If a line of dialogue is the title of the episode, movie, or book, it obviously must have some great significance. If it sounds completely random, that just means the true meaning of the title has yet to be revealed. So when a character is heard using the title in dialogue, the audience sits up and takes notice, because the scriptwriter has just planted a neon sign that flashes THIS CONVERSATION IS IMPORTANT.
Note: If a series is named after a central character, setting, group, etc., it does not count as a Title Drop, unless they are usually called by another name. Hence, Transformers, The West Wing, House, and things like that don't qualify. Often, the Title Drop will finally explain why the episode/book/etc is called that way to begin with. If this explanation comes by ''showing'' instead of by ''telling'' (i.e. it is not actually spoken aloud by any of the characters), then it's The Namesake.
A second variety of Title Drop occurs when the title of a work is used as the last line spoken. Here, it's not nearly as big and flashy and important as the first variety, but it still explains things to the audience a bit more. You can probably find these mainly in thriller works, where it makes you sit up and think (and adds a bit of drama to the ending). It's also common in plays that were written during the Victorian era.
Title Drops aren't always deliberate or premeditated (i.e. the writer takes the title and inserts it for effect). Sometimes the creative process runs the other way, and a phrase from the body of the work will be picked out and used as the title (sometimes the title is the last thing to be nailed down).
Compare with Justified Title, Title Theme Tune. See also Arc Words, Appropriated Appellation, Title Scream, Singer Namedrop, and Album Title Drop. Often combined with a Literary Allusion Title. The exact opposite of this trope is Non Appearing Title.
See a video collection of Title Drops here.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
In Alive The Final Evolution, an ancient alien race thought that death was the final stage of evolution and came to earth to die. soon, however, it was realized that being alive as one singular being was 'the final evolution,' hence the title.
S-CRY-ed originally had nothing to do with its title. The manga attempted a very awkward Title Drop, by making it the "word of evolution" that lets anyone who says it change their Alter into a stronger form.
At the end of the Gravitation OVA's, an executive asks Tohma (in English) what Bad Luck's appeal is. Take a wild guess what he says.
One Piece is named after the greatest treasure in the series, that also happens to be the ultimate goal of the main character. Obviously, it's referenced its share of times as a result of this, though not quite as often as one might expect.
Mai-HiME has Nagi address Mai as, well, Mai-hime (princess Mai: first meaning). But the meaning of this title is a lot more convoluted. HiME is itself an acronym used inside the series to describe girls with powers similar to Mai's (Mai the HiME: second meaning). And the anime just happens to share title with a famous novel by Mori Ogai called "Maihime" (Dancing Girl: third meaning), which is referenced by Nagi's constant metaphors alluding to dance. Add the fact that "mai" is homonymous with the English word "my" (My princess/My girl with HiME powers: fourth and fifth meanings), where My-HiME seems to be the accepted romanization, and you probably have the ultimate Title Drop. The English-subtitled version uses the "Mai-HiME" romanization until the end of episode 16, where the title is well and truly dropped.
Done when Mew Ichigo first names her group of sentaiMagical Girl "Tokyo Mew Mew". Thereafter, they're usually referred to as "the Mew Mews" unless there's something very serious going on where they need to live up to their name.
The English dub, Mew Mew Power, refers to the title in Zoey's (Ichigo) In the Name of the Moon line: "Mew Mew style, Mew Mew grace, Mew Mew Power in your face!" (This was something like "The five of us will serve for Earth's future ~ nya!" in the Japanese version.)
Air Gear has a Title Drop while Kanon discusses Ikki and Ringo's reasons for riding to Rika.
In Galaxy Angel: Eternal Lovers, Tact accepts that he has, for better or worse, become The Captain of the Moon Angels, and they're off to save the galaxy again...so they really shouldn't be named after the White Moon anymore. They then adopt the name "Galaxy Angels". However, they're back to "Moon Angels" by Galaxy Angel II. This makes sense, as they're now Older and Wiser and no longer the main heroines. Whether the Rune Angels will do a similar Title Drop in future games is yet to be seen.
In Serial Experiments Lain, every episode title is a single word, which invariably gets mentioned in a meaningful context in that same episode, although it doesn't necessarily mean what the viewers thought (for example, "Psyche" is a type of processor Lain installs in her Navi, and "KIDS" is the codename of an experiment conducted by a Mad Scientist years ago).
The Lagann's most powerful form is called "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann". It's large enough to throw galaxies.
In addition, the title of every episode is also a line spoken by a character in that same episode — each story arc uses a line from a different character. Naturally, whenever the episode's title is spoken, it's a hugely dramatic moment. (Well, more so than usual.) In fact, one pivotal episode withholds the title until the end because it's a massive spoiler.
Translation conventions in the dub not only make some of the previously mentioned episode titles non-title drops, but, since the series is released simply as Gurren Lagann, technically makes the series Title Drop the third episode. This also renders the series Title Drop a half non-sequitur to someone that didn't know the series original name, as they kept it untranslated.
And then there's also Simon's "And that's Tengen Toppa! That's Gurren Lagann!" in the final fight.
Mahoromatic's second series, Something More Beautiful, drops its title during a climactic battle with The Mole, although not literally.
The exact title is dropped in almost the very end of series, before a heartwarming kiss.
It was first dropped as early as in first season's Whole Episode Flashback, which is referenced in aforementioned scene.
The series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex sounds like a confusing title, but does make sense in the context of the show. The first part comes from the manga, which dealt with the meaning and nature of the human soul (or "ghost") when artificial intelligences could convincingly simulate human thought and most humans were at least partially cybernetic. The second part refers to the occurrences where several people with cyberbrains come together to perform some action like a flash mob, but there doesn't seem to be a leader or even someone who originally came up with the idea, much less communication between these people beforehand. To add an additional layer, episodes were labeled as either "Stand Alone" or "Complex", depending on whether they related to that season's arc.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni ("When the Cicadas Cry") applies in Tatarigoshi-hen. Keiichi says it when he plans to kill Satoko's uncle. Which is understandable since Higurashi literally means daydarkener so in essence he says: It will be over tonight.
A number of Image Songs and OP/EDs for the series also count. "Higurashi ga naku" appears in the first opening (which is named for the series) as well as a few other places, and "Higurashi no naku koro ni" is in a version of "Dear you" as well as in one of Rika's image songs.
The recent anime adaptation of Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When the Gulls Cry) has pulled this with Battler in one of its episodes. The original Umineko No Naku Koro Ni visual novel uses this phrase several times; it generally refers to the end of the story, when the storm will subside, causing the seagulls to return to the island, so the people can hear the seagulls cry again.
"...That's right...When the police come...When the seagulls cry, the crime will be solved."
"...Once the typhoon has passed, when the seagulls cry, everything may be resolved."
"I see...We'll definitely be able to understand each other...When the seagulls cry."
"...That's right, when the seagulls cry...I will remain silent until then."
"When the seagulls cry, nobody will be left alive..."
"...When the seagulls cry, everything will end, I guess. Done, done, the end, the end. So refreshing."
Spice and Wolf gets its Title Drop from an onlooker at the end of the sixth episode, with Lawrence meeting back up with Horo after requesting the spice pepper as payment from a business arrangement and having a fable about a devil eating a spice merchant related to him. In the English dub, it's a bit more obvious...
"They truly are spice and wolf!"
In Kanon, the title comes from Pachelbel's "Canon" ("Kanon D-dur" being its original German name), which is played in the coffee shop. It isn't until the middle of the series that two characters engage a metaphor-laden dialogue referring to it, embodying the themes of the series.
An example of the second type: Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun ("My condolences, Ninomiya-kun"), ends with the show's title as the final spoken line by Hosaka as he overlooks another normal, chaotic morning with the many women surrounding Shungo Ninomiya.
Gasaraki mentions the "Gasara" quite early on, but "Gasaraki" doesn't get mentioned until halfway through the series. The two are related, though.
At the end of the first chapter of Berserk, Puck (who senses the emotions of whoever is nearby) looks on the carnage left behind by Guts's battle with the Snake Baron and whispers in shock, "...berserk..."
And much much later in the series Guts gets his Midseason Upgrade, The Berserk Armor
It's become something of a trend in Gundam to name a series after the Mid-Season Upgrade Gundam rather than the one the protagonist starts out with.
This goes back all the way to Zeta Gundam, where the title mech wasn't even built until about twenty episodes in and the main character started out with what basically amounted to a souped-up version of the original Gundam, but the trend has become more pronounced in recent years.
