticket for 'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor' are going to get exactly what they expect: There is a mummy, a tomb, a dragon and an emperor. And the movie about them is all that it could be."
"So Mafia II is a game about the mafia. They were going to call it "The Quest for the Sausage Fountain", but you know how people are and need everything spelled out."
A title should tell you what a movie, show, or episode of a show is about. Sometimes, though, the premise or plot of the story is all right there in the title. That's when you can say that the story is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Thus, this trope.
The names of action shows designed for children tend to have this as a distinguishing feature, as do most pornographic films, but it certainly doesn't stop there.
Also shows up in naming; an object or organization that does more or less what its name suggests falls into this trope through sheer power of doing Exactly What It Says In Its Name.
Direct opposite of (but not mutually exclusive with) Word Salad Title. Direct opposite of and mutually exclusive with Non-indicative Name.
See also In Which a Trope Is Described, a Victorian version of this trope. Character Title and The Place are subtropes of this. Excited Episode Titles usually feature this. The characters might point out the thing with a Title Drop.
The title comes from the long-running "Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin" TV advertising campaign for Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain, a British product for staining wood, which is known to dry quickly (and other Ronseal products, but the woodstain was first). More on which may be found at That Other Wiki. The word "Tin" is British English for "can".
When adding examples to this page, there are some notes to keep in mind:
- Just because it may be obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to everyone. That next door neighbor you never talk to? Tell her the title and see if she can give a one sentence description of the plot. If not, then the title is NOT Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- A simple Spoiler Title isn't enough to qualify. An episode entitled "Bob Dies" or "Dramatic Entrance! Mary Appears!" doesn't mean that the episode is Exactly What It Says On The Tin unless it tells you how Bob dies or Mary appears (or unless those things are totally irrelevant to the story) — the title needs to tell you absolutely everything you need to know about the contents to qualify.
- Similarly, it isn't enough for the title to just be relevant or accurate — everything meaningful has to be conveyed in the title. Sure, Speed Racer is about a speedy racer and Death Note is about a deadly notebook, but you couldn't convey the entire series with those two words the way you can with Snakes on a Plane; they're not Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- In short, the title must tell you EVERYTHING you need to know by itself. As such, many examples on this page actually do not qualify and we are in the process of slowly cleaning it up. Please help us by removing examples that don't fit when you see them.
Contrast In Name Only, Word Salad Title, Artifact Title, Non-indicative Name. Compare Meaningful Name.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain: Trope Namer, as its advertisement claimed it did literally what its name was - it dried quickly and was a woodstain.
- Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes (as the box indicates, the full name is even more Exactly What It Says On The Tin: they're Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes ''Of Corn''◊ used to be this at least in the USA and Canada, but the word "sugar" was dropped in the 1980s making it less of an example. In an aversion outside the USA & Canada they are commonly known as "Frosties" anyway.
Anime and Manga
- More than a few anime (Naruto is a good example) have episode titles that are a little too indicative of what will happen, and these titles are often mentioned in the already rather obvious previews of the next episode.
- The Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z is particularly bad, with episodes such as "Here comes Satan's Army! Mr. Satan Gets Beat in one hit..." in which Mr. Satan tries to fight Cell, only to get beat in one hit, or "Pitiful Frieza Cannot Stop Shaking." in which pitiful Frieza cannot stop shaking. This is probably because, due to fillers, very little happens in some episodes, and in addition, the Japanese episode titles are all really long, so it's fairly common for the episode title to describe exactly what happens in the episode.
- Some episodes of the Duel Masters dub use this as a joke. Like the one where Shobu duels Hakuo, which is entitled "The One Where Shobu Duels Hakuo".
- Baccano! does this as well with its episode titles, usually revealing the plot of each in one sentence. "Ladd Russo Enjoys Talking a Lot and Slaughtering a Lot" indeed.
- Oku-sama wa Joshi Kōsei. Translation: My Wife Is A High School Girl. In the same vein, Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo, My Wife Is A Magical Girl. Note the series are, in fact, two separate shows.
- Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, the English title being Otoboku: Maidens are falling in love with me!. It's an H-game. Furthermore, the furigana over the male pronoun "boku" reads "oneesama", hinting that the main character is a Wholesome Crossdresser and the haremettes are Sweet on Polly Oliver.
- In the Latin-American Spanish dub of Sailor Moon, there was an infamous episode named "Nephrite dies for Molly(Naru)." Guess what happened. The original Japanese title was just as bad: "Naru's Cry! Nephrite Dies for Love."
- Many episode titles are like this. Some are fairly blatant as to what the episode contains: "The Sailor Warriors Die! The Tragic Final Battle" (Guess what happens)
- Mahou Sensei Negima! has Jack Rakan, who has many names. Two of which are "The Thousand Blades" and "That Damn Guy You Can Stab With Swords All You Like And It Won't Do A Thing, Dammit." These two names really tell you all you need to know about his fighting style.
- One of the swords in Rave Master is named "Explosion". Guess what it does?
- Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force manga give Subaru a new defensive melee weapon called Sword Breaker that proves its effectiveness by breaking a sword.
- Subverted in the first set of Mazinkaiser OV As. There is an episode called "Kabuto Kouji Dies in Magma". He avoids this fate by bursting out of the active volcano he fell into in a rather spectacular fashion. It IS a Super Robot Genre show, after all.
Art
- The Lights Going On And Off◊ by Martin Creed.
- Dogs Playing Poker. It's a series of paintings of dogs that are playing poker.
- The painting (originally, a photograph◊) Dog Looking at and Listening to a Phonograph. Better known as His Master's Voice, which is not indicative.
- Emanuel Leutze's paintings tend to be self-explanatory in titles:
- Most of the famous paintings tend to be known this way. Daffodils is a picture of some daffodils.
Comic Books
- The Bad Art Collection.
- Parodied in Evan Dorkin's Bill And Teds Excellent Comic Book: When Bill and Ted take Death to see Planet of the Apes, he asks "What's this movie about?" "Dude," answers Bill; "it's about a planet of apes!"
