∇

troperville

∇

tools

∇

toys

---

main index

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television

Once Upon a Time, the idea behind Sequels was created, and it was good. To differentiate sequels from original movies, the use of the simple subtitles "2", "3", and so on were used.

But then one day, some studio executives became annoyed at how utterly numerical these simple numbers sounded. They started developing new subtitles, which were often just as technically irrelevant to the actual movie as the numbers were, but hey, these words looked cool. And then everybody lived happily ever after. Well, except the creative people anyway.

...All kidding aside, Stock Subtitles do serve a useful purpose with Long Runners in that when there's several dozen iterations of an individual work, coming up with new titles can get to be a pain-in-the-neck. Additionally, on occasion the stock works do assist in explaining what the gimmick is in this iteration as compared to the other ones, especially those that mark a prequel like "The Beginning", "Origins", etc. With most works that need subtitles, differentiation is the main helpful aspect of this trope, and in that sense the trope usually works.

See also Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo when both a number and a subtitle are used, and Stock Episode Titles for frequently used TV show episode titles. See also Super Title 64 Advance and Title: The Adaptation.

Subtropes:

• Revenge of the Sequel

---

Examples of Stock Subtitles:

---

Spice Up the Subtitles

Text Tropes

Subbing versus Dubbing

Stillborn Franchise

Derivative Works

Suggested By

Stock Episode Titles

Title Tropes

Strawberry Shorthand