G Gundam: The God Gundam doesn't show up until the beginning of the Gundam Fight finals. In the dub, it was renamed "Burning Gundam", which leaves the title unexplained.
Burning Gundam?
In After War Gundam X, aside from being named for the title mech, each individual episode was taken from a character's dialog that episode.
Gundam SEED Destiny: The Destiny Gundam comes along when the series is more than half over.
Gundam 00's eponymous robot didn't even make an appearance until the very last episode of the first season. And even then we had to wait until episode 2 of the second to actually see it in combat.
An odd example occurs in the Gundam SEED side story manga X-Astray, where the main Gundam is orginally called the Dreadnought, but is rechristened the X-Astray after it's equipped with a back-mounted remote weapon system shaped like an X.
The title Gundam of Gundam Wing is the one the protagonist starts with. However, a more conventional Title Drop occurs in the movie, Endless Waltz, where one of the villains describes human history as such.
The Japanese version of Yu-Gi-Oh! drops the name, the Toei version a few episodes in while "Duel Monsters" has this in its opening monologue. "Yu-Gi-Oh" means "King of Games".
In the English dub, the Pharaoh mentions he was once known as Yu-Gi-Oh when Yugi asks him his name.
That is literally what the title means: Just Like the Wind.
In the Image Songs of the second season, each character has exactly one Image Song with "Hayate no Gotoku" in the lyrics.
Dennou Coil doesn't even mention the eponymous Dennou Coil phenomenon until the end of episode 14.
It's not an episode of Toward The Terra unless there's a Title Drop at least once. Usually at the end of a dramatic speech.
Subverted in FLCL: the title of the series, though it comes up frequently, has almost no meaning in the grand scheme of things. Or even in the short-term...
Kamon: Ah, your brother's away, so she sinking her fangs into you, Naota! Fondling around! Fooling around! FOOLY-COOLY!! ...What's fooly-cooly? Naota: How should I know? I'm still in grade school!
Fullmetal Alchemist is the Code Name of Ed, who has a prosthetic arm and leg made entirely out of metal. His brother Al is an animated suit of armor, which causes people who haven't met the duo to think Al is the "Full Metal Alchemist". The Japanese metaphor of the "heart of steel" (Edward being, in Japanese, the "alchemist of steel") also refers to the brothers' dogged determination, which gets a Title Drop in the last page of the manga and scene in the second anime before the credits.
Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo wastes no time. It drops its own title at the end of the first episode.
The "Reservoir" in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is explained in chapter 213, six years after the start of the series. It refers to the water reservoir under the Clow Ruins, which is apparently the fulcrum for the Big Bad's Gambit Roulette. The "Tsubasa" part isn't revealed until the very last chapter and in hindsight is at least half glaringly obvious to almost every fan.
Briefly in Mahou Sensei Negima!, the True Companions (who ultimately became the Ala Alba) after gathering and building their team and many arguments on a name, chose to be called the Negima-club. Evangeline (the club advisor) disliked the name and re-named them the aformented Ala Alba (white wing) after the lead's father's old group, the Ala Rubra (Crimson/Red wing). Outside of Eva's earshot they still prefer calling themself the Negima club.
During the first volume of the manga Vagabond, Takezo (soon to become the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi) declares "I left home knowing I'd never go back. From this day on...I'm a Vagabond."
The very last words spoken in Welcome to the NHK are..."Welcome to the NHK." That's also the title of the last episode. These words are also spoken in the first episode by an (imaginary) announcer when Sato first comes up with the conspiracy that gives the show its title.
In (at least the dub of) Dinosaur King, the title is refers the title Dr. Z plans to bestow on himself one he brings as many dinosaurs into the future as possible in order to build a "dinosaur kingdom".
In the finale of Slayers Evolution-R, Xelloss calls Lina and her group by the series title.
Paranoia Agent never drops its own title, but every episode has its title appear in some way during the episode proper. The last episode's title appears on a sign that is promptly destroyed by the final form of Shonen Bat.
In Ninja Nonsense, when Miyabi first arrives, she tells Shinobu to "Stop this..." and you know the rest.
Shakugan no Shana does this in an interesting way: Shana is the female lead, and "shakugan" (burning eyes) is part of her title, "Enpatsu Shakugan no Uchite," but they aren't used together until episode 23, in reference to her dual identity as a person and a Flame Haze.
In Descendants of Darkness, Muraki, during one of his Tsuzuki-torture moments, says to him that they are the same in that they are both - you guessed it - "descendants of darkness."
After looking quite non-sensical for some time, the Oddly Named Suffixes of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's and StrikerS were eventually title dropped by Fate at the end of the latter's ninth episode, telling the young rookies that they are the titles of two kinds of excellent mages. In case you wondered why "A's" was pronounced like "Ace", that's what it's supposed to mean.
Fushigi Yuugi's theme song is entitled "Itooshi Hito no Tame Ni". Its last episode is called "For My Loved One", the English translation of the song's title. To add to that, the title of the anime itself makes up the last two words of the song.
Revolutionary Girl Utena does this with its final episode, in which the title of the episode is also the last line of dialog in the series.
The protagonist of Shangri-La drops the title as the very last word of the series.
In almost every manga by Misturu Adachi, every chapter is titled after a phrase that is said within that chapter. This is, however, a chapter title drop and not a series title drop.
In Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally, After Alice takes on the Mark Nemo and becomes Nunnally's Knight, she becomes known as "Alice the Code Geass, Knightmare of Nunnally." Rolo shouts this title after she uses the Flame of God and escapes with Nunnally.
While not quite as overt, in the main series the title is dropped in as Lelouch briefly mentions both of them in a monologue of his. Some people also believe he eventually obtained a Code in addition to his Geass by the end of the show.
The title of Project ARMS refers to an experiment in which ARMS are installed in four children. Double meaning in ARMS also (while two of the children recieved their implants in their arms, ARMS is used in the sense of "weapon")
While the main lead of Angel Densetsu is the eponymous angel, Leo thinks he's the devil incarnate. And shortly after says to Ikuno that she is an angel (and she even gets an angel cover like Kitano usually does). Could be either spoofed or played straight: this is after both the Heel Face Turn and the Villain Realization of Ikuno, but she's stillAx Crazy like nobody's business.
In the FRLG arc of Pokémon Special, Red and Green trade their starters, leaving Red with Charizard and Green with Venusaur. Mewtwo comments on this, thinking, "FireRed and LeafGreen, eh?" Unfortunately, since Green is called Blue in the English releases, it didn't really make any sense for us English readers at least until those titles were released in America.
In Pokémon, after deciding to join Ash in his journey, Cilan's brothers bid him farewell with the phrase "Best Wishes", the title of the current series.
Also from the anime, the end of the 11th movie Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior has Dawn dropping one at the end of the movie. (..Oddly enough, it has the movie's Japanese name being said in both versions...)
"It's a...Sky bouquet!"
In the first volume of the Read or Die manga, Yomiko faces off against a pyromaniac while trying to rescue Nenene from a crazed fan. With every shred of paper within the vicinity going up in flames, Yomiko had effectively become powerless and rather distraught at the sight of all the burning books until Joker flew in on a helicopter to drop down a briefcase loaded with paper for her to fight with. This prompts him to think out loud, looking over her situation and saying that she now has a choice, which is, as one could guess, to read or die.
The Princess Resurrection manga has one that only works in Japanese. The series' real title is Kaibutsu Oujo, meaning "Monster Princess", and Hime is addressed as such by one of the few supernatural beings outside her jurisdiction.
Grenadier has both a partial and full Title Drop in the anime. In the tenth episode, Rushuna is bestowed the title of "Grenadier", revealing that it's a title given to Senshi (gun users) who kill other Senshi. In the final episode, she is bestowed the full title of "Grenadier: Hohoemi no Senshi", the anime's full title (translating as "The Smiling Senshi" or "The Senshi of Smiles", referring to Rushuna's "ultimate battle strategy" of eliminating someone's will to fight by smiling at them and embracing them to her breasts).
Excel flat-out says "The title [of the anime] is Excel Saga" in the second episode, and even tells us what it means.
In the manga Not Simple, a novelist named Jim warns that the story he is writing about the protagonist Ian is, well...not simple. This is also the title of the book he's writing. Additionally, the strange life and Anachronic Order of the story is confounding enough to make this a Justified Title.
Sukisho 's full name (Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shouganai) Translates to somthing like "I like what I like so there". Sunao manages to subvert this in the first episode by saying "I hate what I hate, so there."