- The best example from DC comics would probably be Dogwelder. He welds puppies to people.
- A fair number of DC's villains, as well. Captain Boomerang uses boomerangs, the Fiddler plays a violin, the Toymaker makes (high-explosive) toys.
- Lampshaded with Speed from Marvel's Young Avengers:
Patriot: I'm sorry: "Speed"?
Speed: Nice fit, don't you think?
Hawkeye: What's wrong with "Speed"? It tells you everything you need to know in one syllable.
- Marvel loves this trope,
- Armor (Hisako Ichiki): creates a suit of armor around herself. In the Astonishing X-Men #20 comic when she names herself, Wolverine and Armor have a conversation about this exact note:
Wolverine: "'Armor'. Hunh."
Misako: "Is it taken?"
Wolverine: "I don't think so. It'll work for a name. Kinda on the nose..."
Misako: "Well it gets to the point."
Wolverine: "Yeah, it's very direct —I'm thinking of calling myself 'Claws'."
- Dead-Girl: She's a dead girl.
- Flat-Man: He's a flat man.
- Giant-Man: He's a giant man.
- Gorilla-Man: He's a man who is now a gorilla.
- Gravity: He controls gravity.
- Invisible Woman: She's an invisible woman, though the name doesn't mention her forcefield powers.
- Sand-Man: He's a man made of sand.
- Speed: He has speed powers.
- Strong Guy is a strong guy.
- Two-Gun Kid: He was a kid with two guns. Now, he's a young adult...with two guns.
- Human Torch: is on fire.
- Silver Surfer: He's silver, and he rides on a surf board.
- And from DC:
- Legion of Super-Heroes.
- They had members such as Lightning Lad, Bouncing Boy, and Matter-Eating Lad.
- NOTE: The above are characters whose names describe everything about them. Comic books with titles that describe a character are NOT this trope, as their plots tend to have a lot more detail than that.
- Marvel Zombies: the Marvel Universe has lots of people turn into zombies.
- Take a stab at the main plot point of Y The Last Man
- One of the supporting characters in the Grimjack comic went by the name Goddess. It was eventually shown that she was indeed one, specifically from one of the African myths.
- There's an issue of Buffy that centers on her and Angel. The title? Them F#©%ing. Readers get their money's worth.
- Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow
- No prizes for guessing what animal Alexander Lemming from The Beano is. Also from The Beano Roger the Dodger who as the name suggests tries to dodge things mainly work.
- The Tintin album Explorers on the Moon.
- Doom Patrol has had a few of these: The Chief is the leader of the team, Robotman is a man who became a robot, Crazy Jane is a woman called Jane who's crazy (though it later turned out Jane isn't her real name, it's just one of her multiple personalities), the Scissormen are men with huge scissors, Danny the Street is a sentient street called Danny, and Beard Hunter is a guy who hunts for... Well, take a guess.
Fan Fic
Film
Literature
Live Action TV
- Lampshaded on Whose Line Is It Anyway? before a particular performance of the game Foreign Film Dub:
Drew: If you were a Ukranian action film director, what would the name of your action film be?
Someone in audience: Action In the Ukraine!
- Babylon 5 has the "pain givers".
- Friends: All but two episodes follow the basic formula of "The One With /Where/In X", eg. The One With the Hypnosis Tape, The One in Vegas, The One Where They're up all night. Even the three that don't are called "The Pilot", "The One Hundreth", and "The Last One" respectively.
- Frasier. Whenever a singular character from Cheers shows up, the episode title is "The Show Where [Lilith/Sam/Diane/Woody] Shows Up".
- You know she had to get here sometime: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about a girl named Buffy who, well...if you don't know, call somebody.
- The French translation is even less ambiguous—it's effectively "Buffy Versus The Vampires".
- Slightly subverted in that she doesn't just slay vampires. Or just slay vampires. Or just slay vampires. If you see what I mean.
- A number of episode titles fall into this category, usually by describing the Monster of the Week - "The Witch", "Inca Mummy Girl", and of course, "Buffy vs. Dracula".
- Also, Dark Willow (Willow Turned Evil, with black hair), Vampire Willow, Vampire Xander, Giant Dawn, MechaDawn, Insane Spike, The First Evil, The Trio, the Buffybot...
- Chased By Dinosaurs, which was like Walking With Dinosaurs except there was a time travelling zoologist who did, indeed, get chased.
- Prison Break. Seriously.
- Fat Guy Stuck In Internet. When [adult swim] first summarized the show, they said, "Fat Guy Stuck in Internet. This fat guy gets stuck in the Internet."
- An episode of Father Ted was called "Kicking Bishop Brennon up the arse". Ted has to kick Bishop Brennon up the arse.
- Many, many non-fiction programmes, such as those along the lines of When Tropers Attack, or genuine titles The Boy Who Gave Birth To His Brother, My Large Breasts and I and The Man Whose Arms Exploded.
- Used to hilarious effect in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with the episode titles. For example, the cold open will be Frank hatching a dangerous scheme, but claiming that no one will get hurt. Cue the episode title, "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire."
- My Mother The Car. See, this dude's mother is a car...
- Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide approaches Word Salad Title length, but it's about this kid named Ned who composes a guide to surviving school, and is willing to divulge the results to anyone who wants to know. So...
- Lampshaded in The Kids in the Hall sketch about an Ex-Girlfriends Relocation Program. "It's complicated, so allow me to explain. The Ex-Girlfriends Relocation Program is a program that relocates ex-girlfriends. ...Gee, I guess it wasn't that complicated."
- In the second episode of Arrested Development, Michael discovers a bag in the fridge labeled "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat". After looking in the bag he delivers his classic response: "I don't know what I was expecting."
- Also, Tobias is a "nevernude", and when Michael finds this out, he asks, "Is that exactly what it sounds like?"
