Idiosyncratic Episode Naming - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Hellsing manga is using (famous) game titles as their chapters, such as Warcraft or Final Fantasy.
Each episode of Genshiken has a long, convoluted, scholarly sounding title (e.g., "The Sublimating Effects of the Dissimilation Brought on Through Makeup and Costume on Mental Obstacles", an episode about cosplay, likely because Genshiken itself (or rather what its an abbreviation of) is a long scholarly sounding euphemism for "anime/manga fanclub."
Episodes of Galaxy Angel are phrased as titles to very strange recipes, such as "Milfeulle's Special made Cake for Surprise & Hug Hug Hug Pot," "Ambition and Poverty BBQ Chicken & Chain-linked Noodles without the Link" and "Dried Pork Legs & Top-Gun Fried Tofu mixed with Vegetables." Note that the series' Theme Naming means that the five girls are named after foods.
Princess Tutu, Rozen Maiden, Elfen Lied and Weiss Kreuz all have episode titles in German. Each episode of Princess Tutu is also titled after the piece of classical music that's most prominent in the episode.
- Weiss Kreuz Gluhen, meanwhile, uses the titles of the Weiss's previously released Image Songs as episode titles.
The Slayers, like W.I.T.C.H., used the alphabet: Each episode in a 26-ep season followed an alphabetical pattern. Each title was a short exclamation, followed by a longer explanation, and the exclamations were alphabetical: "Angry! Lina's Furious Dragon Slave!" is the opening, continuing with "Bad! Mummy Men Aren't My Type!" and so on, through "Zap! Victory Is Always Mine!"
Cardcaptor Sakura's episodes all started with "Sakura and..." or "Sakura's..."
Tenchi Universe uses "No Need for..." as its episode titles, usually followed by a noun relating to the plot of the episode and an exclamation point. For instance, "No Need for Swimsuits!" was the episode focusing on the group's trip to a beach-like planet and the girls' subsequent entry into a bikini contest. This is significant because "Muyo" from the title of the OVA, Tenchi Muyo, literally means "No Need For" - in other words, "No Need for Tenchi".
Mahou Sensei Negima had all of its titles in Latin in the first series anime. The second series anime's titles were all quotes from various characters.
Martian Successor Nadesico's Japanese episode titles were all references to cliche phrases or words in Anime that were relevant to the episode: for instance, the second episode's title could be translated "Leave 'The Blue Earth' to Me".
Up until season 5, nearly all of Detective Conan's titles would be "(insert victim/event) murder case".
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann uses a line of dialog from each episode as it's title. Each Story Arc uses a different character's dialog — first Kamina, then Nia, then Rossiu, and ultimately Simon. The episode titles are also written in a font appropriate to their speaker (Kamina and Simon's titles are in a graffiti style, Nia's are extremely cutesy, and Rossiu's are angular and futuristic.)
Every episode of Karin has a title that ends with the word "Embarrassing".
The Law Of Ueki episodes all are named "The Law of ___". Example: "Episode 16: The Law of the Awakening Organ".
Magikano episodes always ask a question. Example: "Are They Really Cursed Cat Panties?!"
- I have never felt such a strange mix of Fetish Fuel, Paranoia Fuel, and Nightmare Fuel.
Every episode of Samurai Champloo is written with four kanji that form a Yojijukugo (four-character idiomatic compound is one translation), which would never translate, so the dub uses alliteration (ex. "Bogus Booty", "Hell Hounds for Hire").
- Even the plot uses Added Alliterative Appeal, as Fuu is seeking "the samurai who smells of sunflowers."
- Additionally, multi-part episodes use "verse (number)" instead of "part (number)".
The So Bad Its Good show Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro Na Crescent Love started every episode with "The Princess": ex. "The Princess is here for a homestay?". The final episode was simply entitled "The Princess and...".
All six episodes of FLCL are written with four katakana morae, possibly as an imitation of the yojijukugo style, but using abbreviated English (or nonsense) words in place of Japanese words.
- With the exception of the 3rd episode, "Marquis de Carabas", which makes perfect sense, as the play they are putting on is Puss in Boots.
- And the 2nd episode, "Fire Starter", as this is the name of the handheld game Mamimi plays throughout the episode.
- Those are the translated English titles. The third episode is "Maruraba" and the second episode is "Faisuta" in Japanese. Both are abbreviated forms of the English titles.
Dai Mahou Touge episode titles tend to run on a bit. With two episodes per OVA, the preview screens are just filled with text.
Many anime series also use other words in place of "episode" when ordering episodes (however, some are specific to the original manga versions).
- Neon Genesis Evangelion uses "Genesis" followed by "0:" then the actual episode number.
- Serial Experiments Lain uses "Layer."
- Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny use "Phase."
  - Argento Soma too.
- Cowboy Bebop uses "Session."
- Weiss Kreuz uses "Mission." Gluhen, fittingly, uses "Last Mission."
- Initial D uses "Battle."
- Elfen Lied uses "Vector."
- If this troper remembers well, Trigun uses "Bullet."
- Princess Tutu uses "Akt."
- Air Gear uses "Trick"
- Code Geass uses "Stage" for its first season and "Turn" for its second.
- Karin apparently uses "liter", since each episode card has its number followed by "l" and has a graphic of bottles with a ♥ symbol corresponding to that number. A large bottle equals 5, and a larger one is 10. Interestingly, Galaga used a similar system.
- Haré+Guu uses "Illusion".
- Potemayo uses "Pote".
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX uses "Turn".
- Hikaru No Go uses "Game."
- Texhnolyze uses "Rogue".
- Nodame Cantabile uses "Lesson" on his 1st phase and "Leçon" on Paris-hen (Paris arc);
- Hellsing uses "Order".
- Gankutsuou uses "Act".
- Saber Marionette J uses "Program".
- Pilot Candidate uses "Curriculum".
- Riki-Oh uses "Violence".
- Ergo Proxy uses "Meditatio". (That's not a misspelling)
- Rah Xephon uses "Movement", in keeping with the musical theme of the show.
- The Princeof Tennis uses "Genius", referring to the fact that Ryoma Echizen (the main character) is a tennis prodigy.
- Claymore uses "Scene".
- Bobobobo Bobobo uses "Ougi" (referring to EVERY attack name being referred to as a "[theme] Shinken Ougi").
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn uses "Target".
- Eyeshield21 uses downs for chapters, with the final chapter being touchdown.
- Inuyasha (the English translation, at least initially) used "Scroll".
- Muhyo And Roji uses "Article".
- Code:Breaker uses "Code".
- Lost +Brain uses "Sign".
- The second and third volumes of Fuan No Tane have a ♭and Ω, respectively, in front of the chapter numbers
- Sugar Sugar Rune uses "Rune."
- Yumeiro Patissiere uses "Recette," French for "recipe."
- the Wolfs Rain manga uses "Grope" in place of "chapter."
- Stratos 4 numbers the episodes as "CODE ###: [name]", where [name] is aeronautics-themed. Example: episode 10 of the first season is CODE 110: Mission Abort. The second season is numbered with codes in the 200s, and the OV As are CODE X-1 and CODE X-2.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! uses "Duel"
- Shaman King uses "Reincarnation"
- Death Note uses "Page"
- Negima! uses "Period"
- Zatch Bell uses "Level"
- You're Under Arrest! uses "File"
- A manhwa example: Unbalance X Unbalance uses "Touch".
- Mai HIME uses "Step".
- Saki uses "Hand".
- See below for the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha manga examples.
Another very popular trick is using music-related terminology or music piece/song titles in episode naming:
- Cowboy Bebop used episode titles designed to be reminiscent of song titles (sometimes actual titles) or styles: "Waltz for Venus", "Jupiter Jazz", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Mushroom Samba", etc. The finale was titled "The Real Folk Blues", also the name of the show's end Theme Tune, and the movie is called "Knockin' on Heaven's Door".
- Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 uses 1970s heavy metal/hard rock song titles as episode titles.
- Every episode of Scrapped Princess starts with a musical movement style ("Elegy", "March", "Concerto", etc.) and usually ends with a short description of a major character to be introduced in that chapter.
- Kyoto Animation's adaptation of Kanon used a classical music subgenre in each episode title, ending with "Kanon". Studio Toei's version used track titles from the original game.
- Black Heaven uses the names of famous rock and roll songs as episode titles.
- Eureka Seven likewise uses variations of song titles for most of its episodes, with electronic music being the most common genre. AlternativeSoundtrack
- The chapters of the Cromartie High School manga were all references to song, albums, or lyrics. Similarly, the four volumes of the DVD in the American release were named after song and had covers parodying the names of albums.
- The episode names of Piano are Italian musical terms, starting with "con", which indicate how something should be performed—for example "con amore" (with love).
- While the individual episodes of Simoun weren't named idiosyncratically, the DVDs were, using musical terms: Choir of Pairs, Orchestra of Betrayal, Rondo of Loss, Crescendo of Lamentation, and Song of Prayer. It makes sense, since the teams of pilots that flew the titular aircraft were called chor (choir).
- Hentai artist Black Dog names all of his Sailor Moon works after after Stands from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure—all of which are themselves named after songs of bands from the 70s and 80s.
Gunslinger Girl's episode titles are in Italian.
Every Chrono Crusade episode has two different titles: one in Japanese and one in English.
- The same also goes for Heat Guy J.
Every episode of Welcome To The NHK (and every chapter of the manga) is titled "Welcome to the _______!", which leads to such strange constructions as "Welcome to the Lolita!" and "Welcome to the no hope!"
Episode titles in Mnemosyne always follow the pattern "subject negation verb". Excepting the final episode, "Then, to the Gates of the Kingdom".
Every episode title in El Cazador De La Bruja contains the word "Man" or "Woman", usually referring to the character in the focus of a particular episode. The only exception is episode 14, which is also the biggest continuous Mood Whiplash in the show.
Every original Japanese episode title of Madlax consists of two kanjis making a single word and an English word, which more or less precisely describe the events of the episode. Sadly, it was Lost In Translation.
The 24-episode version of Ah My Goddess used "Ah! ____________" for all its titles, much less common in the original manga and its other adaptations.
Keroro Gunsou uses the format of [Chracter(s) who the episode is centered on],[Episode theme],de-arimasu
Viewtiful Joe had "no Maki" or "Episode" fitting the theme of Viewtiful Joe as a Kamen Rider parrody.
- This convention is often used in comedy manga. Some specific examples are Doctor Slump (both the manga and anime) and Kochi Kame.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha used to end its episode titles with "nano", meaning "it is" or "is it". For example, the first episode translates to "Is This a Mysterious Encounter?" and the second episode translates to "'Lyrical' is the Magic Word?" The series drops this practice mid-way into season two (starting with Episode 9, "Christmas Eve") and hasn't used it since.
- Mind you, the first 8 episodes of A's had the pink scribbly font, the background of Raising Heart, and a little soundbite together with Nanoha saying the episode name. And then comes "Christmas Eve" with nothing more than white text on a black background, and silence. It does a very good job in setting the viewer up for what happens next.
- Also, the original mangas use different words for "chapter": ViVid has "Memory;01" (referencing the subtitle of the manga, "Vivid Memory"), and Force has "Record01:" followed by the chapter title. On a side note, the chapter titles in Force come only in English.
The ARIA anime episode titles all begin with sono ("that") in Japanese. Given the differences in syntax, this is not always carried over in the English translations, though they usually manage to include that (or those) in the title.
Each episode of Black Cat uses the word "cat" in the title. Most of the titles are in the form of "The _____ Cat" or "A(n) _____ Cat", with the _____ being an adjective.
Except for the last one and the specials, Chobits titles tend to follow the formula "Chii <verbs>".
All the titles of Doujin Work's work episodes are some form of sexual joke or phrase.
- Kanokon also uses something that sounds sexual for its episode titles.
- DearS as well.
All episode titles in Blue Drop are scientific names of flowers.
Oruchuban Ebichu ends its titles with "dechu", a baby-speak version of "desu", which roughly translates as "it is".
Each episode of the World Destruction anime is titled There Are Two Kinds of (something).
Every Digimon Savers title (not carried over into Digimon Data Squad) is of the form, "[Excited Episode Title]: [Hero or Monster Of The Week Digimon] [does something]!" Such as "Recover the Bond between Parent and Child - Evilmon's Bewitchment," "Yoshino Gets Her Cinderella Story?! Chrysalimon's Shadow," or "Genius Tohma has Returned! Beat Meramon."
- There's some of this in the other odd-numbered seasons, as well. (For some reason, it's only done with the odd-numbered ones.)
  - Digimon Tamers has two-sentence titles, either of which could serve as a title alone ("Crisis for Guilmon! The Adventure in my Town," "Protect the Light of the Town! Dangerous Camp of the Digimon," "The Order to Capture the Digimon! The Sinister Foreboding.")
  - Though not an unbreakable rule, Digimon Adventure tended to have titles of the form [Sentence!] [Name or reference]. "Lightning! Kabuterimon," "Roar! Ikkakumon," "Clash! The Freezing Digimon." The titles were also mercifully short, whether following the naming trend or not.
- Almost all of the Digimon Frontier dub episode titles were clever manipulations of a popular catchphrase, idiom, or song title. Examples include: "Can't Keep a Gumblemon Down" (Can't keep a good man down); "Fear and Loathing in Los Arboles" (after the novel and movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas); and "Glean Eggs and Scram" (Green Eggs and Ham). Note the pilot episode is called "All Aboard" and the finale is "End of the Line".
Kaleido Star's episodes all have the word "sugoi" (which translates to "amazing") in the title, and are related to the main plot of the episode. For example, the very first episode is "Hajimete no! Sugoi! Stage" (or "First time! Amazing! Stage", which was titled "Amazing Stage Debut!" in the dub), and the fifteenth is "Utahime no Sugoi Ai" ("The Singing Princess' Amazing Love" or "The Diva's Amazing Love", which deals with the backstory of a character who works as a singer at the Kaleido Stage).
Each episode of Nerima Daikon Brothers starts with "Ore wa" or "My"...and, judging by the dub's translations of the episodes, they're often made to sound like vague innuendo.
Every episode of the anime version of Girls Bravo started or ended the title with "Bravo" and included a descriptor ("Bravo From the Bathroom!", "Bravo at School!", and "Cooking is Bravo!", to name the first three episodes). Given some of the titles, it begs the question: just what does Bravo mean...?
- You mean it isn't obvious?
Almost every episode of Penguin Musume Heart is a thinly disguised spoof of another anime's title. Sample titles include "Mae, Otome", "Roze no Tsukaima", and "Marie-sama ga Miteru".
Dirty Pair Flash has a different naming pattern for each of its three parts:
- The first part's episode titles are follow this pattern: <English adjective> Angel. (The last episode is titled "Lovely Angel".)
- The second part's episode titles are in mixed Japanese and English, and contain at least one English word each.
- The third part's episode titles follow this pattern: <color name in Japanese> の <noun in Japanese> [<approximately the same noun in English>].
Nearly every episode of Scryed is a proper noun, the name of some character, place or thing within the series, without any predicates or verbs.
Kiddy Grade had the form of <word>/<usually related word>, except for episode 24. "Depth/Space" is an example.
Haibane Renmei has titles composed of three different nouns or phrases for every episode other than eight, such as "Cocoon — Dream of Falling From the Sky — Old Home." Episode eight's title is just "The Bird."
Gundam X derives its titles from lines spoken within the episode, typically critical lines. Examples include "Can You See The Moon?" (said by Jamil Neate) for the first episode, "My Mount is Fierce" (said by Shagia Frost) for the episode introducing the major antagonists, and "The Moon Will Always Be There" (said by the narrator/D.O.M.E. for the finale.
Last Exile names its episodes after Chess terms.
Pokemon Special titles every chapter "VS. [pokemon name]". The pokemon name is always one that shows up in the chapter, usually fighting against the heroes, but sometimes not.
In "Pet Shop Of Horrors" every chapter is named with a D word as if guessing what the D in Count D's name stands for.
Early chapters in the manga version of DN Angel start with "A Warning of _______", referencing the fact that Dark always sends warning letters before he steals something. This was dropped later in its run, and didn't carry over to the animated adaptation.
Hyakko drops the word "tiger" in every single episode title, since the title of the series is a reference to Byakko, the white tiger of The Four Gods.
Every episode/chapter of Pita Ten is named "How to ________".
While the episode names of Baccano! can be seen as this due to their matter-of-fact, Exactly What It Says On The Tin nature, it's the Light Novels that really count, with each of their titles being based on rock bands.
Since Michiko To Hatchin is set in Brazil (or a version of it), the episodes have Portuguese names.
Every chapter in Hayate X Blade has the word "baka" (idiot) in it somewhere, in reference to its eponymous Idiot Heroine.
Each chapter of the manga Yotsuba&! is of the form "Yotsuba to X" ("Yotsuba & X"), where X is the topic of the chapter. For example, the first chapter, where Yotsuba and her dad move into their new home, is "Yotsuba & Moving."
- The sole exception is Chapter 14, which sees Yotsuba's neighbour Asagi get the title: "Asagi's Gifts". Appropriately enough, it focuses on Asagi and her family.
Every chapter of the School Rumble manga bears the title of a movie, which is often (at least vaguely) related to the plot events of that chapter. For example, in volume 9 one may read such chapters as "#117 MRS.DOUBTFIRE" or side stories such as "b25 MONSTERS INC". The 'b' in that example is a musical flat symbol (♭); there have also been, oddly enough, chapters designated with a natural mark (♮).
Not only does the manga Kitchen Princess call each chapter a recipe, but the title chapters all follow the "Najika and [food]" pattern. The food mentioned is always one she makes in the chapter, even if it's tangential to the actual chapter's plot.
Every episode of Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou is named after a computer programming term. Sample episode titles include "hello, world", "Dragon Book" and "jini".
Maburaho uses the form "<pronoun> <verb>..." for most episodes, or "<pronoun> Was <verb>" in some cases. The final episode is "It Was Over".
Umineko No Naku Koro Ni numbers each episode "episode x-y." This presumably was fine in the visual novels, but in the anime, this gets a little confusing; if someone says, for example, "Episode 2," are they referring to the second 23-minute episode, or the second arc?
- Alongside this, each episode's name is a reference to chess, with the episodes that mark the ending of a particular "arc" named after types of checkmates.
- Regarding the visual novels, every new release is titled "_____ of the Golden Witch" (Legend, Turn, Banquet, Alliance and End thus far).
Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei's chapter titles are not "_______ has left me in despair!" as one would expect, but paraphrased or Punny Name versions of quotes and titles of various novels.
Gintama is full of this. Episode titles are generally whole sentences (if not paragraphs), often things like "When you're tired, eat something sour!" or "A life without gambling is like sushi without wasabi." They often constitute a bit of FridgeLogic, since they seem completely random until you really think about the episode. (Some are a bit more obvious though.)
Every chapter of Hyakko has the word tiger in it, EG "A Good Neighbourhood Tiger", "Paper Tiger" "The Friendship Depends on the Tiger".
Argento Soma's episode names are two words that progress from each other. "Rebirth and Death", "Death and the Maiden", "The Maiden and the Meeting", etc. It comes full circle with the last episode.
Tokyo Mew Mew's episode titles all end in "nya~!"
The anime based on the Sands Of Destruction video game has all of its episode titles begin with "There are Two Kinds" (except for Ep. 10: "There Are 108 Laws of Clockwork Robotics").
Spice And Wolf's episodes are all named "Wolf and..." with the rest of the title referring to elements of the episode.