Kannazuki no Miko. Manga, last page, never explained for English-speakers. (In fact, TOKYOPOP doesn't even translate the series title; they just add a subtitle, "Destiny of Shrine Maiden".) For the record, it means "priestesses of the godless month" — namely October, which according to Shinto is when the gods congregate elsewhere. This is part of the series' heavy Shinto influence, and it's for this reason that Himeko and Chikane's shared birthday is October 1.
This happens in Wife and Wife when a young lesbian couple, Kina and Sumi, discuss what to call their relationship after having recently moved in together.
Kina: I got it, Suu-chan. I'm gonna be yer wife after all. An' yer gonna be my wife...So that's it! We're Wife an' Wife!
In the anime version of Break Blade while looking at the broken-down Ancient Golem one character comments that it's almost like a "broken blade".
The Title Drop for Darker than Black appears in the last episode title of the first series, called "Does the Reaper Dream of a Darkness Darker Than Black".
Super Dreadnought Girl 4946Mana is very insistent that she is not 50 meters tall, but 49 meters, 46 centimeters. Later, Jinguuji decides to make a light novel out of her story, which he calls "Super Dreadnought Girl".
Subverted in the first episode of There's No Way My Little Sister Can Be This Cute!, where the main character is woken up by an alarm clock just before he could say it, but played straight in the third episode, when the main character's sister finally calls him "Aniki" (big brother) for the first time.
Hellsing: "The dead dance. Hell Sings!" Thank you, Major.
There is a silver spoon in the cafeteria of the school in Silver Spoon. No one knows what it's for yet.
The first OVA of Ai No Kusabi has a the title drop when a character uses a metaphor of the "space between two connected opposites" to describe the relationship of the two lead characters.
Comicbooks
Three of the Sin City books' ("A Dame to Kill For," "The Big Fat Kill," and "That Yellow Bastard") titles occur in either dialogue or narration. The film adaptation also works in the first story's retroactive title, "The Hard Goodbye,".
In DC Comics' new weekly series Trinity, every story (there's two per issue) is named for a snippet of dialogue.
Since "Trinity", while it refers to the main characters, isn't an official team name, does its repeated use qualify as well?
Marvel Adventures: Iron Man# 6 has the phrase "Destructive Reentry" used twice. It's a Meaningful Title, considering the issue.
The first big Spider-Man event of the Brand New Day era made sneaky use of this trope. It had what sounded like a pretty typical comic title until Norman Osborn dropped it in-story:
Osborn: For every life you save...there's a million new ways to die.
Issue 24 of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. It gets a double-page spread to itself, and then another page when it's repeated.
Rick: It's obvious now that I'm the only sane one here! We already are savages, Tyreese. You especially! The second we put a bullet in the head of one of these undead monsters — the moment one of us drives a hammer into one of their faces — or cut a head off. We become what we are! And that's just it. That's what this comes down to. You people don't know what we are. We're surrounded by the dead. We're among them — and when we finally give up we become them! We're living on borrowed time here. Every minute of our life is minute we steal from them! You see them out there. You know that when we die — we become them. You think we hide behind walls to protect us from the walking dead! Don't you get it!? Rick:Wearethe walking dead! Rick:We are the walking dead.
Birds of Prey doesn't get a Title Drop until issue #86, when Lady Blackhawk suggests that it might be a fitting name for the team. It is immediately rejected by everybody else on the team.
In one issue of the Sonic X comic book, Sonic was abducted by the Society for Observing and Neutralizing Interdimensional Creatures and Xenomorphs. Guess what the acronym for that is.
Watchmen almost does this with the phrase "Who Watches the Watchmen?" but the graffiti is never shown completely.
In The Movie, "Watchmen" is the name of the alliance. However, the graffiti still remains.
Ozymandias mentions that JFK had part of a speech he intended to give in Dallas that read "We in this country, in this generation, are by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom." Unfortunately, he was assassinated (possibly by the Comedian), by those Ozymandias described as on "the walls of world tyranny," before he could deliver it.
Astonishing X-Men had something of an example, with Cyclops saying that the team had to "astonish" the public if they were ever to be trusted again.
Whedon's last issue, the Giant Sized special, is entitled "Gone". It's also the last word in the issue.
Kitty: Disapponted, Miss Frost? Emma: Astonished, Miss Pryde.
Spider Jerusalem describes The Word as a "great Transmetropolitan newspaper". This is the only mention of the series' title.
The January 9, 2008 strip of Pearls Before Swine has a Title Drop responded to by cheering, noisemakers, confetti, balloons and a rubber chicken dropping down from the ceiling with the title card, in an obvious Shout Out to You Bet Your Life:
Rat: That was odd.
The "final" strip of For Better or for Worse has a Title Drop at the end of the final panel of the nominal (it's complicated) Last Strip Ever.
"I must leave you, and go to her. She lives in a castle which lies east of the sun and west of the moon."
Fan Works
John Freeman got on his motorcycle and said "its time for me to live up to my family name and face full life consequences"
The Invader Zim story "In Short Supply" features one in Chapter 29, when Red muses that "even for the Control Brains, information about Purple was in short supply." The title is actually supposed to be a pun on the Irkens' height-based society, though, and how Irkens of certain heights are much rarer than they should be.
The Firefly fic Forward drops its title at the end of the "Mosaic" story arc, with Mal telling River what direction they have to keep going in.
There is a stuble one in Kira Is Justice: When Justin decides to experiment with the Death Note, one of the victims yell out the words, "Kira is justice!" in a prison cafeteria before dropping dead. It is very amusing.
In the Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction Created Equal, the speech Metal Sonic gave after Eggman's death
"Flesh and blood have no purpose in this place. God made all men equal and men destroyed their gods. A man created me to be equal and I have destroyed that man. I laid waste to his empire of dust. Now I rule the empire of dust. And I will lay hands on that dust and create my own posterity. And I shall hold them to my single inglorious propositon; all robots are not Created Equal..."
In Fantendo: Playing War, before Sandslash transforms into Sandsmash and is consequently knocked out, Sunnyscythe utters "Let's play war...". There's actually a couple more of these, another by Sunnyscythe and yet another by Fantasma.
In the Star Trek fanseries Hidden Frontier, Commodore Cole drops the title of the show in the middle of a speech she gives in the sixth season premiere, as the blockade of starships is about to go into battle with the Tholians and the Breen who just started a war with the Federation.
Done twice for the title and more than a few times for the subtitle of With Strings Attached, or The Big Pink Job, as one of the nicknames the four give the Vasyn is exactly that.
In thisPrince of Persia fanfic, both the title of the movie and the title of the fic are dropped.
Films — Animation
Corpse Bride contains a number of title drops, as most of the inhabitants of the underworld refer to Emily as either "the bride" or "our corpse bride." Victoria, the living bride, also uses it once when speaking to the minister.
Victoria: Victor is married to a dead woman. He has a corpse bride!
"Not to worry, Charlie. You'll go to heaven. All Dogs Go to Heaven, because dogs, unlike people, are naturally good, and loyal, and kind."
Happens in both Hoodwinked and its sequel, when the source of the conflict reveals how the good guys were tricked with the phrase, "You've been hoodwinked!"
The title characters of a famous French movie were introducing themselves to a girl. To make sure of their names, she asked, "Jim et Jules?" The response? "Non, Jules et Jim!"
Robocop 2: One of the rare cases this trope has been done by a sequel with a number in the title. Normally this wouldn't count, considering that "RoboCop 2" is a "character" in the movie, but it's that unusual.
Deathstalker II: Possibly the cheesiest use of this trope for a numbered sequel.
Sultana: I'll have my revenge, and Deathstalker too.
Near the end of Layer Cake, a major character who's struggled to the top explains how life works to the protagonist. He sums it up with a Title Drop. The main character is then seen having dinner with his friends and deciding he doesn't want to be part of organized crime anymore. Guess what they're eating.
Similarly, at the end of To Sir With Love, "Sir" (Sidney Poitier) gets a coffee cup tagged "To Sir With Love" from the class of former delinquents he taught.
Beth: Our people once were warriors. But unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit. If my spirit can survive living with you for 18 years, Then I can survive anything.'''
Done interestingly in You Can Count On Me: at the end, the lead character's brother asks her to remember what they used to tell each other back when they were kids. This was the title sentence, but neither one of them actually says it.