- It becomes a Running Gag, with some variant of "exactly what it sounds like" showing up with almost every mention of Tobias' condition.
- Inverted with one of GOB's "illusions" titled "Free Chicken", when a hungry crowd gathers expecting free chicken.
- The first-ever produced episode of I Love Lucy was entitled "Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her." Bet you can't guess the plot.
- Most of the I Love Lucy titles are like that. Most likely back then, the writers figured no one but themselves would care about titles in a medium that a great many people still considered a passing fad. Why bother with clever titles?
- Many Happy Days episode titles follow this similar style. i.e. "Fonzie Moves In," "Fonzie Moves Out" (who saw that one coming?), or "The Fonz Is Allergic to Girls." And who could forget the ever-so-blunt tragic spoilers like "Fonzie Gets Shot" or "Richie Almost Dies." (is there no sympathy?)
- The game show Win Ben Steins Money. Its eponymous host assures us that if you're fast enough, smart enough, and if you've got the guts, you can win Ben Stein's money!
- How Its Made.
- How Do They Do It?.
- It seems like quite a few Discovery Channel regular shows are like this: MythBusters (About guys who bust, or prove, myths), Dirty Jobs (About a guy who does dirty jobs, but not that kind), Extreme Loggers (About loggers working in extreme conditions), Time Warp (depicting fast things by "warping time"), Destroyed In Seconds (showcases several objects being destroyed in seconds).
- National Geographic is getting in on it too, with Cut It in Half.
- The I'm In the Band movie, "I'm Out Of The Band".
- Lost: After a year and a half of teasing us with what Kate did to become a wanted fugitive, a season 2 episode was titled "What Kate Did."
- They seem to be doing this a bit more recently. Meet Kevin Johnson and The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham come to mind.
- Season 5 finale "The Incident" is pretty straight-forward. Speaking of "What Kate Did", there's an episode in Season 6 titled "What Kate Does".
- Star Trek: Voyager. The trend seeps past Season 3 and slips over into Star Trek: Enterprise afterwards.
- A lot of the Japanese titles for Star Trek episodes are like this. (You can see them here.)
- Plus the name "Star Trek: Voyager" itself - pretty prescient given the ship's creators presumably didn't know the ship was going to be making such a long trip...
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie did indeed contain bits of Stephen Fry and bits of Hugh Laurie.
- Not uncommon among comedy acts. Other British examples include Alexei Sayle's Stuff and The Imaginatively Titled Punt and Dennis Show.
- Leverage - each episode is "The ____ Job" - "The 12-Step Job", "The Wedding Job", "The Juror #6 Job" (featuring cons involving a 12-step program, a wedding, and a trial, respectively). We're still waiting on a "Train Job".
- Most of Cartoon Network's "CN Real" block, most notably Destroy Build Destroy.
- The iCarly episode iStart A Fan War.
- Spencer's friend Socko and his family. Socko owns a sock company, his brother Tyler owns a tie company, his other brother Taylor is a tailor, his Uncle Otto sells cars, and his cousin Rob steals stuff.
- The overly long titles of the iCarly skits. For titles like "Pathetic Plays: (insert long title)", "The prisoner who wanted some soup and the man who refused to give him some" and "The cowboy with a mustache and the idiot farm girl who thought the mustache was a squirrel", guess what the looping plot line of each skit is.
- Also this happened on Wizards of Waverly Place, where they even outright stated, "In the Wizarding worlds people name their children what they want them to grow up to be." This episode included a tutor named Tutor. This didn't always work, though.
- In Blackadder one hopes for Prince George's sake that Blackadder's play "Thick Jack Clot Sits In The Stocks And Gets Pelted With Rancid Tomatoes" isn't an example of this trope, since Blackadder wants him to play the title role.
- In an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine is at a video store trying to find something to rent and picks one up called "The Pain and the Yearning". She turns it over to read the synopsis on the back: "An old woman experiences pain and yearning."
- Not the Nine O'Clock News wasn't in fact, you'll be shocked to know, the nine o'clock news.
- The 90s Nickelodeon musical sketch comedy show Roundhouse titled their last episode "Endings." Also lampshaded: "Either this is a really convoluted episode about endings, or..."
- Name That Tune. It's a game show where the contestants have to name tunes.
- Men Behaving Badly.
- The Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women. It's exactly the barely adequate movie-of-the-week material it sounds like.
- 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow is an excuse to throw people off an 80ft tower in... well... 101 different ways.
- Roger And Val Have Just Got In
- One of the main characters of Para Pencari Tuhan frequently wears a Chelsea F.C. shirt (no, not the one with "Samsung" on it!). His name... is "Chelsea".
- Canada's Worst Driver is a show about the worst drivers in Canada.
- The Bill Nye the Science Guy episode about heat had a few clips featuring a big sweaty guy called Big Sweaty Guy. The show itself could be seen as an example of the trope, since it was presented by Bill Nye and about science.
- Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil is about a boy named Todd and a book that is pure evil.
- In the show there is a book that is called "The Book of Pure Evil". Guess what it does. This is lampshaded many times after everything goes wrong and someone has to ask something along the lines of, "What did you think would happen when reading from something called "The Book of Pure Evil?""
- There has been a trend recently in British TV comedy for shows to be given this kind of title, often in such a way as to suggest their creators think of themselves as a little bit too cool for TV comedy school. Examples include Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and Katy Brand's Big-Ass Show.
- Mr. Brain has some very specific episode titles, including "Eccentric Neuroscientist vs. Beautiful Revived Ghost!!", "Invisible Man Setting Up Serial Murders!!" and "Eccentric Neuroscientist vs. Beautiful Woman With A Split Personality!!"
- Important Things With Demetri Martin, and to a lesser extent, Demetri Martin: Person. Demetri Martin is a person (and a very postmodern one).
- Guess what 1000 Ways to Die is about.
- Some episodes of Psych (known for having bizarre and quirky episode titles) fall under this category, eg: "Gus's Dad May Have Killed An Old Guy."
- Spoofed in the Gerry Anderson pilot Space Police (which was later reworked as Space Precinct): the villain, Mr. Big, is based out of a nightclub called "Mr. Big's Secret Hideout" which is covered with neon signs and arrows indicating same.
- Misfits lampshades this in the first episode of the third season
Kelly: These new powers are bullshet, I thought this power would make me dead clever in everythin, but all I know is how to build and design rockets
Curtis: I guess it does exactly what it says on the tin
Kelly: Except there was no fookin' tin with all the instructions on it
- Jamal Jenkins explains his reasoning for the name he gave to the entity that sent him messages on his computer.
Music
- Parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic's song, "This Song Is Just Six Words Long"... do the math.
- For Weird Al himself, the "Dare To Be Stupid" LP is inscribed with the phrase "More Songs About Television And Food".
- Another song of his that fits this trope is "Truck Drivin' Song".
- Anal Cunt's "88 Song EP" it's an EP with 88 songs in it. Their "5643 Song EP" it's an EP with tons of songs mixed together.
- The Nail's "88 Lines About 44 Women" is... 88 lines about 44 women.
- The Magnetic Fields' triple album "69 Love Songs". It's... well... exactly.
- Debatable in that many songs on it require interpretation and rationalization to be considered "love" songs, strictly speaking...
- Per Stephen Merritt himself: "69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love."
- No FX: "45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records". Fortunately the song Fuck The Kids wasn't meant literally.
- The weird thing is there's actually 47 songs.
- Parodied: An early Saturday Night Live hung a lampshade on this trope by having Frank Sinatra (played by Joe Piscopo) trying to update his image by recording an album with tunes that the young people would enjoy. The title of the album? Frank Sings Tunes The Young People Will Enjoy.
- The compilation album Short Music for Short People. The album features 101 songs by 101 artists, with an average song length of around 30 seconds.
- Said compilation includes the tune "Mike Booted Our First Song, So We Recorded This One Instead" by Mad Caddies.
- Much of the soundtrack to The Proposition consists of songs with titles like "Sad Violin Thing".
- A few of Tom Lehrer's songs fit this trope.
- Obviously "The Masochism Tango".
- His aptly titled Christmas song "A Christmas Carol".
- "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
- "I Hold Your Hand in Mine"
- "The Elements" - every chemical element known at the time, set to the tune of "The Major-General's Song". Speaking of which....
- Dream Theater - a band who had one commercially successful single and then returned to the underground - released a "best of" album called Dream Theater's Greatest Hit and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs.
- Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict" is several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict.
- Pink Floyd once planned to release an album called 'Household Objects' consisting of music played entirely on household objects.
- And of course, there's always Soundtrack from the Film More, which is the band's soundtrack to the film More.
- Stephen Colbert's "Another Christmas Song", which is very similar in tone to "A Christmas Carol" above.
- Classical music in general loved this trope. Pachelbel's Canon is, in full, Canon and Gigue in D major for three Violins and Basso Continuo. Beethoven's works most commonly called the Eroica Variations (for their use in the Eroica Symphony) were in full Variations and Fugue for Piano in E flat major, Op. 35, while his Opus 20 was Septet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and contrabass in E-flat major. It's no wonder many classical works are simply referred to by composer, opus, and number.
- Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs consists of "Layla" and...other assorted love songs.
- Cinematic Sunrise's album comes with a coloring book. It's titled A Coloring Storybook and Long Playing Record.
- Shel Silverstein's "26 Second Song".
- Country singer Kenny Price recorded "The Shortest Song in the World," which was 11 seconds long and consisted of a two-measure intro, followed by Price singing "This is the shortest song in the world." Believe it or not, it was the B side of a single.
- Likewise, one of Peter Sellers's albums has a track called "Peter Sellers Sings George Gershwin", which consists of... Peter Sellers singing the words "George Gershwin".
- The state song of Maine is titled "State Song of Maine."
- John Cage's 4:33 is exactly that: Four minutes and thirty-three seconds... of silence.
- Public Image Ltd once recorded an album that is simply named Album. Depending on the format, the same album is also called Cassette or Compact Disc.
- The band liked using this trope a fair amount. For example, the band's first album was aptly named First Issue.
- The band's second album, originally packaged in metal film canisters, was named Metal Box. After this initial run, the album was reconfigured and renamed Second Edition.
- Possibly inspired by the aforementioned Public Image Ltd album, the British record label Metalheadz released a compilation called Metalheadz Limited Edition CD Metal Box Set, which is a limited edition CD that comes in, you guessed it, a metal box.
- Almost any album named Greatest Hits, especially if it's "[name of artist]'s Greatest Hits". Played with a bit in cases such as Greatest Hits Plus and Greatest Hits...and Then Some (two albums with this name), which include previously unreleased songs.
- There have been at least four different "Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits" or "Best of Fleetwood Mac" albums, which, depending on which Fleetwood Mac you're a fan of, are either examples of this trope or quite the reverse. To avoid any such problem, the full title of one of them was "Green Shadows: The Best of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac" .
- Similar to Greatest Hits compilations, almost any live album falls under this trope. (e.g. Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison, The Who's Live at Leeds, Cheap Trick's At Budokan, etc.)
- The Kentucky Headhunters released an album of soul music. What did they call it? Soul.
- "Three Minute Positive Not-Too-Country Up-Tempo Love Song" by Alan Jackson.
- The David Frizzell & Shelly West Album. Guess which two artists contributed to it.
- The Band. They're a band.
- Apocalyptica's debut album, Plays Metallica By Four Cellos, which has the band, at the time a quartet of cellos, playing Metallica covers.
- KISS' "Rock and Roll all Nite" is a song about rocking and rolling all night.
- "Eleven Four" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (actually by its saxophonist Paul Desmond) is in 11/4 time.
- "The Really Terrible Orchestra" in Edinburgh is a no-audition orchestra of really terrible musicians. When one of the player bios says the person is "too able" for the orchestra...
- The Birthday Massacre have an example of this. When they were called Imagica, they had a song called... The Birthday Massacre. Which was, in fact, about a massacre on someone's birthday. (The song's now called Happy Birthday, for the record).
- Rihanna's "Russian Roulette" is not a metaphor about relationships, according to the songwriters.
- The sound production company known as Epic Score. Basically, they are the guys that make trailers sound, well, epic. (I strongly recommend a low volume setting before following that link.)
- The song "Heroin" by Velvet Underground is explicitly about, well, using heroin.
- "4 Minutes" by Madonna is 4 minutes long, and even starts out with Timbaland rapping about how he's out of time and he's only got four minutes. He keeps on repeating the phrase for about 30 seconds.
- Megadeth's "Headcrusher". It is about a device that crushes heads.
- Rammstein's "Ein Lied", translated to English, becomes "A Song".
- Mr. Jones, by Counting Crows, is about a night a young, lonely Adam Duritz spent in a nightclub with a man named Mr. Jones, where they stared at beautiful women, did some friendly ribbing, and dreamed of becoming rock stars. No, really.
- Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) consists of the members (surprise) David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young.
- The post-punk band Fugazi liked to use this trope to a certain extent:
- 13 Songs is a compilation of the band's first two E Ps which contains 13 songs.
- 3 Songs is an EP which contains 3 songs. This was also later appended to their album Repeater, which was then renamed, fittingly, Repeater + 3 Songs
- Instrument Soundtrack is the soundtrack to the band documentary Instrument.
- Hardcore band Minor Threat has a couple of these to their name, with the compilation Complete Discography and the album First Demo Tape.
- Nilsson Sings Newman, in which singer Harry Nilsson sings songs written by Randy Newman.
- Björk's Debut, which is her solo debut album. (Well, as long as you don't count her self-titled album that was released when she was 11.)
- The Fiery Furnaces' EP, which is an EP.
- The Beach Boys' 15 Big Ones, which contains 15 songs. It's also a sly reference to the number of years the band had been together at that point.
- Aphex Twin plays with this trope on a couple of his releases (such as his Selected Ambient Works albums), but never is it more apparent than on his remix compilation 26 Mixes for Cash.
- Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson (lit. The Story of Melody Nelson), an album about the eponymous character.
- "The Song With the Slow Part" by Portraits of Past is a bit of a subversion. It has a slow part, but so do so many other of their songs, so it's not exactly THE song with the slow part.
- "The Song That Never Ends" pretty much doesn't, since the lyrics are recursive.
- "Yeah" by Kyuss. The "song" is simply a brief recording of their singer saying "yeah."
- Teenage Fanclub have a best of called Four Thousand Seven Hundred And Sixty-Six Seconds, which 4766 seconds long.
- Leonard Cohen's album Songs of Leonard Cohen, consisting entirely of songs written and performed by Leonard Cohen. There's also Recent Songs and 10 New Songs... Well, they were "recent" and "new" in 1979 and 2001, respectively.
- So there's this band called Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Main features of their music: synthesizers and depression.
- Filter have an album called Title of Record.
- The Flaming Lips have made an album called "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots". On the album, there is a song called "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" about, guess what? A young girl, named Yoshimi who is a blackbelt in karate, doing what? Battling robots.
- They also have a song called "Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World." Guess what it's about.
- The Divine Comedy released an album called A Short Album About Love. It's not very long and all the songs are about love.
- The Arrogant Worms' "Song Inside My Head" involves someone who is being driven crazy by a song inside his head.
- They also have a song called "Canada Is Really Big" about how big Canada is.
- Bruce Springsteen's "Wreck On The Highway" is about a guy who sees a bad car accident on the highway one night.
- Squarepusher's New Sound Album, "Solo Electric Bass 1." All the songs were played on an electric bass guitar without any other instruments, unlike the his trademark mishmash style of jungle, drum and bass, acid jazz, IDM, and experimental electronic music.
- Big Black's album, Songs About Fucking.
- F.O.D. has a song called "Synthesizer Tanzmusik" which is a very danceable tune, played on a synthesizer.
- Several songs from Fridge's Happiness album. Can you guess what instruments were used to make the songs Cut Up Piano & Xylophone, Tone Guitar & Drum Noise, or Melodica & Trombone?
- Fantomas Melvins Big Band were the members of Fantomas and The Melvins joining together to play songs from their respective catalogs live. About the only way that this wasn't Exactly What It Says on the Tin is that they weren't that kind of Big Band, just a rock band with a larger number of people on stage at the same time than is usual.
- Jon Lajoie's "2 Girls 1 Cup Song" is, well, a song about the video 2 Girls 1 Cup.
- Also, in "WTF Collective" and "WTF Collective 2" most of the M Cs are this, for example, MC Confusing spouts lyrics that purposefully don't make any sense, MC Lethal Weapon 1, 2, and 3 liked all of the Lethal Weapon movies but the fourth, MC Homophobic F***ing ***hole, is, you guessed it, a homophobe, and by now I'm sure you can guess what The Guy Who Sings The Chorus does...
- Mel Torme's The Christmas Song is a well-known song about Christmas. Never heard of it? "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."
- Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars is a band formed by refugees from Sierra Leone.
- "People Who Died" by Jim Carroll is a song about people who died. Prematurely and tragically.
- Pomplamoose's The Album You Bought at Our Show (thanks for that) is an album that's only available at their concerts.
- Adebisi Shank's three releases are called This is the EP of a band called Adebisi Shank, This is the Album of a band called Adebisi Shank, and This is the Second Album of a band called Adebisi Shank.
- Wing, a singer from New Zealand, has albums such as... Wing Sings AC/DC, The Beatles Classics by Wing, Wing Sings the Carpenters, and Wing Sings Elvis. To top it all off, she guest stars in an episode of South Park, named after herself.
- The band Brothers Of Brazil. They're a pair of brothers... From Brazil.
- Brad Paisley 's album and song "This is Country Music". Guess what genre he sings
- My Hat by Anthony and Those Other Guys, about his hat.
Newspaper Comics
Professional Wrestling
- A few Professional Wrestling gimmick matches have this:
- Steel Cage match, a match inside a steel cage.
- First Blood match, where the first wrestler that bleeds, loses.
- "You're fired"/Loser Leaves Town, where the loser is fired if he or she loses the match.
- "I Quit", where the loser is the one who quits first.
Stand Up Comedy
- Invoked by comedian Ed Byrne as an introduction to a series of jokes about religion and homosexuality: 'Let me explain what God Hates Fags are about, for those of you who didn't know what to expect from Snakes on a Plane. "Hmm, I haven't been this mystified by the title of a film since The Mummy Returns!"'
Tabletop Games
- For every Dungeons And Dragons monster with an obscure or entirely nonsensical name, there's another one or two monsters that's exactly what it says on the tin—take a wild guess what Blooddrinker Oozes, Invisible Stalkers, or Flame Snakes do.
- Owlbears. They're...bears...with owl heads. You can't get more tinny than that.
- Many demons and devils - especially ones like the chain devil and arrow demon.
- The infamous "Brain-In-A-Jar"?
- Same goes for prestige classes: for every Initiate Of The Sevenfold Veil and Green Star Adept, there's a Frost Mage or Exotic Weapon Master.
- This can get particularly amusing when players, upon encountering a strange monster for the first time, start referring to it by a name that turns out to be what it's actually called in the Monster Manual.
- In 4.0, many of the Magic Items are this. Cloak of Invisibility, Vicious Weapon, Supremely Vicious Weapon, Horned Helm, just to mention a few, are exactly what they sound like.
- The standard Ring of Invisibility allowed its wearer to become invisible. The joke Invisible Ring, on the other hand, was itself invisible.
- Likewise, in 3.0, there was an item called "Ring of Death Immunity". It's a magic ring that makes the wearer immune to Death. Not Death Effects. Death. Also qualifies as a Game-Breaking Powerup.
- GURPS stands for "Generic Universal Role-Playing System." This is a system to govern roleplaying games, in any genre, in any setting, and dealing with any subject matter. According to the creator, Steve Jackson, he intended to replace the term (originally a placeholder) with a more imaginative title and just couldn't think of anything.
- Plenty of Magic: The Gathering cards follow this trope, some of the more notable examples include Counterspell and various creature names (i.e. Elf Warrior).
Theatre
- Death Of A Salesman. There is a salesman. He dies.
- Waiting For Godot. That's pretty much it.
- Samuel Beckett, in general: among his other works are 'Act Without Words I' (an act without any spoken words), 'Act without Words II' (another act without any spoken words), Breath (a play just featuring the sound of someone breathing), 'Play' (a play), and 'Film' (you get the idea).
- The Play About The Baby by Edward Albee. It's a play. About a baby.
- One of Eugene Ionesco's plays was originally titled English Without Toil. You guessed it, the whole thing is based on dialogues from foreign language textbooks. Judging by the above two examples, must be a thing in the Theatre of the Absurd.
- Quite a few songs in Spring Awakening fall under this trope, such as:
- "Totally F* cked"
- "Touch Me"
- "Word of Your Body"
- "Don't Do Sadness"
- "My Junk"
- "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade" Yes all that is the play's title.
- Usually, in both stage and film adaptation, shortened to Marat/Sade.
- Danton's Death. Yeah, he dies.
- There's a very off-off-off-broadway show called Naked Boys Singing. Yep. That's pretty much it.
- Intrigue And Love by Friedrich Schiller. There's intrigue and love. Justified, as the play starts out as an examination of common intrigue/love tropes and proceeds to wipe them all off the table.
- "Seussical". The works of Dr. Seuss made into a musical.
- A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking: A description that could fit more than a few TV shows, as well.
Video Games
Web Animation
- Banana-nana-Ninja!
- The Demented Cartoon Movie has a lot of these: Auto Romeo Maker, the Kamikaze Watermelon, Blow Up The World Button, Mr. Large Generic Blunt Object, the Crash Yourself Into A Brick Wall Race, etc.
- The Pointless Button in the asdfmovie series is completely pointless.
Web Comics
- I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space!!! is a complicated post-feminist statement with shifting grounds of metaphor and symbolism, aiming to deconstruct both the uber-manly hero and the Amazon Brigade. Also, there are lesbian pirates. In outer space. Sometimes they kidnap people, such as the protagonist.
- The name The Adventures of Dr. McNinja tells the reader absolutely everything he or she needs to know about the webcomic's premise.
- Girl Genius, in a Story Within A Story:
Bill: I never thought I'd have to use this.
Dr. Mongfish (reformed): "Ocean in a bottle"? What's that?
Bill: Truth in packaging.
- Penny Arcade, regarding The Time Machine.
- Interdimensional Transfer Student Erro, a webcomic about a transfer student from Another Dimension who just happens to be named Erro.
- Suicide for Hire. It's about two guys who run a business which involves being hired to help people commit suicide. Under strict legal definitions it should probably be "Murder For Hire", though ...
- There is a moment in Daisy Owl when her teacher meets her father, Mr. Owl.
Teacher: I didn't expect you to be an actual owl...
- Questionable Content's content can indeed be questionable, or at least highly NSFW at times.
- It also has the Filler Strips character Yelling Bird. Whose only purpose is to yell obscenities at the author.
- Real Life Comics, sort of.
- Schlock Mercenary is about a mercenary named Schlock.
- The Order of the Stick compilation "War and XPs" may sound like just a pun on Tolstoy, but it contains two main stories: one involving a war, and one involving personal growth (defined, in RPG terms, as experience points, or XP).
- For that matter, The Order of the Stick is about an order of adventurers named after a stick.
- Said adventurers (and the rest of the characters in the comic) happen to be drawn as stick figures.