Marvel series by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale all have the protagonist's name followed by a color represented in the story. Examples are Spider-Man: Blue (after the character's emotions), Daredevil: Yellow and Hulk: Gray (after the protagonists' early colours).
Several arcs in Brian Azzarello's Hellblazer run were named after phrases involving the word "Hell", including "Highwater" and "...Freezes Over".
With one exception, the title of each of the 100 Bullets collections is based around its number. Book two is "Split Second Chance", while book ten is "Decayed" (sounds like decade). Some titles don't actually contain the numerical pun, but instead are cleverly part of a phrase that would usually include that number, such as "Samurai," the seventh book, "The Hard Way," the eighth, and the upcoming twelfth book, "Dirty." The only book to break this tradition is "Hang Up on the Hang Low", which was named after a Story Arc contained in the book as the story in question had won an Eisner Award.
Each chapter of V For Vendetta features a word beginning with 'V'; "The Villain", "Virtue Victorious", "The Verdict", "Verwirrung" (German for confusion), etc.
Each story in D.R. & Quinch was titled "D.R. & Quinch _____". For example, "D.R. & Quinch Go Girl Crazy".
- The title of every chapter of Watchmen, and in fact the title Watchmen itself, is a Literary Allusion Title, with the full quote given at the end of each chapter.
Every chapter in the 2000AD story Zenith is named after a rock song. 2000AD itself refers to issues as 'progs'.
The Invincible trades are all named after classic sitcoms. For instance, one was Family Matters, then Facts of Life, and so on.
Evan Dorkin's "Milk & Cheese" comics were entitled "First Number One," "Second Number One," etc. until the 5th issue was finally "First Number Two." Based on the notion that the Number One issue of a comic book tends to be grabbed up by collectors and speculators to sell more issues.
The first 20 issues of Spider Man Loves Mary Jane, as well as the two Mary Jane miniseries preceding them, were all entitled "The ___ Thing", with the second word having to do with the comic's plot. For example, issue 4, when Gwen Stacy is introduced, is called "The Unexpected Thing."

Star Wars has had each film designated by Episode. The original trilogy was known by the episode name, but the prequels were known mostly as Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3. The first Star Wars movie is usually just called Star Wars, with the hardcore fan base divided in the middle on whether to call the movie Star Wars or A New Hope. Some people didn't even catch that The Phantom Menace is Episode 1's actual title.
Kill Bill has Volumes 1 and 2.
In Sweden, this happened to Mel Brooks movies. The Producers was renamed after the play in the movie to Det våras för Hitler (Springtime for Hitler). Ever since then, as soon as a Mel Brooks parody film was released in Sweden, it would be renamed to "Springtime for [subject matter]", e.g. Det våras för rymden (Springtime for space), Det våras för sheriffen (Springtime for the sheriff). Mel Brooks didn't like this practise, and Life Stinks was the last movie to be renamed in this fashion.
- In Israel, Leslie Nielsen's comedies received the same treatment. The Naked Gun was named The Gun Died Laughing, and its sequels were named appropriately. Since then, other films would be translated as "The [something] Died Laughing" - Spy Hard was named The Spy Died Laughing, Wrongfully Accused, a parody of The Fugitive, was named The Fugitive Died Laughing, and 2001: A Space Travesty was named Space Died Laughing.
- In France, the The Naked Gun were translated in "Is there a cop to save the queen", "Is there a cop to save the president", "Is there a cop to save Hollywood". It was a following of the Airplane movies translated in "Is there a pilot in the plane" and "Is there finally a pilot in the plane". "2001: A Space Travesty" was translated in "Is there a cop to save humanity".

Save for Taltos itself, the novels of Steven Brust's Taltos series are all named after Houses of the Dragaeran Empire. Sometimes the chapters of a specific book also follow a pattern: Issola bases them on etiquette principles, while Dzur uses dishes of food.
- Brust has stated that he intends to have one more book with an Odd Name Out: the final one, after all the "house" books have been done, will be The Final Contract.
- The Khaavren novels, meanwhile, loosely base their titles on The Three Musketeers and its sequels, to which the series is an homage. The chapter titles also imitate the style, using a lengthy and flowery description of the chapter contents that always begin "In Which..."
  - "In which the plot, in the manner of soup to which cornstarch has been added, at last begins to thicken."
The names of the books and chapters in A Song Of Ice And Fire series, excluding the Dunk and Egg prequels. The books follow the formula of "Article + Noun + Preposition + Noun" (As in, A Feast for Crows, or A Game of Thrones), and chapters are named after their viewpoint character, save for prologues and epilogues.
All 54 Animorphs book titles were of the form "The X", where X was a single word.
The title of each book in A Series Of Unfortunate Events alliterates (e.g. The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room). The last book, simply title The End, is the exception.
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels all have two-word titles, with the same number of letters in each word ("Storm Front," "White Night," "Fool Moon," etc.).
- They also seem to be a hint to the book's theme, this troper has noticed.
  - And until the eighth book they were all puns.
  - The [Descriptor] [Noun] pattern lasted just as long.
- It's been theorized that this form is deliberate because it looks really good on book covers.
- The original title for the book that became Storm Front was Semiautomagic
  - By that token, it bears pointing out that the working title for Death Masks - in which the Shroud of Turin was the Mc Guffin - was "Holy Sheet". Rumor has it that the publishers demanded a change.
- This troper hadn't noticed the same-number-of-letters thing. Unfortunately, neither had the publishers of the English version of the tenth book, which became Small Favour.
- This naming convention will be broken with the 12th book, with a one-word name, which is itself ironic: "Changes".
Jim Butcher's Alera series always has the word "Fury" in the title - "Princep's Fury", "Captain's Fury", "Furies of Calderon", etc.
The French translation of the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was called La Huitième Couleur, ("The Eighth Colour"). This was followed by The Light Fantastic becoming Le Huitième Sortilège ("The Eighth Spell") and Equal Rites becoming La Huitième Fille ("The Eighth Daughter"; not strictly accurate, as Esk's elder siblings are all brothers). Then they gave up, and just called Mort Mortimer.
Lindsey Davis's Marcus Didius Falco books started out this way, with The Silver Pigs being followed by Shadows in Bronze, Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars and Poseidon's Gold. At which point, she ran out of metals that were known to the Romans and sounded promising in a title. Titles from then on follow no particular pattern, though several play with a well-known phrase (Three Hands in the Fountain, for example.)
Nearly all the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich include a number in the title, and the numbers are sequential. The only three exceptions to the "title includes the number of the book in a chronological listing of the series" pattern so far are three holiday-theme entries, all of which include the word Plum in the title.
John D. MacDonald's mysteries starring Travis McGee all included a color in the title.
Enid Blyton used this device to disambiguate her very similar series about different groups of children solving mysteries. All 21 of the Famous Five book titles begin with the word "Five", and likewise the words Secret Seven appear in the titles of all 15 books about them. More subtly, the six "Barney Mysteries" are all called The __________ Mystery with the missing word beginning with R, and the title formats The ________ of Adventure, Mystery of [the] _________ and The Secret [of] _________ each define a series too.
- Don't forget the hilariously awesome parody novel Five Go Mad In Dorset.
Sue Grafton's "Kinsey Milhone" series of detective novels began with A is for Alibi, and continued in alphabetical order up to (so far) T is for Trespass.
Every title in Patricia C Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles is formatted [Gerund] [Preposition] Dragons. One book, which she absolutely could not think up a title for, was jokingly sent to her editor as Bowling For Dragons.
Almost all of Tony Hillerman's novels have either a two word title or a three word title starting with "the." ("The Fly on the Wall", "Dance Hall of the Dead," and "People of Darkness" are the only exceptions). Usually, they will be of the format [Verb]ing noun, The [noun] Way, or The [adjective] [noun].
Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are titled The Adventure of ________
Each book in J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas series has a title using the pattern _______ In Death, beginning with Naked in Death.
All twelve of the Philo Vance novels had titles The ______ Murder Case; except for The Gracie Allen Murder Case, the extra word had six letters.
The first nine Ellery Queen novels had titles of form The (nationality) (noun) Mystery.
All the Perry Mason novels were called The Case of the (adjective) (noun)
Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durell novels had titles in the form Assignment _______
The Drizzt Do'Urden novels sometimes have idiosyncratic names within series.
- The Dark Elf Trilogy has all one-word titles.
- Three of four books in the Legacy Of The Drow series worked like this: Starless Night, Siege Of Darkness, Passage To Dawn.
- The current series, Transitions, has three books, each with the title The _____ King.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, The Hand Of Thrawn "duology" had books titled Specter Of The Past and Vision Of The Future.
- The Legacy of the Force novels each had a one-word title.
- The Corellian trilogy included planets/space stations in the Corellian system as its titles.
Martha Grimes' Richard Jury novels are named after pubs or bars featured in the stories.
Most of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series works the same way, titled from night clubs.
- By the same author, the Merry Genry series, the titles of which could be stated as " A suggestive verb of a noun." A Kiss of Shadown, A Caress Of Twilight, A Stroke of Midnight, A Lick of Frost, and the ones that aren't are Seduced By Midnight, Mistral's kiss, and Swallowing Darkness. I like the books (in a very Gulity Pleasure sort of way,) but the titles kind of make me want to pat Laurell on the shoulder and say, in a loving yet exasperated manner, "Honey. I get it. The books have a lot of sex. Can you spend more time writing 'em and less time thinking up the most innuendo-laced, porn-sounding titles possible?"
Lilian Jackson Braun's series titles use the formula "The Cat Who <something>".
The Honor Harrington series has the eponymous character's first name somewhere in the title of every other book focused on her. This pattern is established in the second book, The Honor of the Queen.
All the Twilight book titles use times of day as metaphors. Additionally, most chapters titles are simple one- or two-word phrases.
- Except in part 2 of Breaking Dawn, where the story is narrated by Jacob; and therefore, the chapter titles are all in same sarcastic tone as Jacob's narration. (eg: "Why Didn't I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I'm an Idiot.", and "The Two Things at the Very Top of My Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do List")
- And except for 'Eclipse', which definitely isn't a time of day...
  - Or 'New Moon', which is a time of the month...
- It might be more accurate to say that the titles are all sky-related rather than time-related.
The Dragonlance series gives related books related titles. For example, the trilogy about Mina is "Amber and X", there are several sets of "Dragons of Adjective Noun" books, and many others.
The Magic Tree House books also have alliterative titles (Night Of The Ninjas, Dolphins Past Daybreak). If the title isn't alliterative then it rhymes (Ghost Town At Sundown) or manages to make a pun (The Knight At Dawn).
Robert Ludlum.
- While he was aware that he had adopted this naming convention, he didn't treat it as having any significance. One time (probably in the 70s) he came up with a title that was not "The ______ ______". Both his agent and his publisher queried this, then called him in for a meeting to beg him (almost on the verge of tears, he recalls) to change the title to follow his previous convention.
- This was mocked in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, where Joel and the 'Bots come up with a Long List of bogus titles in "the Ludlum library": The Horshack Conspiracy, The Forbin Conundrum, The Slingshack Congealment, etc.
Lawrence Block's books about Bernie Rhodenbarr all start with "The Burglar Who..." or "The Burglar In...". Block unintentionally created a pattern with his books about Matt Scudder, which all had five word titles (Eight Million Ways to Die, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, Time to Murder and Create, etc.) until somebody pointed it out to him. He called the next one A Long Line of Dead Men to break the pattern.
Glen Cook's fantasy mysteries all have titles in the form Adjective Metal Nouns: Cold Copper Tears, Angry Lead Skies, Sweet Silver Blues, etc.
In the Whateley Universe, all the Phase stories have titles "Ayla and the...". Probably because Phase was/is a pompous rich kid with years of prep schooling, the novels have meaningful chapter titles as well. The first novel has five chapters named for the books of the Old Testament. "Ayla and the Tests" has eight chapters named for some of the labors of Hercules. Pompous and too much prep school.
Every book of Suzumiya Haruhi is entitled "The ______ of Haruhi Suzumiya". Examples are "Melancholy", "Disappearance", "Rampage", "Intrigues" etc.
- Fanfic titles often follow the convention. A Death Note crossover was called "The Boredom of Shinigami Ryuk".
- It's always two kanji after the phrase (the original grammatical format is "Suzumiya Haruhi no ________"). Anything after the "no" is always a complicated enough word for two kanji, but not so complicated it requires three. Kyoto Animation and Kadokawa carried this over to the music and games, too; even some of the puns in Haruhi-chan use this format.
The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time uses idiosyncratic chapter numbering where only prime numbers are used (the first chapter is chapter 2, followed by 3, 5, 7, 11...). This is done to underline the protagonist's mathematical genius.
- Or alternately, to underline just how poorly the autistic protagonist understands people. He numbers the chapters because chapters are always numbered, and he uses prime numbers because they're more interesting. Of course, chapter titles are included not for convention or interest, but to help the reader navigate easily through the book, and he completely fails to understand that.
Chapter names in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar saga are all one words. Each book subtitle (the first book has two, one for each part) has an interesting naming gimmick. The first one is called "Pug and Tomas", the second "Milamber and the Valheru" and the third is "Arutha and Jimmy", to show that each part will focus on a particular pair of characters. The first 2 pairs are in fact only one pair, and the reason for the name change isn't obvious until some time into the second part.
The Dirty Pair novels' titles usually follow the pattern "Dirty Pair no Dai______" ("The Dirty Pair's Great _______"). The only exceptions are the side story "Dokusaisha no Isan" ("Legacy of the Dictator") and possibly "Doruroi no Arashi" ("Storm of Doruroi"), although the latter is considered part of the Crusher Joe series.
- The Dirty Pair Flash novels' title follow the pattern "Tenshi no ______" ("The Angels' ______").
Frank Herbert's original Dune novels all contain the word "Dune", and four out of six follow the formula "X of Dune".
- The three Prelude to Dune novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson are each named after a noble house in the Dune Verse.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels all contain the word "Foundation" in their titles. Most of his Robot novels or stories contain some form of the word "Robot" or something related to robots (Caves of Steel).
- A bad example: the Caves of Steel was so titled because all of mankind on Earth lived in massive, mostly underground cities sealed from the outdoors. Robots have nothing to do with it and in fact were nearly non-present inside those domes, even though they saw extensive use outside (as humans all become at least somewhat agoraphobic, they avoid going outside at all cost).
Each novel in Charlaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries series has the word "Dead" in its title.
- and in Harris' Harper Connelly Mysteries series, each title features the word "Grave"
- and in Harris' Lily Bard Mysteries series, titles follow the pattern "Shakespeare's ______".
The chapter headings and subheadings of Ian M. Banks's novella The 'State of the Art' are revealed, in that the end in the supposed translation notes, to be the names of various ships and the Minds that control them. Although since Culture ship names can be pretty much anything whether this qualifies as a pattern is debateable.
- Use of Weapons is another case of idiosyncratic numbering, where there are one set of chapters in increasing written numbers interspersed with decreasing Roman numerals (One, XIII, Two, XII, Three, XI, etc...). Ties in with the chronological ordering of the chapters.
All of the books in The Hollows series, written by Kim Harrison, are titled after westerns, most often those starring Clint Eastwood (The Outlaw Demon Wails).
Shouji Gatou names all "mainline" Full Metal Panic novels by [Japanese verb][Three-word English proverb] system (Yureru Into The Blue, Owaru Day By Day, Moeru One Man Force etc). His comedic short story anthologies (read Fumoffu!) are correspondingly named by Japanese proverbs, each having the number of respective book somewhere inside. Recently he complained that he starts to run out of suitable proverbs.
Winnie The Pooh. Well, technically, that gets filed under In Which A Trope Is Described.
Almost all of Lynn Kurland's De Piaget and MacLeod romances are titled after songs (Till There Was You, With Every Breath, My Heart Stood Still, The Very Thought of You, When I Fall In Love, If I Had You, This Is All I Ask, From This Moment On, etc); those that aren't are song lyrics (Stardust of Yesterday from "Stardust," Another Chance to Dream from Greg Sczebel's "Everybody," Love Came Just In Time from "Just In Time," etc.) The sole exceptions to this seem to be Dreams Of Stardust and Much Ado in the Moonlight.
- Similarly, every Nine Kingdoms book is ________: A Novel of the Nine Kingdoms.
Canadian children's author Linda Bailey with her Stevie Diamond mystery books. The first one was titled How Come the Best Clues Are Always In the Garbage?, so her publisher insisted subsequent titles all had to be questions about ten words in length. For example, the title of the third book was going to be Who's Got Gertie?, but this was deemed too short, so it was extended with And How Can We Get Her Back?
Each chapter of Walter Jon Williams' This Is Not a Game is titled "This Is Not a(n) _____".
Most of the titles of the Jeeves stories (usually the novels, but also a chunk of the short stories and the American publication re-titlings) use "Jeeves and the _____" or some quotation of Bertie's from the story directed at Jeeves, "_____________, Jeeves" (examples of the latter include "Right Ho, Jeeves", "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves", and "Thank You, Jeeves").
- Speaking of Wodehouse, all of the Psmith and Mr. Mulliner books have their respective main character's name in their title.
Robin Hobb's first three trilogies all had a similar word in common, e.g. The first had "Assassin", the Second "Ship" and the third "Fool"
- And now the Fourth looks like it will be "Dragon".
The [[Harry Potter]] books are all titled "Harry Potter and the <thing>"
- Four of the books follow the formula "Harry Potter and the <X> of <Y>"
The Rabbi Small mysteries by Harry Kemelman all have titles of the form "<X>day the Rabbi <Y>." Many use days of the week ("Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet," "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late"). He started with "Friday", because the day of the week was plot-relevant and worked through to "Thursday" in chronological order. The later books kept the "day" theme but in a rather more forced way: ("One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross").
Each of Gordon R Dickson's Dragon Knight series has the title start with "The Dragon". Half of them are The Dragon and the _____.
- His children's books are all titled Secret Under ______.
The Dexter series by Jeff Lindsay likes to stick with 'D' alliteration and always have 'Dexter' in the title. Examples include 'Darkly Dreaming Dexter', 'Dexter by Design', 'Dearly Devoted Dexter', Dexter is Delicious'.
There's a trend of the German versions of Stephen King novels to get titles that are one word. It is particularly striking in the first half of the Dark Tower series, which looks like they were trying to go for one syllable titles for the whole run. This might or might not have to do something with the success of It, but that seems particularly likely in the case of Misery, whose translation was published in the year after It was a bestseller, under the title Sie ("She"). As to the Dark Tower series: The Gunslinger -> Schwarz ("Black"), The Drawing of the Three -> Drei ("Three"), The Waste Lands -> Tot ("Dead"), Wizard and Glass -> Glas, Wolves of the Calla -> Wolfsmond ("Wolf Moon"), Song of Susannah -> Susannah - the last, Der Turm, gets an article. the other wiki has a full list for the completists.
Starting with the eighth book, the reference/humor series Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader began naming its books Uncle John's [adjective] Bathroom Reader.
Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow series are all named on a bird theme. After the first three, the names also reference popular sayings or quotes (Murder with Peacocks, No Nest For the Wicket, We'll Always Have Parrots, Cockatiels At Seven, etc.) and they all involve the named birds in some manner. They also progress seasonally, so that the reader expecting Six Geese A-Slaying to be set at Christmas is going to be absolutely correct. The Turing Hopper series are all have references to computer terms in the name (You Have Murder references AOL's well-known "You've Got Mail!", while Delete All Suspects is more similar to "Delete All Files"), which is thematically appropriate since the main character, Turing, is an AI.

Supernatural often names its episodes after classic songs — for example, an episode where a town's local children are being possessed is called 'The Kids Are Alright', and the episode where John Winchester dies is called 'In My Time Of Dying'. Many such songs are also played in various episodes.
- They must have stopped doing this recently then. Or is there a classic song named "Chris Angel Is A Douchebag"?
- They still do, just not as often. Episode twenty-one was "When The Levee Breaks," an old blues song by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie (famously covered up by Led Zeppelin).
Most likely because the fans will probably refer to the episodes this way anyway, most episodes of Friends follow the pattern "The One With ____" or "The One Where ____". The only exception is the finale ("The Last One"), and to some extent, "The One That Could Have Been" (the what-if ep) and "The One Hundredth".
- There was actually an interview somewhere in which the writing staff explained that they "wanted to name them what people were going to be calling them anyway".
- The episode naming style of Friends was parodied with the title of the 30 Rock episode "The One With the Cast of Nightcourt," which guest starred Friends's Jennifer Aniston (and the cast of Nightcourt).
The Friends Spin Off Joey uses a similar naming convention, in which each episode is titled "Joey and the ____".
- One reason why Coupling has been considered a British version of Friends, is that several episodes have titles staring with "The Girl With" - this was a Running Gag that started when the boys were suggesting names for a hypothetical porn film in which a woman's breasts had independent brains, with suggestions like "The Girl With Two Brains" (Steve: "Three brains, Patrick!") and "The Girl With Two Breasts" (Steve: "That's the worst one yet!"), the latter being the title of the episode. For the record, the name Steve preferred for the movie was "Wobblewars", Patrick's first suggestion.
Seinfeld uses a subtler convention, in which each episode follows the pattern "The ____". What followed was a term or important aspect of the episodes story like "The Chinese Restaurant" and "The Serenity Now." The only exception in the entire show's run is the second episode "Male-Unbonding".
- Apparently the reason they did it was so they wouldn't spend a whole lot of time thinking of an episode name that people would never see anyway.
- Some episode guides list the title as "The Male Unbonding" to bring this one in line with the others.
- The OC did the same — even when this led to odd constructions like "The My Two Dads".
Every episode of Greys Anatomy shares its title with a popular song, though the songs chosen run the gamut of genres and eras.
- Ditto for Alf.
- And Goodnight Sweetheart.
- And May To December.
- And True Blood, although the songs are often obscure and not well-known. And the song is always played at some point during the episode or over the credits.
- And Degrassi The Next Generation, though the producers get even more specific. Every episode title is an song from the 80's or the 90's.
Grey's spinoff, Private Practice, seems to be going the Friends route, as each of its episodes starts with "In Which..."
In La Femme Nikita, first-season episodes titles were one word long, second-season episode titles were two words, and so forth (the show ran for five seasons.)
The NBC spy comedy Chuck titles its episodes "Chuck Vs. the ___" (usually a geek reference).
- The second episode is "Chuck Vs. the Helicopter", which looks funny when you see it on an episode guide after "Pilot".
  - Though "Pilot" has, according to some sources, been renamed "Chuck Vs. the Intersect" to fit the theme.
During the first season of Dawsons Creek, each episode was named after a classic or popular movie.
Every episode of Scrubs follows the naming convention "My ____", as it is told from the perspective of J.D., the main character. The only exceptions are episodes told from the perspective of other characters in the show, which are called either "His Story", "Her Story", or "Their Story", with a number.
- At one point the writers persuade themselves that they're terribly clever and name an episode "My Ocardial Infarction" (a myocardial infarction is a heart attack).
- Season 9, which is from the perspective of the medical students at the new Sacred Heart, uses "Our ____". This was previously used on the Season 8 Webisodes from the perspective of the new interns (mostly Sunny).
Each episode of Boston Public was named "Chapter _____", with the titular number corresponding to the episode number.
Every episode of Wonderfalls mentions an animal in the title, and is also two words.
Fitting with the premise of the show, episodes of 24 are titled with the time period represented during the episode. For example "2:00 a.m.-3:00 a.m.". To disambiguate episodes in different seasons, subsequent seasons named episodes in the following manner: "Day 2: 2:00 a.m.-3:00 a.m.".
Every episode of the first season of War Of The Worlds took its title from a biblical reference.
Remington Steele incorporated the word "Steele" into most of its titles, usually as a pun.
Knight Rider did the same with the word "Knight". Most particularly, the season openers (except for the second season) used titles of the form "Knight of the _______": "Knight of the Phoenix", "Knight of the Drones", "Knight of the Juggernaut".
- The 2008 revival has returned to this convention, though there isn't too many variations you can take from that pattern.
Power Rangers occasionally uses a set formula for a season's episodes.
- Power Rangers Zeo used mangled song, movie, or book titles, such as Brother, Can You Spare an Arrowhead, Bulk Fiction, The Ranger Who Came In From the Gold, and A Brief Mystery of Time.
- During Bruce Kalish's run on the series, episode titles had a set number of words: Power Rangers SPD episodes used single-word titles, Power Rangers Mystic Force's titles were always two words long (though they fudged it with "The Snow Prince"), and Power Rangers Operation Overdrive's were always three words long. As expected, Power Rangers Jungle Fury went with four word titles, but in addition, they're all pre-90's music (mainly rock) references. With Kalish's departure, Power Rangers RPM returns to regular episode naming, seen in the first twelve seasons.
- Well, maybe not quite regular. About half of the RPM episodes so far feature flashbacks of a character's history, with the episode being named for the featured character. Most are about the Rangers and so called "Ranger _____", but the one about Dr. K is called, well, "Doctor K".
Speaking of the Rangers' Japanese analogue, Super Sentai does this occasionally. Episodes are numbered, and a season's titles will have something in place of "episode" that's appropriate to the season, such as "Stage 1" or "Task 2" or "Quest 3." Naming trends also exist, such as Hurricaneger's "X and Y" titles, Abaranger's working "Abare" (or something derived from the term) into every title, and Dekaranger's not-always-followed trend of two-word English titles.
Almost every episode of Dragnet used a title of the form "The Big ______".
Every episode of Love American Style used a title of the form "Love and the ______" or "Love in the _____".
Every episode of Monk begins with the words "Mr. Monk", e.g. "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus", "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", etc.
- Lampshaded in the episode "Mr. Monk and his Biggest Fan", where Marci tells Monk she has named all of his cases, with the names being the real-world episode titles. Monk is baffled why anyone would bother.
Every episode of MST3K is titled after the movie riffed in it: Manos The Hands Of Fate, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians....
The last few episodes of News Radio's second season were named after Led Zeppelin albums, such as Presence and Coda. Just in case you missed the joke, a third season episode was finally titled Led Zeppelin Boxed Set. Though this wasn't done for idiosyncratic reasons as much as laziness on the part of the writers. (And just in case you were curious, none of the episode titles have anything to do with the episode's contents.)
- Was that episode a Clip Show perhaps?
  - No, just a regular episode. News Radio never did a clip show.
Every episode title of The L Word is a word or phrase that starts with the letter "L". Examples are "Longing", "L'Ennui", "Labia Majora", "Life, Loss, Leaving" and "Lobsters".
Episode titles of The Wild Wild West always began with "The Night of the _____" or "The Night the _____".
Each episode of Still Standing begins with the word "Still": "Still Bad", "Still Losin' It", etc.
The Man From UNCLE used titles of the form "The ________ Affair".
- And each individual act of every episode was subtitled, usually with a quote from the dialogue in that act.
The Amazing Race (starting with season 2) and Survivor (starting with Cook Islands) refer to their episodes with quotes from the episodes. (For TAR, it has become quite a sport guessing who says the quote.)
- While not a reality show, Two And A Half Men does this as well. Usually it's a weird or obscure line from the show (e.g. "Humiliation is a Visual Medium")
Another Reality TV example is Americas Next Top Model, titling its episodes "The Girl Who/With ___". (Main drawback: The show has had 4 of its 10 cycles so far end with an episode titled "The Girl Who Becomes America's Next Top Model": cycles 1, 7, 8, and 9.)
Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry is a Stephen Sondheim fan, and so uses Sondheim songs as the titles of his episodes.
On Nip/Tuck, the episodes are named after the main patient undergoing surgery at McNamara/Troy that episode.
- This has interesting potential for drama; when you see an episode named after a major character, you know something is happening. Of course, it also gave us the episode "Quentin Costa," in which we learn the identity of the Carver, which we had been waiting for for about two seasons. Three guesses what's funny about that title.
Starting with the fifth, each season of That 70's Show picked an appropriate band and used their song titles for every episode. (In order, the bands were Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Queen.)
Smallville always uses one-word titles.
Law And Order shows usually use one-word titles, often using words with a double-meaning. For example, the SVU episode "Taken" appears to be about a kidnapping, but it turns out to be a con job. A particularly egregious example would be the episode "Head," about a woman who rapes a boy in a bathroom because she has a brain tumor.
- In at least two instances, L&O:SVU had two-part crossovers with other L&O franchises using IEN for the titles. A crossover with Trial By Jury was named "Night" (SVU) & "Day" (TBJ). A crossover with L&O Prime was named "Design" (SVU) & "Flaw" (Prime).
Blackadder from season 2 onwards.
- Every episode title in Blackadder II is a concrete noun, which appears on the table in the opening credits.
- Every episode title in Blackadder the Third takes the form "<short noun> and <alliterative longer noun>", playing on the Austen titles Pride And Prejudice and Sense And Sensibility. (One of them is called "Sense and Senility".)
- Every episode title in Blackadder Goes Forth, except the finale ("Goodbyeee"), is a plot-significant pun on a military rank ("Captain Cook", "Corporal Punishment", "General Hospital", etc.) They are also lettered as Plans A-F.
Special case: Emily's Reasons Why Not had every episode except the pilot have a title starting with "Why Not To", e.g., "Why Not to Date Your Gynecologist". However, only the pilot ever aired in the US.
Episode titles of Bones are all formatted "The [victim] in the [place]" ("The Woman in the Sand," "The Superhero in the Alley"). Exceptions are "The Man on Death Row" and "The Graft in the Girl," which follow the linguistic pattern but do not refer directly to the victim, and "The Girl With The Curl," which is just out of left field as far as the pattern goes. ("The Truth in the Lye," while a horrible pun, still technically refers to the victim.)
- The 4th season premiere had "The Yanks in the UK" which was talking about Booth and Brennan.
  - Possibly, but the victim (and her family) in that episode were also Americans. Booth was asked to help specifically because the victim's father was a powerful American businessman.
- The series also varied from the 'victim' format with the over-dramatic title The Pain in the Heart for the third season finale, where Zack is revealed as the Gormogon's apprentice.
- Season 5 had "A Night at the Bones Museum," probably because the major murder heavily involved a mummy, and the show already had an episode with "mummy" in its title. There are several other exceptions in this season for varying reasons.
3rd Rock from the Sun always worked "Dick" into the title. That's what happens when you downsize standards and practices. For those who don't know, that's the name of the male lead.
- On a DVD Commentary, one of the writers explained that they created these titles to amuse themselves, thinking they would never be seen by the public due to the series having no Episode Title Card. They were wrong.
Similarly, every episode of Slings And Arrows after the first two was titled with a Shakespeare quote.
- More specifically, a quote from the play that was being rehearsed that season (Hamlet in S1, Macbeth in S2, and King Lear in S3)
Though there was no idiosyncratic system for episode titles on Babylon Five, every season had one significant episode whose title also doubled as the overall name of the season, fitting in with the concept that the show was a series of novels for television. The titles were "Signs and Portents" (season 1); "The Coming of Shadows" (season 2); "Point of No Return" (season 3); "No Surrender, No Retreat" (season 4); and "The Wheel of Fire" (season 5).
Freaks And Geeks had many episode titles that combined two rhyming thematic words: "Beers and Weirs," "Carded and Discarded," "Tests and Breasts".
- Some non-rhyming examples: "Tricks and Treats", "Girlfriends and Boyfriends", "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers", "Discos and Dragons".
The X Files sometimes used complimentary or opposing episode names for multi-part and mytharc episodes: "The End"/"The Beginning," "Two Fathers"/"One Son," "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction I & II," "Within"/"Without."
- Perhaps "Deadalive" was the result of a shortened two-parter?
- Most of the time, though, episodes titles for The X Files were extremely vague words or phrases brought up by a single line of dialogue or some other subtle or insignificant aspect of the episode, and the titles were simply there so the creators had something to refer to each individual episode as.
The Sopranos, after a few episodes, started to have a somewhat idiosyncratic naming convention where each episode had a title that would be spoken aloud by a character somewhere in the episode (one of the best of the early episodes titled in this manner was "Nobody Knows Anything"). AS the series went on, the titles themselves became more idiosyncratic, and some viewers (*cough* Television Without Pity *cough*) started actively checking to see how long it took before the writers managed to work the title into the dialogue ("Fleshy Part Of The Thigh", anyone?).
- The British private eye series Public Eye did the "random dialogue as episode title" thing before, and Damages also uses it.
  - Deadwood did this too, starting during its second season.
  - And so does Two And A Half Men.
Doctor Who has a venerable tradition of titles in the format, "The (noun) of (scary abstract noun)", eg. "The Hand of Fear", "The Face of Evil", "The Reign of Terror", "The Seeds of Doom", "The Edge of Destruction", "The Robots of Death"... and so forth. The audio drama ...ish hung a lampshade on this when the Doctor mentioned an encounter with the sentient word called The Adjective of Noun. Eventually parodied with Steven Moffat's The Curse of Fatal Death.
- And of course, there's "(The) X of the Daleks". Way to spoil the surprise, BBC. Averted by the new series, until "Evolution of the Daleks" (And even then, "Dalek" and "Daleks in Manhattan" still gave away their appearances despite not following the convention.)
  - Averted with The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, being the only episodes in the entire series involving the Daleks that do NOT have Dalek in the name.
  - ... except for the 2005 2 part finale Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, which prominently featured Daleks in episode but not title. Oh ... and the 2006 2 part finale Army of Ghosts/Doomsday.
- After John Nathan-Turner became producer (1980), many stories had one-word titles (e.g. "Meglos," "Logopolis"), often named after characters or planets. Before that, there were three such stories ("Inferno," "Robot" and "Underworld") in 17 years.
  - Similarly, the first three series of Blakes Seven (produced by David Maloney) had no pattern to the titles. The fourth series (produced by Vere Lorrimer) had all one-word titles.
- Stories where multiple doctors meet are called "The <number of doctors> Doctors", except the mini episode "Time Crash"
Batman: the episodes of the 1966 series have names that rhyme (sometime approximatively) two by two. Episodes 21 and 22 of the first season, for instance, are called "The Penguin Goes Straight" and "Not Yet, He Ain't".
- Batman The Brave And The Bold did a shout-out to this with the first two-parter being named "Deep Cover for Batman" and "Game Over for Owlman".
iCarly episodes are of the form "i<Insert Phrase Here>"
The Showtime drama Brotherhood had all its Season 1 episodes titled after Bible verses. For a bit of a shift, all the Season 2 episodes were named after Dylan songs.
Life Interrupted's episodes are tiled as to rhyme with the series title, apart from the pilot, which could also be called Life Interrupted. So far it's been Home Inspected, Rent Uncollected, and Bong Intercepted.
Everybody Hates Chris: Every episode title has the form "Everybody Hates _____".
Every episode of Police Squad! had two titles. At the end of the intro, the name of the episode would be given on screen, and at the same time, a voiceover would read out a completely different title. Which one was actually relevant to the episode varied.
Neighbours had episode titles that form utterly terrible puns, often based on a song or literary allusion that has something to do with the plot of the episode, such as (this troper's favorite) 'Assault and Pepper'. Thankfully, they have now stopped releasing the names of episodes
The titles for season two of Carnivale referred to the town in which the Carnivale set up camp - i.e. "Ingram, TX", "Cheyenne, WY", and the finale, "New Caanan, CA" - or where Ben Hawkins was discovering more bits of the End Game - "Alamagordo, NM", "Old Cherry Blossom Road", etc. The first season did this somewhat - "Babylon", "The River" - but if it'd stuck to the trope, we wouldn't have such fun titles as "The Day That Was the Day".
The World War Two TV show The Rat Patrol episodes were always The "____________" Raid.
Every episode of The Middleman is The "_____" "______" "______", such as "The Accidental Occidental Conception." This formula was even used to name the pilot episode "The Pilot Episode Sanction."
The Blair Brown US TV series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd had every episode title starting with "Here" or "Here's". Most of the first season episode titles began with "Here's Why", the rest mostly began "Here's a". Some episode titles: Here's why you should always have a cake burning in the refrigerator, Here's why you should never wear high heels to the bank, and Here's a side effect of serious moonlight.
The Big Bang Theory phrases its episode titles like scientific terminology. ("The Fuzzy Boots Corollary", "The Hamburger Postulate", "The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization", etc.)
Episodes of The King Of Queens that crossover with Everybody Loves Raymond include a pun on Ray in the title. ("Road Rayge", "Rayny Day", "Dire Strayts")
- All episodes of The King Of Queens, except for the pilot episode, have a two word title, usually involving a pun like "Queasy Rider" or an intentional misuse of an existing phrase like "Major Disturbance" ("Major" is the name of Doug's best friend's son).
Every episode of the first season of Eli Stone shared its title with a George Michael song.
The Mentalist uses the word "Red" in its titles, sometimes fitting the episode (i.e. "Red Hair and Silver Tape" which refers to the trait of the victims and the item used to bind them.)
- During the middle of the first season the seemed to run out of "red" puns, so they went with "Scarlett Fever", "Bloodshot", "Carnelian, Inc", Russet Potatoes", all different shades of red, before returning to only red from "A Dozen Red Roses".
- All are a reference to the series' unseen villain and object of Patrick Jane's obsession, Red John.
Leverage episode titles use the form "The _______ Job".
- Parodied by the creators themselves in the online special The Hand Job: Getting What You Want the Leverage way
Gossip Girl often based the episode titles on movies. Examples: "The Blair Bitch Project" from The Blair Witch Project, "Desperately Seeking Serena" based on Desperately Seeking Susan, "Never Been Marcused" based on Never Been Kissed etc.
The first season of The Drew Carey Show had many episodes with titles related to chemistry. Also parodied itself with episode 10, titled "Science Names Suck" and episode 15, titled "There is No Scientific Name for a Show About God".
Skins titles are the first name of the main character that they focus on.
- Except the Series 1 and 3 finales, which focus, respectively, the entire cast and most of the cast, and are both titled "Finale". The Series 2 finale also focuses on the whole cast, but is titled "Everyone".
All of the episode titles in Are You Afraid Of The Dark begin with "The Tale of", eg "The Tale of the Lonely Ghost" or "The Tale of Laughing in the Dark".
The episode titles of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place were modeled after the title of the show, following the pattern "Two Guys, a Girl and ________". When the show was renamed simply Two Guys and a Girl, the pattern was dropped.
In Hannah Montana, every single episode is named after a song, including the pilot: "Lilly, Do You Want To Know A Secret?" Other examples include "Oops! I Meddled Again," "Welcome To The Bungle," and "I Want You To Want Me... To Go To Florida."
Episode titles of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia describe what happens in the episode, usually referring to the main characters as "The Gang." The title card serves as a punchline by bluntly affirming or contradicting the last line of the cold opening. For example, just after Frank insists that no one is going to get hurt by his scheme, the title appears: "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire."
- It's a little more formulatic than that. The vast majority of the episode titles are <The Gang/Gang member> <verb> <noun/contriversial isse>.
The pilot episode for Caroline In The City used the same title as the series itself, but every subsequent episode title used some variant of "Caroline and the _____".
Every episode of the short-lived sitcom Alright Already had a title of "Again with the _____".
A considerable number of M*A*S*H episodes took their titles from classic movies or songs. These could be either taken straight ("It Happened One Night", "Hey, Look Me Over"), slightly adjusted ("Hawkeye Get Your Gun", "A War for All Seasons"), or turned into horrible puns ("U.N. the Night and the Music", "The Novocaine Mutiny"). The title of the series' final episode ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen") was paraphrased from a line in Cole Porter's song "Just One of Those Things".
Each episode title in Harper's Island is onomatopoeia associated with a death that occurs in that episode.
All episodes of British children's show Bernards Watch had the word "time" in the title (since they were about a watch that could stop time).
Each episode of Party Down takes its name from whatever event the crew is working.
In Kamen Rider Kuuga, the episode titles are simply two kanji. Kamen Rider Hibiki has titles that are all two-word noun phrases, and Kamen Rider Kiva precedes the actual title with a musical term or reference. Those three series' relevant Kamen Rider Decade episodes retain their naming conventions.
- Garo has its episodes titled in the same manner as Kuuga's.
- Kamen Rider Double uses a "<story arc>/<episode>" format. In addition, each story arc title features an english word written down as a single latin letter, like W for "double" and M for "money"
Most episodes of The Norm Show were titled "Norm vs. _____".
Super Sentai uses these often:
- Himitsu Sentai Goranger: Two sentences, the first containing a color and ending with an exclamation point (or two).
- JAKQ Dengekitai: All episodes contained two sentences, the first ending with an exclamation point (or two). For the first twelve episodes, the first sentence consisted of "[Number] [Noun]!!".
- Chouriki Sentai Ohranger: A very large amount of episodes had titles prefixed by a one-word sentence ending in two exclamation points. Fifteen of the first seventeen episodes used this scheme, and it became less common after that.
- Denji Sentai Megaranger: Every episode title is prefixed by a one-word sentence (sometimes with a particle or two at the end) ending in an exclamation point, except for one where they used a question mark instead.
- Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: Every episode title is in the form "X of Y" (Y no X in Japanese).
- Mirai Sentai Timeranger: Every episode title has a date attached to it.
- Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: Most episodes are either in the form "Noun, Verb!!" (early episodes) or "The Noun Verbs" (later episodes).
- Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger: Every episode title is in the form "Noun and Noun".
- Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger: Every episode title contains "Abare", either as its own word or part of another.
- Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: Every episode title is in Gratuitous English, written in katakana.
- Mahou Sentai Magiranger: Every episode title is suffixed with the name of a spell from the show.
- Go Go Sentai Boukenger: Every episode title is a noun phrase.
- Juken Sentai Gekiranger: Every episode title begins with a word from Jan's unique vocabulary.
- Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: Every episode title is written entirely in kanji. Particles (which have no kanji) spoken in the episode title are omitted from the written title, and not a single episode title contains a word of Gratuitous English (as those have no kanji, and aren't necessary for grammar like particles are).
In the Yorkshire Television series The Beiderbecke Affair, all episode titles are in the form of a question or comment, which is then the first line of dialogue. (E.g., "What I don't understand is this ...")
Privileged has all of the episode titles start with "All About", e.g. All About the Power Position, All About Love, Actually etc.
Originally, Father Ted was to model its episode titles after the 'Mr Moto' episode titles (e.g. Think Fast Ted, Are you right there Ted?) but the writers could only think of a few examples and dropped the idea.
Every episode of season 1 of Stargate Universe has a one-word title. This troper guesses that if there's a season 2, every episode will have a two word title.
The Honey I Shrunk The Kids TV show titled their episodes as a statement starting with "Honey..." The only exception is "From Honey with Love".
Each episode of Day Break has a question as the title: What If He Runs Away?, What If It's Her?, since the protaganist is trying new tactics each time the day restarts.
Community is set on a community college campus, and every episode features a subtle play on college course titles as it relates to the episode — such as "Football, Feminism and You", "Advanced Criminal Law" and "Social Psychology".
The Forgotten uses "<something> John/Jane" for its titles. This is taken from the practice of identifying unknown victims as John or Jane Doe.
Breaking Bad: Put together, the titles of the episodes "737", "Down", "Over", "ABQ" give a Spoiler for the season 2 finale. The episodes in question are connected by a strange crime-scene Cold Open with a conspicuous Empathy Doll Shot.
The Cake Boss uses three-word titles with Added Alliterative Appeal that are typically about the cakes they're making plus some hijinks the bakers get up to. For instance "Robots, Rollerskates, and Relatives" had a robot cake, a rollerskate cake, and Buddy's sister and nephew driving him and the staff insane.
Accidentally on Purpose titles its episodes after movies, in keeping with the main character's job as a film critic.
Charlie's Angels used the word "angel" in some form in the names of most of its episodes ("Angels in Paradise," "Angel on My Mind," "Angels Go Trucking," "Catch a Falling Angel," "Angels in the Deep," and others).
Episodes of Nip/Tuck are named after that week's client. It's usually something normal like FirstName LastName, but occasionally someone is Only One Name, or sometimes there's multiple clients.
Though never seen by the viewing audience, every episode of Prisoners Of Gravity (a Canadian show about science fiction hosted by Rick Green) had a topic-appropriate title with the initials P. O. G.
Nearly every episode of the short-lived Steven Weber sitcom The Weber Show (a.k.a. Cursed) had an episode title which was some variant of "...And Then (Something Happened)".
Gary Unmarried begins every episode title with "Gary" or "Gary's" followed by a description of a person or action.

The score for Batman Begins is titled idiosyncratically: the first track, Vespertilio, is the Latin word for bat, and the other titles are all scientific names for different genera of bat. This is not the case for The Dark Knight's music; however, many of the track titles are either taken from lines of dialogue in the film, or a slight variation on them: I'm Not A Hero, Blood On My Hands, And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad, Like A Dog Chasing Cars; etc. However, it's noteworthy that the lines of dialogue spoken do not correspond to the scenes in which the music plays. For example, "Like A Dog Chasing Cars", an energetic treatment of one of the main themes, is not played over the scene where the line is spoken, which is a quiet conversation with the Joker. In fact, it's not even played over any of the scenes involving high-speed vehicular chases, which mostly go without score.
Each song on the Mountain Goats's 2009 album The Life of the World to Come is named after a Bible verse.
Between 1972 and 1977, the band America had seven consecutive album titles that started with the letter H. The group used used six more non-consecutive H titles since then.
Queen named two consecutive albums after Marx Brothers films: A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.
- Later, the power metal band Blind Guardian (who are all Queen fans) named their 2002 album A Night at the Opera as a Shout Out to Queen.
Extreme metal band Dimmu Borgir tend toward three-word album titles that are often quite nonsensical: Enthrone Darkness Triumphant, Godless Savage Garden, Spiritual Black Dimensions, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, Death Cult Armageddon.
- This is spoofed in the 101 Rules of Black Metal (rule 87).
Death metal band Morbid Angel consistently have their nth album staring with the nth letter of the alphabet. Straight from their first, Altars of Madness, to their ninth, Heretic.
Progressive Doom Metal band, Madder Mortem, use their name as an acronym for the titles of their albums: M - Mercury, A - All Flesh is Grass, D - Deadlands, D - Desiderata...
¡Forward, Russia! used to give all their songs numeric titles in order of writing. This ended after their album Give Me A Wall.
Most albums by Chicago are called "Chicago" followed by the number of the album.
Asia's studio albums were all named with a word beginning and ending with "a" up until the eighth one, Rare.
British folk-rocker John Wesley Harding (aka Wesley Stace) named several of his albums after Frank Capra movies: It Happened One Night, Here Comes The Groom, Why We Fight. Another one, The Name Above The Title, was named after Capra's autobiography.
Progressive metal band Dream Theater named their sixth and eighth albums Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium, respectively. In addition, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence had six songs and Octavarium eight.
- Some fans also think that Train of Thought contains a subtle nod to leetspeak (not surprising considering how warmly the band references things such as the John Petrucci Psycho Exercises dubs), as the letter T is usually represented by a 7. This was their seventh studio album and contains seven songs.
Boys Night Out's Trainwreck album had all its songs named (verb)-ing such as 'Dreaming', 'Waking', 'Medicating' etc.
Global Communication's magnum opus 76:14 had all its tracks named after the length of the song much like the album name itself (being 76minutes and 14seconds long. The reasoning is they didn't want to influence anyone's interpretation of the songs by naming them a certain way.
Aphex Twin's 'I Care Because You Do' features several anagrams of 'Aphex Twin', 'The Aphex Twin' and 'Richard David James'. Such as 'Wax the Nip' and 'The Waxen Pith'
- Similarly, his Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 is named by pictures instead of words. The songs are based on lucid dreams and the pictures associated all tie into it. It's kinda unnerving but also really cool.
- A good deal of the songs released in the Analord series of 12" singles are named after viruses or malicious software ("Backdoor.Ranky.S" for instance) - apparently something of a prank on those who would try to find them on filesharing programs.
KMFDM album titles are five letters long.
- Not exactly. Exceptions are Hau Ruck, Tohuvabohu, Ruck Zuck, and Brimborium.
All the song titles on German singer Annett Louisan's debut album Boheme follow the pattern (article/noun) - Das Spiel (the game), Das Gefühl (the feeling) etc., with the sole exception of Daddy.
Almost every release by The Jesus Lizard has a 4 letter, one syllable title, the exception being one self-titled EP.
Of Montreal's demo collection The Early Four Track Recordings: Evidently none of the songs were given proper titles when they were recorded, so the track listing consists of non-appearing titles that form a surreal story about the misadventures of Dustin Hoffman ("Dustin Hoffman Does Not Resist Temptation to Eat the Bathtub," "Dustin Hoffman's Wife Comes Home", "Dustin Hoffman's Wife Seems Suspicious About the Absent Bathtub", etc).
Parodied in A Mighty Wind with Kingston Trio/Weavers/Limeliters pastiche The Folksmen. Their first 5 albums all have single word gerund titles with a missing final "g". Examples Pickin' and Wishin'. Their 6th album, Saying Something, breaks this trend (as well as using electric instruments for the first time); and is described (in a cut scene) by the band as the reason they lost their fanbase.
Japanese Black Metal band Sigh do this with their major releases. Each one begins with one of the letters of the band's name, in order: Scorn Defeat, Infidel Art, Ghastly Funeral Theatre, Hail Horror Hail, Scenario IV: Dead Dreams, Imaginary Sonicscape, Gallows Gallery, Hangman's Hymn, Scenes from Hell.

The code names of Magic The Gathering expansions always have some kind of theme to them, ranging from Mexican words to food; recent examples have included "Rock/Paper/Scissors" (for Shards of Alara/Conflux/Alara Reborn) and "Live/Long/Prosper" (for Zendikar/Worldwake/Rise of the Eldrazi).
Many genre supplements for the original Big Eyes, Small Mouth RPG used the "(adjective) (noun), (adjective) (noun)": Big Robots, Cool Starships (mecha and science fiction), Cold Hands, Dark Hearts (gothic and horror), Big Ears, Small Mouse (talking animal cartoons), "Hot Rods & Gun Bunnies'' (modern action; bends the convention a bit).

Angels In America is a total of eight acts long, and each act has a name. Some of them are more... interesting than others.
- Millenium Approaches Act Three: "Not-Yet-Conscious, Forward Dawning"
- Perestroika Act Three: "Borborygmi (The Squirming Facts Exceed the Squamous Mind)"
Each scene in the musical Music in the Air is titled after a form of classical music. The first scene, which shows the evolution of a songbird's twittering into a melody later to be known as "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star," is fittingly labeled 'Leit Motif'.

Each chapter in each of the Gyakuten Saiban games features the word "gyakuten" (which means "reversal" or "turnabout") in it. This carries over to the English version, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, where each chapter has "turnabout" in the name (except for "Rise From the Ashes", the "bonus" fifth chapter in the DS version of the first game, and that only in the English translation).
The Ogre Battle series takes its subtitles from Queen references.
- Also, the series' title shares its name with a Queen song.
All of the map themes in Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals have are titled "Roy's ____" (Courage, Challenge, Battle ect)
All 5 Acts of Metal Gear Solid 4 are titled "_____ Sun", appropriately with a massive sun dominating the background whenever the title is shown at the beginning of each Act. Although not exactly Acts, the ending and post-credits "Debriefing" are similarly called "Naked Sin" and "Naked Son", respectively.
- Similarly, the subtitles of the special editions of the games from Metal Gear Solid 2 onwards have been nouns abstract nouns ending with the prefix ___nce - for example, Substance and Subsistence, with the next supposedly being called Existence.
- Also, all downloadable expansion packs for Metal Gear Online have been named after Kojima's themes for the Metal Gear series - Gene, Meme, Scene and Sense.
Every scene in Dynamite Headdy has a name parodying that of some famous film, e.g. "Mad Mechs", "Stair Wars", "Fly Hard", "Fatal Contraption"...
The Half-Life franchise has consistently used tongue-in-cheek episode names, such as Surface Tension (heavy fighting in an outdoors environment), Insecurity (in the Exanpansion Pack Blue Shift, where you play as a security guard) or Route Kanal (escaping City 17 via its sewer system).
- Speaking of Half-Life, the names of the game, its expansion packs Opposing Forces and Blue Shift, and the Play Station 2 Gaiden Game Decay are all scientific terms that can also apply to the content of the game proper.
- Some offer a nice bit of foreboding: after all, there's a reason We Don't Go to Ravenholm.
The Castlevania series, starting with Rondo of Blood, have usually had musical names (Symphony of the Night, Harmony of Dissonance) or X of X names that described a main plot point (Curse of Darkness, Portrait of Ruin). The Japanese releases usually have a similar name (Harmony was originally Concerto of the Midnight Sun/White Night Concerto).
- Averted in the Wii title, Judgment, the retconned Legends, and the PSP remake of Rondo, called The Dracula X Chronicles. The canceled Dreamcast title Resurrection (starring Legends' Sonia) would have also been an aversion, but... well.
All three of the Halo games have these strewn about every level in campaign, including such favorites as "The Gun Pointed At The Head of the Universe", "Breaking Stuff To Look Tough", and "I Would Have Been Your Daddy."
- While these are mostly idiosynchratic, the "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" level is named after something the character of Sergeant Johnson can say during the level, as a taunt to the enemies. The full line goes "I would have been your daddy...but the dog beat me over the fence!"
- I defy anyone to start the section titled "It's Quiet..." without saying aloud "...too quiet..."
Marathon, Halo's spiritual predecessor, had its fair share of these. All the levels in Marathon 1 involving the Pfhor (The aliens of the game) were titled with such pun-ishing phrases as "phfor your eyes only", "ain't got time phfor this", and "two times two equals...". Later chapters in the series had names such as "Begging for Mercy makes me Angry!", "If I had a Rocket Launcher, I'd make someone Pay", and "You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time!". Not to mention the occasional latin three-word title thrown in, occasionally with some form of grammatical or lexical error.
The level names of The Ultimate Doom's fourth episode and the episode name are phrases taken from the Bible: Thy Flesh Consumed, Hell Beneath, Perfect Hatred, Sever the Wicked, Unruly Evil, Against Thee Wickedly, They Will Repent, ...And Hell Followed, and Unto the Cruel.
Bubble Bobble series: Bubble _________ and/or "The Story of Bubble Bobble (confusing installment number)".
The levels in 2D Sonic games generally follow the naming pattern "______ Zone Act X"
Mario has a few of these. All of the boss levels in Super Mario 64 are called "Bowser in the ______" (Dark World, Fire Sea, and Sky, in that order). All of the main levels in Super Mario Galaxy are "[Alliterative pair of words] Galaxy".
Entire video game consoles have had this with game titles, but that's it's own trope.
No mention of Dead Space yet? The first letters spell something plot-relevant.
In Thunder Force II, each separate area equates to half a stage. So one overhead section and one side-scorlling section equals to one stage.
In The World Ends With You, each day is essentially its own chapter. And there's three weeks, totaling up to 21 days, with each week being a different arc.
Each new installment of Rappelz is called an "Epic", and they're numbered with Roman numerals.
Raiden Fighters Jet's simulation stages start at level 1, then go up to level 5, then in increments of 5 up to level 50, with the exception of a jump from level 20 to 30 (there's no level 25). Additionally, unless you're playing the full mode in the 360 port, you don't go up the stages sequentially; you may jump stages depending on your performance, and on one instance you can actually go backwards (level 40 to 35).

Bonus Stage defines its seasons through the use of this. Season 2's titles have "2" in them, Season 3's titles start with "Virtual", Season 4's titles have "Curse" in them, Season 5's episodes have "Fi" as the first two letters, Season 6's titles are puns on episodes of The Simpsons, Season 7's titles are more general puns.
Awesome Series has all the titles named after the work being parodied, but with one word replaced with "Awesome".
- Or mashed into the title when it's only one word, such as TetrAwesome and Awesomefield.

Dinosaur Comics titles originally started out as a reasonable description of the events in the story. However, they have since evolved into an alternative to Alt Text, usually with bizarre capitalisation rules and sometimes with nothing to do with the story. For example, one recent comic was "when i was a kid i solemnly vowed that, when i was an adult, i would make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and eat all the dough, because my mom wouldn't let me eat raw cookie dough. it is a vow i have yet to satisfy and which haunts me still" and another is "last night i was at a friend's house and mimed a helicopter, which caused me to break a glass and spill beer everywhere. i was like, man, why did have to mime a helicopter? i felt terrible and it wasn't even a very good helicopter impression". The titles are only visible from the archives and RSS feed anyway, making them little more than a 4th punchline to the comic (after the alt tag and email comment Easter Eggs).
Each page of The Non-Adventures Of Wonderella is named with a relevant catch-phrase or pop-culture reference, or (more frequently) pun based on such. One word of every title is written in all-caps to make them more dramatic. For example: "SIN Derella", "A Christmas PERIL", and "MELANIN COLLEAGUE and the Infinite Sadness".
The name of each page of Megatokyo is a quote from the page.
Each Three Panel Soul strip is named "On ________", with the ________ usually refering to the strip's subject. For example: On Surnames
The title of each chapter of Lagend is a complete sentence that obliquely refers to that chapter's main conflict.
The Prime Directive storyline of Adventures In Aaron's Room is the only one to stick with single-word titles.

Almost every episode of the first season of Sonic The Hedgehog had the word 'Sonic' in it, despite how little it would have to do with the actual plot. This was discarded in season 2.
Every title of an Ed Edd N Eddy episode is based on an aphorism or pop-culture reference with "Ed" inserted into it somewhere ("One of Those Eds", "X Marks the Ed", "The Day the Ed Stood Still", etc.).
- This troper's favorite example is "Boom Boom! Out goes the Ed", which is a play on Pat Traver's song "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)".
Every episode of Codename Kids Next Door has a title of the form "Operation: ______", where the ______ is always an acronym that both fits the theme of the episode and expands to a phrase that fits the theme.
Every Pink Panther short made in the 1960s and 1970s has the word "Pink" in the title. Similarly, every short in DFE's The Inspector series has some French wordplay in the title.
Probably related is Viz Video's practice of giving its Ranma 1/2 releases — first on videotape and later on DVD — names that were puns or parodies of the titles of other works well known at the time in North America. For example, the theatrical film Ranma 1/2: Kessen Tôgenkyô! Hanayome o torimodose!! (literally, Ranma 1/2: Battle at Togenkyo! Get Back the Brides!) was released as Nihao My Concubine (referring to the 1993 Chinese film distributed in the United States as Farewell My Concubine). Other such titles included Like Water For Ranma, Smells Like Evil Spirit, One Grew Over The Kuno's Nest, and Big Trouble in Nekonron, China.
Another DFE series, The Houndcats, used titles of the form "The ________ Mission".
Every episode of Men In Black: The Series was named "The _____ Syndrome".
Every episode of Clone High had two names, separated by colons, such as “Escape to Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand” or “Film Fest: Tears of a Clone”. This was subverted in the second episode title, “Episode Two: Election Blu-Galoo”. Supposedly this was a joke based around the theme of clones within the show.
The 26 episodes of the second season of W.I.T.C.H. were all named in the form "(letter) is for (word starting with that letter)", and in their proper sequence run from "A Is for Anonymous" to "Z is for Zenith", without repeating or dropping any letters.
Sav! The World's series Oban Star-Racers names most of its episodes in the form "X Like Y", where Y is the name of the Monster Of The Week. X is always an adjective that begins with the same letter or sound as the antagonist's name — "Playful Like Para-Dice", "Agile Like Aikka", et cetera. Unfortunately, this meant they were forced to use the word "Cruel" twice.
Skunk Fu! uses "The Art of ____". There was even an episode where they did "The Art of Art".
Totally Spies went through a phase in the third season where most episodes had titles ending in the word "Much?" (e.g. "Head Shrinker Much?"), reflecting the Valley Girl-esque way Clover sometimes speaks.
The episodes of Clerks The Animated Series had descriptive and increasingly lengthy titles (apart from the last episode, entitled simply "The Last Episode Ever"). The longest was that of the second-to-last episode, "Dante and Randal and Jay and Silent Bob and a Bunch of New Characters and Lando, Take Part in a Whole Bunch of Movie Parodies Including But Not Exclusive To, The Bad News Bears, The Last Starfighter, Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom, Plus a High School Reunion".
Most episodes of the cartoon The Tick had titles of the form "The Tick vs. ______" — for example, "The Tick vs. Science" or "The Tick vs. Reno, Nevada".
Most episodes of the cartoon Darkwing Duck had pun-laden titles. One pun was usually enough, and by and large they were simple variations on stock phrases, like "Slime Okay, You're Okay", "Whirled History", and "Water Way to Go" or well-known movie titles, like "Dry Hard", "Planet of the Capes", and "Steerminator". A few, like the two-part episodes "Darkly Dawns the Duck" and "Just Us Justice Ducks" were not puns, but were still obviously wordplay, while some, such as "Smarter than a Speeding Bullet" fit the variation on stock phrases form, without being puns.
- Punny episode titles were also common on Disney's other comedy/adventure Animated Series, such as Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers and Goof Troop. In addition, Duck Tales and Tale Spin also had punny series titles.
Family Guy was supposed to have idiosyncratic episode naming. Each episode was supposed to have a Film Noir-ish death-themed title that had nothing to do with the plot of the episode. The practice was quickly abandoned when it became difficult to tell which episode was which during the production process. The first four episodes retain these names: "Death Has A Shadow", "I Never Met The Dead Man" (both of which were originally titles for episodes of the classic '40s Radio Drama Suspense), "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", and "Mind Over Murder."
- More often, it's just innuendo: "Deep Throats", "Prick Up Your Ear".
Aqua Teen Hunger Force's second season had two naming themes (and some in the middle that didn't match either). It started with "Super" ("Super Birthday Snake", "Super Hero", "Super Bowl"...) and ended with "The" ("The Cubing", "The Clowning", "The Dressing"... including an episode named just "The". The season ended with "The Last One", which was purportedly short for "The Last [Expletive Deleted] One of 2003")
Transformers: Beast Wars had a Story Arc featuring the characters coming into contact with mysterious aliens. These arc episodes were the only Beast Wars episodes with idiosyncratic names: "Other Voices" Parts 1 and 2, "Other Visits" Parts 1 and 2, and "Other Victories".
- The Japanese dub of Beast Machines used The X Of Y for all its titles.
In a convention reminiscent of the old $10,000 Pyramid game show, The Spectacular Spider-Man's episode titles are all derived from scientific terminology. "Survival of the Fittest," "Interactions" and "Natural Selection" are concepts from evolutionary theory, while "Market Forces," "Competition" and "The Invisible Hand" are from capitalist theory. "Catalysts" and "Reactions" are from chemistry, while "The Uncertainty Principle" is from physics. The rest of the season's titles "Persona," "Group Therapy," "Intervention" and "Nature vs. Nurture" are from psychology.
- Season 2 has "Blueprints", "Destructive Testing", "Reinforcement" and "Shear Strength", which are from construction and architecture; "First Steps", "Growing Pains", and "Identity Crisis", from child psychology; "Accomplices", "Probable Causes", and "Gangland" are from criminal justice, and "Subtext", "Opening Night" and "Final Curtain" are from theatre.
Every episode in the first series of Max Steel had titles beginning with the letter S. Possibly, if Greg Weisman had been kept on as developer, this would have carried on for the rest of the show.
Each episode of Mission Hill has two titles—a normal one that describes the plot, which would be printed in TV listings, and a racy one containing a vulgar pun. Example: "Andy Joins the PTA (or Great Sexpectations)".
The first episode of Aozora Shoujotai is titled DEFCON I, with subsequent episode titles counting up to DEFCON VI.
Samurai Jack would use some form of "Jack and the..." or "Samurai versus..." (or "Jack versus..." and "Samurai and the...", making it idiosyncratic and effectively descriptive of the episode.
The first four episodes of the fourth season of South Park all had "2000" appended to their titles, making fun of its overuse at the start of the new millennium. "Timmy 2000", anyone?
Every episode of Doug had "Doug" or "Doug's" as the first word of the title.
In Batman The Animated Series one episode is called "Night of the Ninja," a latter follow up episode with the same villan is titled "Day of the Samurai."
Justice League used a combination of this trope and a Mythology Gag by using various DC comic series as titles, most being sub-lines of Justice League titles. "Secret Origins," "In Darkest Night," "The Brave and the Bold," "Wild West Stories"..
- Also, earlier Superman The Animated Series had had "World's Finest" and "In Brightest Day".
While most Teen Titans episodes usually made sense, the first episode of the fourth season was entitled "Episode 257-494".
On DVD, the titles of the first 10 episodes of the fourth season of Robot Chicken form a message saying that its author is trapped in a DVD factory.
- The rest of the season's episode titles form the factory owner's reply.
Nearly every episode of Metalocalypse contains either "Deth" or "Klok" in the episode name.
Total Drama Action episodes are all parodies of movie titles, going with the different movie genre every week.
Every episode of Rocky And Bullwinkle had two titles: One very punny, and one alliterative.
Street Sharks was nothing but constant in squeezing the word "Shark" into every title, from "Card Sharks" to "Shark Father" "Shark-Apocalyse Now".
In Avatar The Last Airbender, each season is called a book and is named after one of the four elements (Example: Book One, Water), and each episode is called a chapter. Also the majority of the episodes usually followed the pattern of "The" and then whatever the episode was about. For example: "The Boy in the Iceburg", "The Siege of the North", "The Blind Bandit", "The Crossroads of Destiny", "The Eclipse", "The Old Masters", ect.
The Simpsons name a lot of episodes like "X vs X". Homer vs. Patty and Selma, Bart vs Thanksgiving, Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment, Lisa vs. Malibu Stacey, Bart vs. Australia, Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment, The City of New York vs. Homer, etc, etc.

Some FAQ/walkthrough writers on GameFAQs do this. For instance, Split Infinity, a major Final Fantasy FAQ writer, uses names of characters for version "numbers."

Each Ubuntu release is named (in increasing alphabetical order) after an animal accompanied by an alliterative adjective - for instance, Hardy Heron or Gutsy Gibbon; and alpha releases are named with terms suitable for the respective animal, like Flight, Knot, Herd, and Tribe.
- Also, the release numbers, rather than being the typical boring major.minor increments, are year.month. E.g., 8.10 was released Oct 2008.
Recent versions of the Linux kernel itself have an irregularly updated name, some of which sound a bit like Ubuntu versions ("Affluent Albatross", "Sliding Snow Leopard"), and some of which don't ("Avast! A bilge rat!"). They're pretty much based on whatever Linus feels like calling them, with International Talk Like A Pirate Day being one of the few recurring themes.
Fedora Linux (and Red Hat Linux, before it became fedora) uses a naming convention where each release's codename is related to the previous release's codename, but in a way different from the previous previous relation. For example, Bordeaux is a region in France, and also a comic book character; Zod is comic book character, and also a record label; Moonshine is a record label, and also a movie title.
The TeX typesetting software lets its version number converge towards pi with each release since version 3.0. It has currently reached version 3.1415926. The author, Donald Knuth, has stated that upon his death the version number should become precisely π, and no further changes should occur, with "all remaining bugs being classified as features".
Likewise, Knuth's font rendering engine METAFONT is currently at version 2.718281 and converging towards e.
The OGRE 3D game engine names each release after deities from the works of HP Lovecraft, starting with Hastur and continuing to the present with Shoggoth.
Debian names each release after a Toy Story character: Buzz, Rex, ..., Sarge, Etch, Lenny, and the still-in-development Squeeze. The unstable release is named Sid, after the boy who broke toys.
The various releases of Mac OS X are all named after big cats.
For a while, all the programs and applications released for desktop enviroment KDE snuck the letter "K" in their names. The trend has been waning in recent years, though.
- Inverted with the codenames of the release candidates of KDE 4.0, whose codenames all began with a "C". Most likely done to parody KDE apps that replace "C"s with "K"s such as Konversation, Kommander, KolourPaint, etc.
Many GPL-Licensed programs have names beginning with a silent G, for example Gnus, a newsreader. Java programs often have J prefixed to their names (this seems to be especially common with applications based on the swing GUI toolkit, where all class names are prefixed with J)
Many Mozilla/Gecko-based programs follow the format [Nature noun][Animal] - Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Sunbird, Songbird. Not all of them do, though (e.g. Camino).

Moons.
- Jupiter's moons are named after the lovers and descendants of Zeus
- Saturn's moons are named after other elder gods (originally the Titans, but expanded to include Norse, Gallic and Inuit gods)
- Uranus' moons are named after characters from Shakespearian plays or The Rape of the Lock
- Neptune's moons are named after water spirits.
Geographical features on any ball of rock we can see has even more odd naming conventions: all craters on Mercury have to be named after dead artists. Thanks Wikipedia!
Everything on Venus is named after famous women or female mythological figures. Except the Maxwell Mountains, because someone forgot.
The planets themselves are named after the Roman gods. Even, in some cases, our own (Terra is sometimes used; it means Earth in Latin and is the shorthand name of the Roman Earth goddess.)
The dark zones of basaltic rock on the Moon are called Seas (Mare in latin) and are usually called Sea of <Emotion> or Sea of <Water-related term>. The landing spot for Apollo 11 was in the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis). Others include Sea of Serenity, Sea of Crisis, Sea of Vapor, Sea of Moisture (!!!), Sea of Clouds. The major craters on the Moon are named after famous Astronomers: Copernicus, Tycho...

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