A number of times in the James Bond films (excluding the ones named after a significant character or object):
Said family motto also shows up thirty-some odd years earlier in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, so in a way, The World Is Not Enough has been title dropped in two films.
Accidentally averted in Tomorrow Never Dies; originally it was titled Tomorrow Never Lies, with the intent that this would be the slogan of Carver's newspaper, Tomorrow.
They pulled it in the video game version, however. As he's dying, Carver pushes the three minute countdown for the nuclear launch and drops it horribly out of place.
Though "Nobody Does It Better" is the name of the Theme Tune from The Spy Who Loved Me, it still drops the movie's title. But does it so classy: "I wasn't lookin' but somehow you found me, it tried to hide from your love light, but like heaven above me. The spy who loved me, is keepin' all my secrets safe tonight."
Each of the movies in The Lord of the Rings trilogy feature a Title Drop, mostly to stem the confusion about what they refer to. In the first movie, Elrond proclaims "You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring!" In the second movie, Saruman says "Who now dares to stand against the union of the two towers?" In the third movie, Gandalf says to Denethor "It is not your place to deny the return of the King, steward!"
Although the meanings of the first and third titles were already pretty clear, the books never came out and said which of the three towers that figured decisively in The Two Towers were the title ones. The movie line refers to Saruman's tower, Orthanc, and Sauron's fortress of Barad-dur. Supplementary information (among them the Tolkien-drawn book cover) show Orthanc and Minas Morgul. The latter isn't in the film, so it wouldn't make sense otherwise.
Make that five Towers. The title of the book was chosen by a publisher, not Tolkien, and Professor himself stated in his letters that it could refer to any of: Orthanc, Barad Dur, Cirith Ungol, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith, pick two.
Peter Jackson also had a habit of dropping chapter titles into The Fellowship of the Ring, although having characters refer to "the long-expected party" and "a shortcut to mushrooms" was more in-jokey than portentous. Composer Howard Shore got in on the act in the titles of some of the pieces of the score he wrote.
Bilbo's line "I'm not at home!" may refer to the chapter Not at Home from The Hobbit.
Gandalf also mutters the words "riddles in the dark" to himself while waiting for Frodo. That's the chapter of The Hobbit in which Bilbo finds the Ring.
Also: "There is only one Lord of the Ring, only one who can bend it to his will. And he does not share power!" This line is used, as in the book, to prevent audience-members from thinking that title refers to Frodo.
The movie Chinatown is infamous for having nothing to do with Chinatown except for one offhand and cryptic reference, which, while obviously important, appears to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
Tough Guys Don't Dance features one early on thats rather laughable and has nothing to do with the film:
Six months ago, they told me to stop or I was dead. I stopped. Now the spirits circle around my bed and they tell me to dance. I tell 'em, "Tough guys don't dance." They answer me, "Keep dancin'."
Manos! God of primal darkness! As thou hast decreed, so have I done. The hands of fate have doomed this man. Thy will is done!
In La Haine, Vinz expresses his desire to kill a cop if his hospitalized friend (a victim of police brutality) does not wake from his coma, to show that the banlieusards are finished turning the other cheek. His friend Hubert tries to talk him out of it: "La haine attire la haine!" ("Hatred breeds hatred".)
Colonel Glenn Manning gives one during his "circus freak" rant to a hapless sergeant:
The Black Cat had nothing to do with its title (which is from an otherwise unrelated story by Edgar Allan Poe), so a black cat walks through some scenes, just to make some sense of it.
The title of Full Metal Jacket is mentioned by Leonard Lawrence (Gomer Pyle) when describing some live ammunition before he uses it to kill his drill instructor and himself.
To some degree: "I have had it with these muthafuckin' snakes on this muthafuckin' plane!" It's a kind of chicken-and-egg story: Snakes on a Plane was the working title when the movie was in production, then it was going to be changed to something less colorful. When Samuel L. Jackson heard this, he informed the producers that the title was the reason he signed on in the first place. So the movie embraced the feeling, and re-shot certain scenes for an R rating. So the title secured the star, who kept the title, which caused reshoots, which led to the Title Drop.
The title of the movie Kiss of the Dragon refers to the special forbidden technique that Jet Li uses to kill the Big Bad.
A threefer occurs in The Rundown, which Title Drops the title ("Your kid was a tough rundown, Billy"), the working title (sign reading "El Dorado" vandalized to read "Helldorado") and an alternate title ("Welcome to the Jungle, tough guy").
The movie Dead Birds tries to pull a non-verbal version of these. The only scene where a dead bird ever appears — and yes, it's only one — has a dramatic sound in the background, and equally dramatic camera zooming on the only one dead bird that's never mentioned again. The result is that it simply feels ridiculous.
In the giant mutant ant flick Them!, the title is what a traumatized young girl screams when given a whiff of formic acid.
Later on, a scientist quips "We haven't seen the end of them!"
The Dark Knight has a Title Drop as the last line spoken. Also, Harvey Dent says at a press conference, "The night is darkest just before the dawn"; though that's more referencing one of the themes of the film, it's a clever way of doing it by dropping the syllables of the title.
The Babylon 5 made-for-TV prequel movie seems appropriately titled In the Beginning, taking place a decade before the series. The movie fleshes out the Earth-Minbari War and how the Minbari, with vast technological superiority, very nearly wiped out the human race with only a single military loss. Near the end, Delenn asks another of the Minbari ruling body if there is any glory in genocide. The reply is, "Not as much as in the beginning."
Each Babylon 5 season has a title, such as "Signs and Portents" or "Point of No Return". Some episodes have the same title as the season they occur in. These episodes are typically rather important.
Give My Regards to Broad Street drops its title twice, during flashbacks to the same moment. It takes the second flashback for us to learn, and for the protagonist to realize, its significance.
Also a case of circumstances forcing the Title Drop: most radio conversations, including the "We got a Blackhawk down" line, were taken verbatim from the radio conversations that occurred during the operation. The book author named the book after said line, then the movie came out and used the same title.
Towards the end of Free Willy, the Kid Hero says "Let's free Willy!"
Melvin Udall says to a room of psychiatric patients: "What if this is As Good As It Gets?"
The working title of The Toxic Avenger was "The Monster Hero", so that phrase shows up repeatedly. As it stands, the trope is averted — nobody uses the phrase "Toxic Avenger".
Done in the most Anvilicious manner in High School Musical 3: Senior Year: not only is the title of the Show Within a Show "Senior Year", but our protagonists end the show by singing a goodbye-to-the-audience song as the Title Drops down in front of the screen (in the style of the first movie's poster). And just to make sure that we know what kind of "high school musical" they're on about, they jump up, again like the first movie's poster.
At the end of the 2008 film Doubt Aloysius breaks down in front of another nun, sobbing "I have doubts! I have such doubts!"
The end of We Were Soldiers has a war photographer narrating "...for we were soldiers once, and young". This is directly lifted from the historical novel "We Were Soldiers Once, And Young", which ends the exact same way.
"Junior": Syncopators. Does that mean you play that very fast music...jazz? Sugar: Yeah. Real hot. "Junior": I guess some like it hot. I personally prefer classical music.
Popescu: Can I ask is Mr. Martins engaged in a new book? Holly: Yes, it's called The Third Man. Popescu: A novel, Mr. Martins? Holly: It's a murder story. I've just started it. It's based on fact.
Adso: And yet, now that I am an old, old man, I must confess that of all the faces that appear to me out of the past, the one I see most clearly is that of the girl of whom I've never ceased to dream these many long years. She was the only earthly love in my life, yet I never knew, nor ever learned, her name.
A particularly brilliant title drop occurs in the Anthony Perkins / Stephen Sondheim-penned murder mystery The Last of Sheila. Seemingly referring to the puzzle-happy Clinton Green's obsession with his wife who was killed in a hit-and-run accident ("I wonder if we'll ever hear the last of Sheila?" says one character), the title is actually a clue to a puzzle set up near the beginning of the play, which ultimately reveals Clinton's murderer: Each of the six guests / suspects are given 'dirty secrets' that actually are the secrets of one of their fellow guests. Each secret corresponds to a letter in the word "Sheila"; the murderer is uncovered when one guest acting as detective cracks the puzzle and realises that the murderer replaced the final secret, "Alcoholic", with "Hit and Run Killer", in order to guilt someone into confessing their accidental killing of Sheila. As the detective points out, "the last of Sheila isn't an H, it's an A."
Reporter: Well, whatever you call them, Champion City will forever owe a debt of gratitude to these mystery men. The Sphinx: Wait! Wait, that's it. We are...the Super Squad!
Too many musicals to list have title songs, but the movie version of The Pajama Game deserves credit for having the title card appear word by word as Hines sings, "The Pajama Game is the game I'm in..."
Gone Baby Gone:
"And if that girl's only hope is you, well I pray for her. 'Cause she's gone, baby. Gone."
Generally speaking, the President of the United States can name any person or group a "clear and present danger" to the safety and security of the USA. This is roughly equivalent to a Mafia don saying that he dislikes someone immensely: don't expect said person to last very long.
Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun, spoken by Hercule Poirot. Don't remember if it was in the original book.
And also at William's mother's funeral, where Costello left a card reading "God Bless the Dearly Departed."
The phrase is also said at a funeral at the end of the film.
In Ocean's 12, someone refers to the team as "Ocean's 11", the name of the previous movie. One of the characters later complains about this.
In Nil By Mouth, Ray gives a speech about his father that goes some way toward explaining his behaviour. During it, he mentions an incident in which he saw the words 'Nil By Mouth' written above his father's hospital bed.
In Paul Greengrass's film Bloody Sunday, the local cinema's billboard advertises a showing of John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday. Ironically, Schlesinger's film is about a bisexual love triangle and has nothing to do with Greengrass's film or the historical events upon which it is based.
This happens in Law-Abiding Citizen: "Your honor, I am a law-abiding citizen."
In the closing scene of A Bridge Too Far, Lieutenant General Frederick Browning sums up the main strategic blunder of Operation Market Garden in this manner.
Lt. Gen. Browning: Well, as you know, I always felt we tried to go a bridge too far.
While in the previous World War 2 blockbuster based on a Cornelius Ryan book, Field Marshal Rommel makes his speech incorporating the quote from which the title The Longest Day was taken right at the beginning.
Kingdom of Heaven deserves some credit for making its Title Drop fit in naturally with a larger conversation about what it is that makes the Holy Land so appealing to many pilgrims.
Balian: What could a king ask of a man like me? Godfrey: A new world. A better world than has ever been seen. A kingdom of conscience. A kingdom of heaven.
"She was the girl, I know that now. But I pushed her away. So I've spent every day since then chasing Amy. So to speak".
If we're counting this...then:
Randal Graves: If title dictated my behavior, as a clerk serving the public, I wouldn't be allowed to spit water at that guy. But I did. So, my point is that people dictate their own behavior. Even though I work in a video store, I choose to go rent movies at Big Choice. Agreed?
Shannon Hamilton: Smart-ass ex-boyfriend! I've got two things to tell you. One: I don't like you. I see you every week in this mall. I don't like you shiftless layabouts. You're one of those loser fucking mallrat kids. You don't come to the mall to shop or work. You hang out all day, act like you fucking live here. Well, I have no respect for people with no shopping agenda.
"And though I never would've anticipated it, in the end she did for me what I have done for so many: help solve a problem, first by observation, then by careful intervention — in other words, the Zero Effect."
"It must be some kind of...Hot Tub Time Machine." Craig Robinson lampshades the trope by delivering a deadpan Aside Glance to the camera immediately after saying the line.
"I give you Happily Never After!!!" — said by the evil stepmom in...you guessed it, Happily N'Ever After.
Throw Momma from the Train is the title of the book Larry writes based on the events of the movie.
"Are you sure [your car] is safe?" "It's better than safe. It's Death Proof."
In Motel Hell, the film's title comes from Motel Hello's neon sign's broken last letter.
This is how the title of Entrapment first appears in the movie's dialogue:
German movie Good Bye, Lenin! manages a visual title drop in its climactic moment, when a woman who was in a coma during the end of communism goes outside for the first time. After seeing west german students, car dealers, and western advertisment posters, she watches a helicopter passing by, carrying a dismantled statue of Lenin that seems to stretch out its hand to her before vanishing in the sunset.
Titles Drop like flies in Weird Al's "Theme From Spy Hard," which is the theme from Spy Hard.
"Well, we've prepared a trap for this Predator." (from the second movie)
"It's because we're Predators like them. We're the monsters in our own world."
Happens in the first Rambo film, twice in one scene.
Colonel Trautman: Well you did some pushing of your own, John. John Rambo: They drew first blood, not me. Colonel Trautman: Look, Johnny, let me come in and get you the hell out of there. John Rambo:(to himself) They drew first blood.
In Suspect Zero, the titular numbered suspect is often mentioned in the cryptic communications between FBI Agent Mackelway and Serial Killer O'Ryan.
"Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, its bobsled time! Cool Runnings!"
The title for Awake is dropped in the opening moments that explain the premise of the film.
"Each year, over 21,000,000 people receive general anesthesia. The vast majority go to sleep peacefully. They remember nothing. 30,000 of these patients are not so fortunate. They find themselves unable to sleep. Trapped in a phenomenon known as Anesthesia Awareness. These victims are completely paralyzed. They cannot scream for help. They are...Awake."
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
Towards the end of Unthinkable, Samuel L. Jackson's character, a torture expert working for the US military, says "what I am about to do...is unthinkable".
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps has a partial one: "Money is the bitch that never sleeps".
"Looked dead, didn't I? But I wasn't. But it wasn't from lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last bullet put me in a coma — a coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a "Roaring Rampage of Revenge". I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna Kill Bill."
Defied in Goodbye Solo. In the second to last scene William very pointedly doesn't say the line as he goes to (probably) kill himself.
"Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige'."
All That Jazz drops its title in a speech made by Ben Vereen:
"Folks, what can I tell you about my next guest? This cat allowed himself to be adored but not loved and his success in show business was met by his failure in his personal relationship bag. Now that's where he really bombed. And he came to believe that work, show business, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz was bullshit. He became a numero uno gameplayer to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended and the reality began. Like for this cat, the only reality is death, man."
They didn't just drop this title, they carpet bombed the audience with it - the "face...off" line gets repeated at least 3 times in less than a minute.
In Show Me Love, the original Swedish title Fucking Åmål is dropped gloriously by Elin: "Varför måste vi bo i fucking, jävla kuk-Åmål?"
Brilliantly subverted in the Indie Movie "Rocket Science;" the main character has a stutter, and when trying to figure out love, he says, "You know, it shouldn't be, it really shouldn't be, it shouldn't be rocket, uh, shouldn't be rocket, um, sometimes..." stopping just short of saying the whole title.
The GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra live action movie has one, incidentally at the same time that the film reveals who Cobra Commander is.
The time has come for the Cobra to rise.
Black Narcissus. The Young General explains that it's the perfume he uses to scent his handkerchief.
"Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club."
Mac: What is "easy"? Valerie:[kissing him] This is "easy".
"That's the answer to the riddle. Because that's what an 8000-pound mako thinks about. About freedom. About the Deep Blue Sea."
The Ides Of March features a subversion. The film's working title of Farragut North (the name of the play that it's based on) gets title dropped twice. Meanwhile, The Ides of March is never said once in the film.
"I used to be like you...a long time ago. All brand new and perfect. No mistakes, no regrets. People look at you and think of how wonderful your future will be. They want you to be something special...like a doctor or a lawyer. I hate to tell you this, but if you grow up here, you're more likely to wind up selling your bodies on the streets, or shooting dope from dirty needles in a bus stop. And if you're successful, you'll make money selling junk to crackheads, and won't think twice about killing someone's wife, because you won't even know it's wrong in the first place. Maybe...you'll end up like me. A hobo with a shotgun."
A partial example appears in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans, or an entire one if you go by the film's original title.
Chavez: Are you still working with the police department?
McDonaugh: Port of call still New Orleans.
In Bend It Like Beckham Jess speaks the exact title once ("No one can cross a ball or bend it like Beckham") and a close variant at another moment ("Anyone can cook aloo gobai, but who can bend a ball like Beckham?").
In the 2001 indie film Jump Tomorrow, George uses the title words to talk a man out of suicide. Later, the man turns the words back at him when telling him to stay another night at the family of the girl he really loves, rather than go to the wedding he's been pressured into.
S.O.B.: One of the characters refers to to the studio's latest stunt as "S.O.B". He then explains to a bewildered listener that it stands for "standard operational bullshit".
Literature
To Kill a Mockingbird: Heard in a tale Atticus relates over dinner. If it weren't for the use of the Title Drop, his tale would seem unimportant at the time, but it turns out to be a metaphor for one of the major themes.
The last five words of the novel The Silence of the Lambs are "the silence of the lambs," in reference to an intense conversation Clarice had earlier on with Lecter about witnessing lambs being slaughtered as a child. In the movie, the conversation appears virtually unchanged, but the words "the silence of the lambs" never specifically come up, leaving some audiences quite confused about what, exactly, the title meant. Lecter does, however, say "Have the lambs stopped screaming?" to Clarice at one point.
Every version of Stephen King's The Dead Zone has featured the phrase "the dead zone." However, oddly enough each version ascribes the phrase a different meaning. In the original novel it referred to parts of Johnny's brain which had died during his coma, which became important when he had a crucial vision of the future — some elements of which he couldn't make out because they were in "the dead zone." In the movie, Johnny explained to another character that his visions of the future were different from his visions of the past or present, in that they had a "dead zone" — his way of describing a sense that the events weren't solid or fixed, but could be prevented. In the TV series, Johnny's powers stem from the fact that his brain was badly enough damaged during the coma that certain mental functions were re-routed through an area which had up until then been dormant — a "dead zone."
The Pendragon Adventure gets a lot of usage out of this trope, with the title usually relating to the turning point of the territory that has to be saved. It begins in the very first book, The Merchant of Death. Eccentric tradesman Figgis reveals himself to be selling tak, a deadly explosive. The Milago people are constructing it into a bomb as part of La Résistance. Cue Title Drop.
In Brave New World, John the Savage replies to Bernard's invitation for him to come and live in the "civilized" world by quoting Miranda's words from the final scene of Shakespeare's Tempest, pausing when he comes to the Title Drop.
He later recites the same words (and Title Drop) as an Ironic Echo, after his disillusionment with the values of said "civilized" world.
The Sholan Alliance: Lisanne Norman has managed to write the title of each book into the character dialogue or the character's thoughts.
It is usually done word for word, but on at least one occasion, paraphrased.
For Foreshadowing, book 7's title is dropped in book 6.
The book I Am Legend has a very good Title Drop as the very last line. The Movie on the other hand changes the ending completely and thus forces in a very inelegant Title Drop at the very end that doesn't even make grammatical sense (ironically Executive Meddling made them change the ending from something that was similar to the book, but had no such Title Drop).
In both of Paul Robinson's books In the Matter of: The Gatekeeper: The Gate Contracts and In the Matter of: Instrument Of God, each chapter's title comes from a line of dialog used in that chapter.
The events in the fantasy novel, Satyrday take place over the course of the week. Guess which day the climax falls on. No, really.
It takes some time for The Catcher in the Rye to mention the proverbial catcher in the rye.
Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis, waits until the final chapter to mention the title, making its meaning clear by context.
The book's Working Title was actually "Bareface" (the main character goes veiled through most of the book). His editor objected that people would think the book was a western. (Lewis observed that he didn't think that would hurt sales.) So the title was pulled from that line in the last chapter.
Also by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength has this: "No power that is merely earthly," he continued at last, "will serve against the Hideous Strength."
A Song of Ice and Fire, both with the series name (though not until the second book) and the individual books A Game of Thrones, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.
Note that while the title has been briefly mentioned, as of book four it is still not known what it actually is, though a popular theory has been pieced together from context and evidence. Rhaegar Targaryen believed that "the song of ice and fire" was something to do with the Prince Who Was Promised. At first, he thought that the Prince was his son Aegon, but later concluded that he'd been mistaken. This is what led him to seduce Lyanna Stark (Targaryen = fire, Stark = ice), presumably in the hope of fathering a Stark/Targaryen child who would be the Prince Who Was Promised. Since the role of the Prince Who Was Promised is to fight the Others, the title song is the cyclical/prophetic saga of a hero battling against the Others to save mankind.
Important detail about the Rhaegar and Lyanna theory: a lot of fans are convinced that not only did Rhaegar and Lyanna have a child together but that that child was Jon Snow.
The title drop for A Game of Thrones most famously occurs in one of Ned's chapters in which he confronts Cersei, and is the first title drop in the live action adaption. Cersei famously counters with the phrase, "In the game of thrones, you win or you die." The phrase "game of thrones" is used several times afterwards throughout the rest of the series.
The first title drop for A Game of Thrones is by Ser Jorah, of all people, in response to Dany's claim that the common people are praying for Viserys' return to the throne. Interestingly, while all other title drops in the thousands-of-pages-long series indicates the importance of the situation, the very first one belittles the entire thing.
"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are."
In A Feast for Crows the title drop occurs in Asha's first chapter: "We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros."
In A Dance with Dragons one character says, "Not all men were meant to dance with dragons" about Quentyn Martell after his death.
The Avi book "Sometimes I think I Hear My Name" uses itself as the last line spoken.
House of Leaves is the title of a book Navidson brings with him on a journey into the labyrinth. It also occurs in one of the supplementary appendices which are connected with the main narrative, as part of a poem.
Title Drops occur in many, if not all Discworld books. "The Colour of Magic", "The Light Fantastic", "Thief of Time" and "Thud" is even of the sort that the true title reference is explained later as having been different from the assumed reference, due to the cover (at least on the American printings).
In "The Last Olympian", the final book in the Percy Jackson series, the goddess Hestia tells Percy that as the guardian of the hearth, she is the last olympian.
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series takes each of its titles from the text of the book, usually from dialog between characters but occasionally from description; there is also quite often an excerpt from the Prophecies of the Dragon at the beginning or end of the book that does a Title Drop. The individual chapters within the books follow the same trend, though more loosely, often referring to an event or location which is not described in the exact phrasing as the chapter title. The ninth book, Winter's Heart, is in many ways a crux to the entire series, and this is foreshadowed in that the title phrase appears somewhere in almost every book in the series.
The last two words of every Sharpe book except the last two are the title, which often requires some slightly clumsy prose.
Happens in every single book of the Sword of Truth series, except for Soul of the Fire (a title which, incidentally, can't really refer to anything in the book. There is a fire spirit, but it's explicitly described as not having a soul). It gest slightly varied, as the Blood of the Fold of the third book were first mentioned in the second, and the last title, Confessor, as it's the title of one of the main characters, had been in common usage in the books since the first one.
P. G. Wodehouse does this a lot, perhaps because of his musical comedy training. (The musicals he wrote with Guy Bolton tended to drop the title in the last spoken line.)
The first book in the Left Behind series gives a Title Dropin advance, as the characters excitedly discuss the formation of a "Tribulation Force".
In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Simon speaks to a "pig's head on a stick" who is referred to by the narrator as "The lord of the flies".
A Scanner Darkly has this line: "Does a passive infrared scanner...see into me-into us-clearly or darkly?"
A great one happens in the short novel/novella They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, where the title is used in the last chapter as an explanation for why the main character shot his depressed girlfriend who couldn't kill herself—he had to put her out of her misery. (Don't worry, not a spoiler, it's the first thing in the book.)
The Crying of Lot 49 plays with this. The title is the final line of text, and deliberately makes absolutely no sense until then. It turns out that the 49th lot (property) at an auction is maybe relevent to the mystery, and Oedipa is waiting for that lot to be cried (sold). The book ends just before the crying starts, because Thomas Pynchon likes doing that sort of thing, so we never find out what happens.
Iain Banks does this at times in his The Culture series, probably most notably in Use of Weapons, and also in Look to Windward and Matter.
Jennifer Government (though you can see it coming from the beginning of the chapter, lessening the impact).
I Am The Cheese: The title drop is the first person narrator's comment on the last line ("The cheese stands alone") of the Ironic Nursery Tune he has been humming to himself throughout the novel.
From the moment King Solomon starts referring to the Hand Of Mercy, it's clear that Helen and Clem aren't just reassembling some old angel bones.
Tom Clancy usually puts the title of his novels into the text, usually at a critical point in the story or at the climax.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
The Color Purple does it towards the end of the book. It is somewhere in the middle of a long list of small things to be grateful for and enjoy. This philosophical/religious discussion would be totally unremarkable without the Title Drop.
Lilies Of The Field has the protagonist quote scripture to try to get the stingy, English-deficient mother superior to pay him for his work.
Near the end of The Lord of the Rings Frodo reveals that he's written The War of the Ring and the Fall of the Lord of the Rings.
When Frodo also first sees his friends after waking up in Rivendell, Pippin cheers for him and calls him "Frodo, Lord of the Ring!" Gandalf promptly scolds him.
The Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet. "I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh?"
Most of the stories do this, actually, and just about all of them refer to a key plot point, whether the exact title phrase is used or not. Occasionally, the story refers to other works Watson has published, or in the case of the Second Stain, plans to publish (in the unlikely event that people are still waiting for it in seven years).
In the companion book to the Uglies series, Bogus to Bubbly, which explained many things that were left out of the series, Word Of God states that the last word of each book was the name of the next book. Scott Westerfeld says that the first two were unintentional, though.
The first two? There are only three books in the series, so the last words of the first two would be the only relevant ones. Unless you're including Extras...
More specifically, the last word of "Uglies" is "pretty", the last word of "Pretties" is "special", and the last word of "Specials" is "ugly". Considering Tally's Character Development, these could be considered Arc Words.
The last word of "Extras" is "cake." Make of that what you will.
The Killer Angels drops its title in response to the "What a piece of work is man...," quote from Hamlet. The movie uses the same structure but is titled Gettysburg.
A rather clever example in the original novel A Clockwork Orange; it's the title of one of Frank Alexander's manuscripts, and Alex, upon seeing it, remarks on what a stupid title it is. Later, after being "rehabilitated", he suddenly blurts it out.
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books do this in every single book, making the whole series' titles into an Anvilicious metaphor for Bella's life: ie, when she meets Edward, her life descends into twilight; when he leaves her, her world becomes dark in New Moon; The Volturi/fear eclipse everything else in Eclipse; and Breaking Dawn is when everything is working out all right. In the Swedish editions the title drops are inevitable, since the Swedish title of every book in the series is a quote from said book. The Short Life of Bree Tanner is the only exception; it was translated without any changes.
The title drop in Eclipse is more blatant. Bella calls Jacob her personal sun, balancing out the clouds of her depression, but says that she's choosing Edward. Jacob replies that he can handle the clouds, but that he can't fight an Eclipse.
"These were The Lovely Bones that had grown around my absense: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone."
The Title Drop in The Name of the Rose is intentionally opaque, showing up only in an untranslated Latin epitaph in the last line in the novel: Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus. This translates roughly to "the ancient rose continues to exist through its name, yet its name is all that remains to us," a line that touches on several of the book's themes.
Umberto Eco went on to say that, as a semiologist (a specialist in metaphors and symbols) he'd found that the Rose was the most used of symbols, to the point that it could be used as a symbol of almost *anything*. Meaning that it has become too charged with subtitles to actually mean anything any more. He deliberately chose the title to be the most portentous ever, but to not portent anything in particular. It is a semiotic joke, mister Moreau.
Number The Stars has its Title Drop during the fake funeral: Peter reads from Psalm 147, which describes God as "He Who numbers the stars one by one." The protagonist Annemarie looks out the window as he says this, wondering how this is possible considering how many stars she could see.
The title question in Agatha Christie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? is the last thing spoken by the murder victim. The significant title drop doesn't come until near the end, however, when the heroine finds herself asking the very same question.
The Quantum Gravity series has three. The first two, Keeping It Real and Selling Out, come in the second book, in talking about what it means to be a demon: Keeping it real and never selling out. The title drop for the series as a whole finally makes sense of the series title.
The ghost glow was gone, but she had been Jone's ship and real enough before her capture by the Fleet's massive quantum gravity, so she hadn't fallen apart yet[.]
In the first of Jack L. Chalker's Quintara Marathon trilogy, The Demons at the Rainbow Bridge, one character says: "Three highly trained teams are about to set out on a racecourse blindfolded, where they will attempt to murder one another in their quest to catch creatures that will certainly eat the winners! Yes, indeed, beings of all races! Don't dare miss—The Quintara Marathon!" To which the character's telepathic parasite responds with Shut up, Jimmy! All the individual books also include a title drop.
"As one of the survivors of the lone southern strongpoint would say later, the defense of Isabelle had been hell in a very small place "
Anthony Horowitz's Diamond Brothers books all have incredibly lame puns as their titles, and each one gets title dropped, from "I Know Who You Killed Last Wednesday" to "South by Southeast".
My Sister's Keeper. While the title initially seems to refer to Anna's role as (involuntary) organ donour to her sister Kate, the actual Title Drop is done by Jesse, responding to a question about Anna's whereabouts with "Am I my sister's keeper?"
Besides, there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les misérables; whose fault is it? And then, when the fall is furthest, is that not when charity should be greatest?
In an interesting twist, Ted Dekker names the titles of the first three books of The Circle Series in the form of the last names of three serial killers in some later books. Showdown has Marsuvees Black, Skin has Sterling Red, and House has Barsidious White.
The Lord Peter Wimsey short story The Article in Question does it twice in ca ten pages, combining Title Drop with Chekhov's Boomerang. The title is dropped for the first time already in the preamble, where "the article in question" refers to a diamond necklace. The story proper deals with two french jewel thieves. The article in question turns out to be the french definite article, which has different form for male and female. One of the thieves, while impersonating a maid, slips up and uses the male form about himself, which leads to lord Peter solving the case.
"I have students who are sure most of the stars are just like our sun, only much much younger, and many with worlds just like ours. You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever." —A Deepness In The Sky
Time Scout: The first and third books don't count, as the first, Time Scout names the profession that is the focus of the series and the third, Ripping Time names the period of time that is the focus of the last two books. The third, Wagers of Sin is only dropped in the description on the back cover. The last one, The House That Jack Built is dropped in the epilogue in a rather gratuitous fashion.
An Isaac Asimov short story In Poor Taste ends with the main character, who is right, but exiled from his planet nonetheless, hearing form his mother that "what you did was in..." then the shuttle doors close, muffling out the last three words.
The Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol aren't souls in the religious sense, they're not immediately mentioned, and it takes even longer for us to learn what's the real purpose of the protagonist buying them up.
The Madness Season is the portion of the Tyr life cycle where the Raayat drones gain a sense of individuality apart from the Hive Mind as they prepare to mate with the queen.
In Kiss of the Spider Woman from Manuel Puig, Molina recreates movie arguments to his cell mate Valentin to pass time. The first one is about a panther-woman who kills every man who kiss her. Later in the book, after both prisoners start having an affair and Molina is send out free, Molina asks Valentin why he haven't kiss him yet. He answer jokingly that he was afraid he'll became a panther and kill him, like the panther-woman movie, to what Molina replies that he is not a panther-woman. Valentine then say to him: "You are the spider-woman, who catches the men in her web" and Molina says that he likes that. At the end of the book, when Valentin starts having a death dream, the title is dropped again reinforced with the image of the spider-woman when he is talking with Marta.
In John C. Wright's Count To A Trillion, Blackie starts making plans at once for a far future danger, on the grounds that even if a man does not have the patience to count to a trillion, still the number exists.
Mr. Jaggers says that Pip has "Great Expectations" upon the second time they meet.
Live-Action TV
Parodied by the Upright Citizens Brigade, when a man tells a video store clerk that he had the title line in Star Wars. The man claims that, in a scene that was cut in the final release, he wanders into the Millennium Falcon for no good reason, says, "I'm just so tired of all these star wars," and walks out.
Mad Magazine's parody of the first film opened with a character in the midst of a space battle saying "Boy, this movie sure is noisy! Maybe that's why they called it—" splash opening title: STAR ROARS.
Blue Heelers liked doing this. Just to give one example, in the episode Pigs Will Fly, after the station bombing someone starts leaving bomb threats, one demanding "Fifty thousand or pigs will fly."
Done in The Twilight Zone in many episodes, usually to point out the black humor ending. Some examples:
"You were right. PEOPLE really ARE ALIKE ALL OVER."
HBO shows The Wire, Deadwood, and Boardwalk Empire all use lines of dialogue from particular episodes as the title of the episodes themselves, though the titles are not shown in the opening credits.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 makes a habit of commenting whenever a Title Drop occurs in one of their movies. Usually with Joel/Mike and the Bots saying in unison, "We have a title!"
Doctor Who, obviously. Used fairly straight the first time in "An Unearthly Child", where the Doctor had no clue who "Dr. Foreman" was supposed to be, and mostly used as an in-joke since.
The episode "The Long Game" has a belated Title Drop; it ends without any reference to what the title meant at all. Not until the Doctor returns to the same location 100 years later, in "Bad Wolf", does he realise "Someone's been playing a long game." (The title of "Bad Wolf" had, of course already been dropped all over the series.) And of course not mentioning the "Long Game" of the title until a later episode is itself a reference to the concept of the long game.
Also, after The Doctor "defeats" the Dream Lord, Rory Title Drops the episode when asked where he wants to go:
Rory: I'm fine with anywhere. It's Amy's Choice.
Because the title can be used as a question, the title can be dropped every time the Doctor meets someone new and doesn't use an alias.
Subverted in "Rose":
The Doctor: I'm the Doctor.
Rose: Doctor what?
Subverted in the same way in "The Lazarus Experiment".
And sometimes when he does. In "The Gunfighters", he introduced himself with a very long, muttered name, provoking the response "Doctor who?"
The Doctor: Precisely.
Now elevated to more than just a Running Gag and in-joke. 'Doctor Who' is now the oldest question, which must never be answered, or silence will fall.
The meaning of the title Star Trek is fairly self-evident, so they managed to go without doing this for thirty years. Then, in Star Trek: First Contact, Zephram Cochrane says, "So you're astronauts, on some kind of star trek?" (although in the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale Q nearly does it: "It's time to put an end to your trek through the stars").
Though he does drop the title of the finale itself: "Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you...you had such potential. But then again, All Good Things must come to an end."
This is also done in some episodes such as "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". "Plato's Stepchildren" is another memorable title drop, as it occurs within moments of the episode's beginning, and has relatively little relevance on the plot of the episode from then on.
Also in Star Trek VI, Chancellor Gorkon proposes a toast to "The Undiscovered Country: the future." Justified because everyone is constantly spouting Shakespeare throughout the movie; but it's played as a bit of a gaffe/uncomfortable foreshadowing, because the real "undiscovered country" in Hamlet is death.
In the second episode of Hogan's Heroes, an Allied pilot looks down to see an arrow made by the lit cigarettes of the Stalag 13 men standing in formation and comments, "There they are, Hogan's Heroes." On a few other occasions they're referred to as the "Unsung Heroes" by the media.
Arrested Developmentlampshades the series title in "Forget-Me-Now" as Rita laments the puerile sense of humor of American men.
Rita: And they think the stupidest things are funny. Michael: Yeah, that's a cultural problem is what it is. You know, your average American is in a perpetual state of adolescence, you know, arrested development. Narrator: Hey, that's the name of the show!
The pilot episode had a newspaper headline proclaiming "Arrested Developer!"
The episode "Justice is Blind" had a particularly clever one. "Justice" is the name of Maggie's alleged seeing-eye dog.
Eureka doesn't just title drop, it does a title sequence drop. It has always had part of the title sequence end with Carter watching buildings floating in mid-air. 4 seasons later, they have a problem of the week involving anti-gravity and they drop the title sequence mid-way through the episode, almost exactly like the title sequence, including the theme music.
Burn Notice also features a title sequence drop. The title sequence opens with Michael narrting "My name is Michael Weston. I used to be a spy." In the fifth season, another character introduces Michael near the end of an episode by saying "That's Michael Weston. He used to be a spy."
In the second season, Stargate SG-1 frequently had a character reference the episode's title, but it always sounded more akin to Cochrane's "some kind of star trek" comment than anything profound.
On iCarly, Freddie thinks up the name, title drops it, then explains it a little more:
Freddie:i, Internet...Carly, you...
The episode iLove You has a Title Drop, but it's a Shocking Swerve. Everyone is expecting it to be one or both Sam and Freddie saying "I Love You" to the other in a romantic to cement them as the Official Couple, instead it's said after they break up as Sam is about to leave, and they stay broken up after.
While The West Wing doesn't qualify as a whole, a number of episodes do on their own, such as "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc", "An Khe", "Eppur Si Muove" and the finale "Tomorrow" (it's the last line spoken in the entire show).
Most episodes of House feature Title Drops of the episode titles, which are otherwise not shown.
Slings and Arrows deliberately avoids dropping the title: in the first rehearsal where Jack (who's playing Hamlet) reads the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, he misspeaks and says "the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune".
Three of the four episodes of a miniseries called The Way We Live Now had one of these, although usually the exact wording would be changed to something like "The way people live now."
In Lost, many episodes feature Title Drops (even bizarre phrases such as "Tricia Tanaka is Dead"). The series' name is Title Dropped just about every episode, in lines as "we're lost", "we've lost him" et cetera..
Strangely, the writers set themselves up for and didn't use an amazing title drop opportunity in ''What They Died For" when Jacob is describing the attributes of the candidates. Everything he said would have been summed up nicely by saying "All of you were lost." but he just stops speaking.
In the season one finale of One Tree Hill, The Games that Play Us, Karen is talking to Lucas one last time before he leaves Tree Hill. Karen puts her arm around Lucas and says 'There is only one Tree Hill'.
The writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hammered home the fact that Bianca Lawson's character wasn't your average single-episode guest star when she introduced herself as "Kendra, the vampire slayer."
Also used in season 7, where Buffy was moonlighting as a counselor for troubled teens. ("Buffy the vampire slayer would break down this door." "And Buffy the counselor?" "Waits.")
There are a few episodes that do their own title drop, as well, such as "Lie To Me" and "Two to Go". Also, the musical episode, "Once More With Feeling", has the title in a line of the second-last song.
Many episodes of Angel featured Title Drops, though not every one of them. It also wasn't necessarily a key moment of the episode. Prominent ones include "A Hole In The World" and "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been".
The Sopranos drops a title almost every episode. This became more and more noticeable as the series went on and got more and more unusual titles. In the first season, for example, there were titles like "Meadowlands" (though that, in a subversion, wasn't actually said until the following episode), "College", "A Hit Is A Hit", and "Nobody Knows Anything" (which was used at least twice in the ep). In the sixth season, you had things like "The Fleshy Part Of The Thigh" (which is where a supporting character offers to shoot a wannabe gangsta rapper, nonlethally and with minimal complications, in order to give him street cred).
That Girl famously ended its opening segments with somebody pointing at the title character and saying "That Girl!", with a sometimes contrived and convoluted lead-in to get to that point.
Saturday Night Live ends its opening skit with "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", a slightly rearranged version of the show title which had its origins in the rather obscure fact that when the show launched in 1975, its actual title was Saturday Night rather than Saturday Night Live because the latter title was already taken for the short-lived Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.
The X-Files is fond of this trope, especially for their myth-arc episodes. A few however are misnomers and refer to scape goats and not the real culprits. An example would be the episode "The Red Museum" which features the eponymous cult who were victims in the mystery, not the culprits like the town believed.
Every episode in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, though the conversations are often not particularly important to the plot.
Parodied in Two and a Half Men. There is usually a Title Drop in the episode, but it is usually a completely irrelevant line that gets little attention drawn to it and has no impact on the plot.
Mr. Show inverts the trope by choosing a completely random line from each episode as the title, such as, "Oh, you men!"
Many episodes of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister end with a character, usually Sir Humphrey or Bernard, responding to something Hacker has said by saying "Yes, (Prime) Minister." Nigel Hawthorne, showing his serious actor chops, made a point of saying this with a different emotion every time.
Parodied in Blackadder when Edmund decides to take the name of The Black...Vegetable! Fortunately Baldrick suggests a better title for the series his Lord.
The Young Ones reserved their Title Drop for the final few minutes of the series. As the lads ride to glory in a stolen double-decker bus with wads of stolen cash, Rick celebrates their victory and newfound freedom in a rousing speech: "We’re young ones! Bachelor boys!" Seconds later, the bus crashes through a Cliff Richard billboard and plummets off a steep cliff, whereupon landing it explodes into a fireball from whence nothing or no one could escape.The End.
Twice thus far in Being Human: once in the Pilot and once in the finale.
Played with in the Supernatural episode "Wishful Thinking." Sam claims to be writing a book to get a witness to talk to him. When she asks the title, he has to think quickly to come up with "Uh, well, the working title is...Supernatural?"
'By its very definition, Glee is about opening yourself up to joy.' Done again, various times, for episode titles, eg. "Thanks, Grilled Cheesus!". They even managed to drop the title with a song for the episode Extraordinary Merry Christmas.
Name an episode where Smallvilledoesn'tTitle Drop the episode title (usually awkwardly, glaringly, and embarrassingly) and I'll (not really) pay you a hundred dollars.
Alton Brown referring to the Iron Chef America participants as "Your Iron Chef's, America" in their introduction seems a pretty blatant attempt at this.
In an episode of Leverage, the Villain of the Week remarks that as long as he is holding Nate and Sophie hostage, he "has leverage."
"So if you're fast enough, smart enough, and if you've got the guts, you can Win Ben Steins Money!"
In-universe example: On an episode of The Odd Couple, