Works have titles, so people know what to call them. Well, unless they have No Title, that is. Anyways, if a work is going to have a title, sometimes a single title just isn't enough, so another title is made and placed after the first one. That first title is the main title. The second title? That's a subtitle.
One reason might be if a work's part of a series: the main title connects all the works together, while the subtitle gives each individual work some distinctiveness. When written out, a main title is the first phrase in a work's name, while subtitles are any phrases after that, usually separated by colons, but other separators have been used too, such as the first sentence of a title being the main one, and all others as subtitles. Although, there might not be a hierarchy of titles, and instead they're just alternates of each other.
All Title Tropes can apply to subtitles as well, since this is a sub-index of that, and sub-titles are also titles. Although they might not warrant a separate example. For instance, a long title's subtitle just either makes a long title longer, or makes the full title a Long Title.
Lastly, there are tropes that only look like they'd go here, like Episode Zero: The Beginning, for titles with the number 0 and beginning something, and Title: Requiem, for titles with the word "Requiem" in it, implying that event's going to occur. And to cap off the confusion, thanks to the history of the English language, there's "Closed Captioning"-type "subtitles", and the tropes about that also don't go here. Tropes such as Reality Has No Subtitles, Fun with Subtitles, and Spice Up the Subtitles.
This is one of the Definition-Only Pages, being an Exampleless Supertrope because it's too common and too broad to have enough context, what with the actual meaning of the subtitle always being encompassed by one of the Title Tropes, unless the trope is about the relation between subtitle and main title.
Tropes:
- Colon Cancer
- Either/Or Title
- Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!
- The Foreign Subtitle
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Sequel: The Original Title
- Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle
