There's a tendency in media to create very long titles full of rare (or fake) multisyllabic words that paint a picture of whimsy, fun, and adventure, especially when the work is set in the past. This is almost a
Dead Unicorn Trope as most of the titles are homages to works that never existed at all. It's often associated with pseudo-Victorian throwbacks and
Steam Punk.
Not to be confused with (but may overlap with)
Character Name and the Noun Phrase. A sub-trope of
Long Title. See also
The Adjectival Superhero.
Examples
Anime and Manga
Comics
- The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in his Wake).
Fan Fiction
Film
Literature
- The Last Of The Really Great Whangdoodles
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
- The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm
- Another classic kids' book: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
- Gulliver's Travels, officially known as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.
- Andre Norton's Scarface: Being the story of one Justin Blade, late of the pirate isle of Tortuga, and how fate deal justly deal with him to his great profit — which harks back to the same era as Gulliver
- The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming (Return of the Fireclown)
- The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century
- The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
- "The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass"
- Parodied in Good Omens with the book within the book "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter; Being a Certaine and Precise History from the Present Day Unto the Endinges of this World. Containing therein Many Diuerse Wonders and precepts for the Wife; More complete than ever yet before published; Concerning the Strange Times aheade and Events of a Wonderful Nature"
- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making
Live-Action Television
- Stephen Colbert claimed that Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy starred in The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman.
- Mr. Show and the Incredible, Fantastical News Report
- Subverted in a series of Saturday Night Live skits with Michael Palin about a supposed Charles Dickens novel, The Wretched Birth, Miserable Childhood, Agonisingly Painful Adolescence, and Appallingly Vile and Degrading Death of Miles Cowperthwaite.
Music
- Music from the unrealized film script Dusk at Cubist Castle, debut LP of TheOliviaTremorControl. To a lesser extent, the band's name (and the loosely-structured "Elephant 6 Collective" of bands, of which they are a member) are also examples of the trope.
Western Animation
Web Comic
Web Original
Video Games
