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This is a Common Fan Fallacy associated with Character Titles. It works as follows:
The work is titled X; therefore, X is the protagonist.
As common as Protagonist Title is, this is simply not always the case.
This is a Sister Trope of I Am Not Shazam. The difference is that, in these cases, the confusion arises from the title of the work referring to someone other than the main protagonist, such as a secondary character or antagonist. Viewers know who the person is but incorrectly assume said person is the protagonist.
- I Am Not Shazam: People correctly know which character is the protagonist but think the title refers to that protagonist's name.
- Protagonist Title Fallacy: People correctly know to whom or what the title refers but wrongly assume that the eponymous character is the protagonist because his/her name is the title.
When done with a Secondary Character Title, this can lead to Adaptation Decay where the hero is actually Demoted to Extra, making the adaptation an unintentional Perspective Flip.
When done with an Antagonist Title, this guarantees Draco in Leather Pants, as the reader or viewer assumes the villain is actually the one they're supposed to root for. Ron the Death Eater easily follows for the true protagonist(s). If this is done intentionally, it's not an error but deliberate invocation of Evil Is Cool.
Compare other forms of Title Confusion. Contrast Protagonist Title, which is when the character's name really is the protagonist. When someone in media doing a report on a fictional work commits this fallacy, it crosses with Cowboy Bebop At His Computer. When protagonists gradually switched over time, this crosses with Artifact Title. May be a result of Wolverine Publicity. See also Fandom Berserk Button.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In A Certain Magical Index, Touma is the protagonist, not Index (Who is still the second most important character). Index's importance fades so much after the first volume that there's a common rumor that the author had originally intended to change which character's name was in the title with each volume, but the editors shot down the idea for the sake of title recognition. Mikoto "Railgun" Misaka is the protagonist of the spin-off A Certain Scientific Railgun, however.
- Some fans argue that, being the name of the series, Soul Eater Evans must therefore be the main character and so worthy of the most attention. Yet it is not he but his meister Maka Albarn who gets the most page-time of the two.
- Doraemon. The main character is actually Nobita.
- Samurai Champloo is another arguable example. The title, chanpuru refers to an Okinawan dish that is a fusion of various things. Since Mugen is also from Okinawa and incorporates a "Chanpuru" sword style, people assume he is the protagonist. (It doesn't help that Mugen is an expy of Spike, the protagonist of Cowboy Bebop.) Actually, Fuu fits a bit better. It is her motivation of finding "the sunflower samurai" that drives the plot.
- Kagome is the protagonist and POV character of the show InuYasha. Although Inu-Yasha is the other half of the Battle Couple and gets about the same amount of screen time.
- Axis Powers Hetalia has stopped focusing on the Axis or Italy long ago.
- The Lyrical Nanoha franchise was almost never about the title character. Much more, each installment is the story of the "villains" whom Nanoha (and the previous seasons' villains) is to befriend to smithereens in it and, to a lesser degree, of younger heroes she serves to inspire. It's quite telling that the franchise first really kicked off when Fate Testarossa was introduced almost half-way through The Original Series. Still, each installment faithfully keeps her name in their titles, even ones that hardly feature her at all.
- Medaka Box: Despite being the title character and The Hero, more often than not she seems to be more of a plot device to be observed by people, especially Supporting Protagonist Zenkichi than the actual protagonist of the series.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny is an unusual examplenote not in the least because the title refers to a Humongous Mecha and not a person; the pilot of the Destiny Gundam (Shinn Asuka) was the protagonist, but shortly before he upgraded to the Destiny his spotlight was stolen by Kira Yamato, protagonist of the previous series, and Shinn ended up becoming a Hero Antagonist.
Comic Strips
- Blondie is the name of Dagwood Bumstead's wife. This is confusing to some kids who read the comics, which mostly (but not always) follow Dagwood, and assume that "Blondie" is a Gender Blender Name in this case. This has elements of Artifact Title in that, although Blondie is still a character (and thus this is a Secondary Character Title), in the very beginning Blondie was the protagonist.
- Funky Winkerbean is a Secondary Character Title. The strip was originally an ensemble comic with no single protagonist (Funky being one of the teenage characters), but since then the title of protagonist has settled on Funky's best friend, Les Moore.
- Keeping Up with the Joneses was a popular strip in the early 20th century, and its title remains a common vernacular phrase to this day. But the strip's main characters were the McGinises; the eponymous Joneses were their (never-seen) neighbors.
- The original protagonist of Judge Parker was Judge Alan Parker. Soon after the strip started, though, the character of Sam Driver was introduced, and nowadays he and his wife are the main characters.
- Barney Google and Snuffy Smith can go for years without featuring the first title character — so much so that some local newspapers now just refer to the strip as Snuffy Smith, period.
Films — Animation
- Akira. The main characters are actually TETSUO! And KANEDA!!
- Princess Mononoke is the nickname for San, the human girl raised by wolf gods. However, the main character is Ashitaka.
- Finding Nemo: While the eponymous character does gain development, it's fairly clear his father Marlin is the protagonist. After all, it would be pretty hard for the movie to be about Nemo searching for himself.
- Disney's Sleeping Beauty: The actual protagonists are the three fairies — a Perspective Flip for the better that the merchandising is still unaware of.
Films — Live-Action
- In The Thin Man, the title refers to the person detective Nick Charles (who is out of shape in the book) is seeking. In the later sequel movies, it refers to Charles.
- Dr. Strangelove: The title character is more of a Dr. Exposition than anything else.
- Ichi The Killer: The main character is named Kakihara (Ichi is an assassin hired to kill him), but many people make the mistaken assumption that Kakihara is Ichi since his face is on the posters and home video covers rather than Ichi's.
- Beetlejuice: Antagonist Title; the main protagonists are actually the Maitlands (Adam and Barbara). The eponymous character actually only appears for about 11 minutes of the film.
- While Rocky is a major character in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he's not the protagonist, nor the antagonist. That honor goes to Brad and Janet, and to Dr. Frank-N-Furter, respectively.
- The protagonist of the Oliver Stone film JFK is not President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy only appears in the movie in camera footage and in a doctor's flashback as a corpse. The protagonist of the story is Jim Garrison, the DA investigating JFK's assassination (who does bear a few similarities to the real Jim Garrison, though not many).
- In The Third Man, the title character does not appear on camera until the second half of the film, and even then it's only for about ten minute's screentime. The protagonist is Holly Martins, played by Joseph Cotten. The confusion is cemented further by the fact that said title character is now one of the most iconic film villains of all time, verging on a One-Scene Wonder (especially as it's one scene in particular that everyone remembers).
- Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971) was really more about Charlie. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) focused more strongly on Willy Wonka.
- In Rachel Getting Married, the protagonist is Kym, Rachel's sister.
- The Last Samurai refers to all those who fought in the Satsuma Rebellion, not Tom Cruise. Part of the confusion is that Samurai can refer both to a single warrior and to a group, in this case it was the latter. A fact completely lost on the translators of many countries:
- In Sweden, they named the movie Den siste samurajen (the explicitly singular form); the plural form would be De sista samurajerna.
- In Russia, Posledniy samuray instead of Poslednie samurai.
- In Italy, L'ultimo samurai instead of Gli ultimi samurai.
- In Spain and all the Spanish-speaking American countries, El Último Samurai instead of Los Últimos Samurais.
- TRON is a Secondary Character Title. The main character is Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges).
- The Legend of Bagger Vance: Wolverine Publicity — Will Smith gets top billing and his God in Human Form character is in the title, but he plays guru and caddy to the protagonist, Rannulph Junuh.
- The Big Lebowski complicates this even further by having two characters who both have the surname "Lebowski", one of whom is the protagonist, and the other an antagonist. The main character is The Dude, not the titular character (the Dude is named Lebowski, but it's made clear in the film that the "big" Lebowski is the other guy).
- Gunga Din is named after the water boy who accompanies the main characters (his character is fourth-billed in the movie). The confusion is understandable, especially since the film is very loosely adapted from the Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name.
- Searching For Bobby Fischer has Josh Waitzkin as the main character. Bobby Fisher isn't a character - who appeared after the movie stating that he had not "received one thin dime for the totally exploitative Paramount Pictures 'rip-off' full-length feature film".
- In The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, the protagonists are Victor Pivert and Mohammed Larbi Slimane. You could say that Rabbi Jacob is just a minor character, except that Pivert (Louis de Funčs) impersonates him for most of the movie, hence some confusion.
- In Oscar, the title character is repeatedly mentioned but goes completely unseen until near the end, where the story has gotten so ludicrous that by the time he appears, nobody cares about him any more.
- The hero of The 13th Warrior isn't the 13th person selected for the expedition and film's viewpoint character, Ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas); it's Bulliwye.
Literature
Live-Action TV
- Tin Man: Secondary Character Title; Cain is simply the focus of a secondary character arc.
- Abigail's Party. Abigail doesn't appear, nor do we see her party. The actual party is one thrown by her neighbours, which her mother attends.
- Life With Derek: The protagonist is Casey, and the title refers to her new life with her step-brother.
- How I Met Your Mother. The series itself is an example. Except for her ankle for a brief moment in one episode, we haven't so far ever seen the title mother. (Or at least it isn't yet possible to discern who she is, if she already did appear on screen.)
- Gossip Girl. Although for a few episodes in season five Serena was Gossip Girl.
Music
- Jethro Tull was a 17th century agriculturist; Ian Anderson is the lead singer of a band with the same name.
- The J. Geils band was named after its guitarist, not its lead singer. Some people mistakenly assume Peter Wolf is J. Geils.
Theatre
- Gilbert and Sullivan operettas:
- Iolanthe, the actual character of Iolanthe actually doesn't do too many important things.
- The Mikado, the eponymous character doesn't appear until well into the second act.
- Trial By Jury, the jury acts as a (heavily biased) Greek Chorus to an ensemble cast; the beleaguered Edwin may almost stand as a protagonist.
- The Pirates Of Penzance are not protagonists, although a former one of their number is.
- From William Shakespeare:
- Julius Caesar. Caesar is in only three scenes; the protagonist is Brutus.
- Henry IV parts 1 and 2 are mainly about Henry's son Prince Hal (later Henry V) and his relationship with his friends, including the legendary Falstaff.
- In Cymbeline, the protagonist is Cymbeline's daughter, Imogen.
- Fiddler on the Roof: The protagonist is Tevye the milkman, who neither plays the violin nor stands on a roof. The Fiddler is a walk-on character with very few appearances and no spoken lines. (He functions as a metaphor for the show's theme of balancing tradition and modernity.)
- Bye Bye Birdie: "We love you, Conrad," but you're not the protagonist of this show. That would be Albert (though Ann-Margret as Kim steals the spotlight in the movie version).
Video Games
Web Comics
- Schlock Mercenary is very much an ensemble comic, and if any one character can be said to be the protagonist, it's Captain Tagon, not Sergeant Schlock.
- May overlap with Artifact Title, as Schlock was a central character in the early years, when they had a smaller cast and he was the crew's only genuine alien with very novel
- Rusty and Co.: Rusty the rust monster is the adorable mascot of the comic, but as far as the stories go, Mimic is the main protagonist.
- The titular character of Tonja Steele started as a main character but drifted into the background as the comic continued. This was actually depicted as preferrable to her, as the supporting cast got saddled with serious, emotional storylines and wangsting, while Tonja and her daughter had lighthearted madcap adventures in the background.
- Invoked in Urban Underbrush, where Scatter thinks
 that Charlie Brown is named Peanuts.
Western Animation
Live-Action TV
- In How I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson combines this with Misaimed Fandom, making bizarre and often disturbing justifications for how a film's actual villain is supposedly the title character and why he roots for him. Specifically, he roots for Hans Gruber in Die Hard ("Charming international bandit. In the end he dies hard. He's the title character."), Johnny Lawrence in The Karate Kid, (he describes Daniel as a scrawny loser who barely even knows karate, hence Johnny is the real Karate Kid) and the Terminator (who is, after all, the title character). Strangely, he does not apply this to The Breakfast Club, and only roots for Vernon because he wears a suit.
- In an episode of Warehouse 13, Pete calls a hockey player's Stalker with a Crush "Misery". The character he's thinking of is called Annie; Misery is the main character in the books she's a fan of.
- A possible in-universe example is Gilligan's Island. Gilligan was merely the first mate on the S.S. Minnow, and it's usually either the Skipper or the Professor who serves as the Team Dad.
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