- Then there's the character Redcloak, who wears a red cloak, as well as The Monster In The Dark. Redcloak, however, is justified in that he made up a name that was easy for Xykon to remember, since Xykon just obliterated somebody with a complex name.
- The Azure city is a city that is Azure.
- How I Killed Your Master is a conversation in flashback format, between a young fighter and the old man who killed his master.
- White Ninja Comics, a group of comics about White Ninja.
- Wicked Lasers has this in-story: Killsword. He kills people. Using his sword.
- In The Way of the Metagamer, there's a town called "Townwithanequipmentstoreaplacewithmapsandatavernofcourse". Guess which three things are located in said town.
- Gods Playing Poker Is about some gods around a table playing poker.
- The comic Basic Instructions uses this trope daily, as it masquerades as a self-help book; titles of comics include "How To Accept Creative Input From A Friend" and "How To Avenge Your Brother's Murder". this comic deserves special mention for invoking the trope directly.
- NSFW Comix. Need I go on?
- The Life of Nob T. Mouse details the life of Nob T. Mouse.
- In Homestuck, troll movies are apparently named this way, due to the troll civilization being so old that all the good movie titles are taken.
CG: WHEREIN NUMEROUS VIGILANTES CONFRONT PERIL; ONE OF THEM BETRAYS THE OTHERS; (BUT IT TURNS OUT TO BE PART OF THE PLAN ALL ALONG);
CG: SEVERAL ATTRACTIVE FEMALE LEADS PROVOKE ROMANTIC TENSION; FOUR MAJOR CHARACTERS WEAR UNUSUAL HATS; ONE HOLDS PLOT-CRITICAL SECRET;
CG: 47 ON-SCREEN EXPLOSIONS, ONE RESULTING IN DEMISE OF KEY-ADVERSARY; 6 to 20 LINES THAT COULD BE CONSTRUED AS HUMOROUS;
EB: wait...
EB: this is the title?
CG: IT GOES ON.
- In Lovecraft Is Missing, H.P. Lovecraft is missing.
Web Original
- Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog has the Evil League of Evil, led by Bad Horse. He's bad. And literally a horse. Also, the title perfectly describes the Framing Story of the show.
- Ami spins, Cho's dizzy...
- Survival of the Fittest: See The One Where Gabe Dies, which is the one where Gabe dies. Gabe McCallum, to be specific.
- The Dutch Gamesite named Gamekings once had an item named: A look into the kitchen of Rockstar (which besides the literal meaning means something like: A look behind the scenes of Rockstar) Little did viewers know that they indeed showed the kitchen of the Rockstar studios.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd.
- The Midna fan forum/site Want Midna Back is a forum created and visited by Midna fans who... well, weren't pleased by her final scene.
- The ''Crash-Yourself-Into-A-Brick-Wall Race"
- The Cats In Sinks website.
- The "Will it Blend?" series of Youtube videos involve a man putting objects in a blender to see if they will blend.
- The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog.
- Badass of the Week features articles about badasses. Updated weekly.
- Cats That Look Like Hitler
- Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians
- Japanese Bird Cooking Spaghetti
- The programming blog at delphi.org features a regular podcast about Delphi programming. Its name? "The podcast @ delphi.org"
- How Stuff Works is a website dedicated to showing you... well... how stuff works.
- In A Very Potter Musical, the incantations for most spells are like this. For example, the spell to produce an indian burn is "Indian Burn Hex!"
- The Dangeresque trilogy from Homestar Runner features a henchman called Killingyouguy, whose task is to kill you. Incidentally, he's a guy.
- Old Jews Telling Jokes
- The "Free Boobs" test on OK Cupid refers to this trope by name in its description,
- You Suck at Craigslist actually uses the trope as its subtitle.
- Wario Farts On Pokemon. Basically showing screenshots of Wario farting on every Pokémon in Brawl, for the humour value.
- Leekspin.com. It's about spinning a leek.
- Parodied by The Cinema Snob, when he comments on a film titled Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, that he and everybody else in the world should pretty much know what to expect. Turns out it's an artsploitation flick with pretensions of seriousness and relatively minimal gore. It does have a bed that eats, at least.
- Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar.
- AAAAAAAAA!
- Five Second Films. They're films that are five seconds long.
- The Annoying Orange counts too!
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum. 'nuff said.
- New York Magician
- The Guild: See, there's this guild...
- There's a story on a NSFW site whose title is simply the name of its main character. It's the blurb which takes the cake: "[character name] has a lot of sex."
- Movies You May Have Missed is about Movies You May Have Missed.
- Many of Jon Lajoie's videos, such as both parts to Pointless Profanity and the Breathing Commercial. His songs also have many straightforward titles such as "Show Me Your Genitals" and "I Kill People."
- Lego Pirate Misadventures follows a group of Lego minifig pirates and their misadventures.
- Rap News: News commentary in rap format.
- Is it a good idea to microwave this?: Puts random stuff into microwaves, and comments on whether it's a good idea at the end.
- One episode of Agents Of Cracked has Swaim being asked to make a Facebook for the site, and he assumes this trope is in effect. The result screams, faintly, in its bloody box. They end up having an intern make "the other kind" of Facebook instead.
- AM2R or, Another Metroid 2 Remake. I wonder what it's similar to...
- You Only Live Once: In this flash game, you only have one life. PERIOD. When you press 'continue', you just see the consequences of your death. Reloading the game to try again only shows grass growing on your grave.
- http://www.yeahbutton.com/ It's a button you press it and goes "YEEEEAHHHH!".
- Subverting this is something of a meme on 4chan, where users will deliberately misname images as a joke (e.g. a .gif of Jackie Chan punching a guy will be labeled as "Bruce Lee Practices a rider kick," and the like).
- Paula Deen Riding Things It even lampshades this in the subtitle of the website.
- Sometimes Red, Sometimes Blue. Each color has a 50% chance of being chosen.
- There's a Brazilian Tumblr named "Atheism and Breasts" (NSFW), which shows atheist quotes and pictures of boobs.
- My Opinions on Every Pokémon Ever is an ongoing series of opinions on every Pokémon ever.
- There's a Youtube channel called "Cooking with (a) Dog". The banner says "It's not what you think..."*
That is, not cooking dogs , except it's exactly what you think - cooking. With a dog, who is also the narrator.
- A great many SCP objects are EXACTLY what they say on the tin. The Hard-To-Destroy Reptile, a Machine, a Miniature Dump Truck, a Cowbell, Knowledge, living LEGO, the 13 Inch Chef's Knife, a Ball of Green Slime...
- The Book Of Stories OCT.
Western Animation
- Family Guy had an episode named "Stew-roids". It's about Stewie going on Steroids.
- As a bonus, in the same episode, Chris mentions a movie called Distracting Trumpet.
- One episode of the X-Men animated series was titled "Enter Magneto". Yep, he does.
- While most The Simpsons episode titles are parodies or in-jokes, quite a few are pretty plain and non-funny: "Bart Gets Hit By a Car" (featuring a rare use of an Episode Title Card), "Bart Gets Famous", "Lisa's Substitute", "Lisa the Vegetarian", "Lisa's Sax", "Homer's Barbershop Quarter", "Homer and Apu"...
- "Hans Moleman Productions Presents: Man Getting Hit By Football".
- "Bin Laden in a Blender." It delivers what it promises.
- Indeed, the show itself may qualify, since it's about a family whose surname is "Simpson".
- "The First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence".
- At a drive-in, Bart and Homer watch The Monster that Ate Everybody.
- Krusty once introduced a Show Within a Show titled Trans-Clown-o-Morphs that was about, as the theme song described, "transforming clowns that morph".
- Naturally parodied.
Karl: Hey, I heard we're goin' to Ape Island.
Lenny: Yeah, to capture a giant ape.
Carl: I wish we were going to Candy Apple Island.
Charlie: Candy Apple Island? What do they got there?
Carl: Apes. But they're not so big.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was about, well, Mutant Turtles who are both teenagers and ninja.
- There was an episode of Beany And Cecil titled "Invasion of Earth by Robots". There needs to be a movie made under that title if there isn't one already. As in, right now. Invasion of Earth by Robots, definite article and exclamation point optional. Run with it.
- In the Spider-Man Compilation Movie Doctor Doom Conquers the World, Doctor Doom... conquers... the world.
- One episode of Batman Beyond is called "Terry's Friend Dates A Robot". Guess what it's about?
- On that note, the international title of the series, Batman of the Future is also an example.
- In the Looney Tunes short "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century", Dodgers has a disintegrating pistol. He pulls the trigger, and the gun crumbles into powder. "Well, what do you know... it disintegrated."
- In the same cartoon, he smugly says that Marvin the Martian can shoot him with a disintegrator since he's wearing a disintegration-proof vest. The vest does not disintegrate. Duck Dodgers does.
- In one episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, a troll challenges Buster to face three trials. In the second trial, the troll says he must fight the "Three Guys who Charge at You With Spears and Fall Off a Cliff". Guess what happens next.
- The entire cast of The Mr. Men Show can be defined by their names: Mr. Happy, Mr. Strong, Miss Helpful, etc.
- The Smurfs are a good example of this. Each smurf's name reflects their personality. Grouchy Smurf is grouchy, Handy Smurf is handy, Papa Smurf is their, well, papa.
- Care Bears. Not only are they bears that care, but each one has a name based on how they act. Secret Bear whispers secrets and doesn't talk aloud, Grumpy Bear is very grumpy, and Share Bear advocates sharing.
- Transformers Animated. It's about Transformers, and it's animated. (You can tell a lot of thought and caring went into THAT title...)
- The similar to Transformers, but never as popular TV series, The Gobots, had almost their entire cyborg cast suffer from this. For instance:
- Leader-1 was the leader of the good guys.
- Tank turned into a tank.
- Scooter turned into a scooter.
- Coptur turned into a helicopter.
- Scorp turned into a Scorpion.
- Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is about Sherlock Holmes revived in the 22nd century and doing Holmesian things there. Even the theme song is just repeating the title Ad Nauseam while showing scenes from different episodes.
- Minoriteam had a villain named "Racist Frankenstein." He dressed like a WASP but is in all other ways exactly what you'd expect. Also featured Dirty Cop, a living pile of grime on the police force, Loophole, a scurrulous rope tied into a loop, the Corporate Ladder, a business-minded ladder, and White Rapper, a white rapper.
- Some examples from Phineas And Ferb:
- ALL of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's '-inators' minus his first, which was simply called the 'Inator'. Lampshaded in one episode when he mentions that he hasn't quite figured out the name for his new machine and goes through various obvious names (The 'Who's-laughing-now-inator!) and mentions it'll be something with the 'inator' suffix.
- "The Wrapped-Up-In-a-Nice-Little-Bow-inator! I bet you're wondering what it does?"
- Lampshaded heavily in this song
- And now it's time for Silly Songs With Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song.
- The Tick has the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. Guess what he does and when?
- Bambi Meets Godzilla.
- Avatar The Last Airbender features an episode called "Nightmares and Daydreams." Guess what the eponymous character spends the entire episode doing?
- In a Road Runner cartoon, Wile E. Coyote read a book about how to make a Burmese tiger trap and then made one of these traps to capture the road runner. Guess what he caught?
- In another episode, he tried to catch the roadrunner with a giant fly trap and caught a giant fly.
- Cow and Chicken features an episode where they tried to capture a jackhal with a "jackhal shovel" but a "koala shovel" was delivered to them by mistake. Guess which animal got caught in the hole dug with that shovel.
- The Museum of Dangerous Books and Papers from The Amazing Screw-On Head
- An episode of Yin Yang Yo features toy glasses with toothed metallic "jaws" called "Eyebiters." They bite the wearer's eyes.
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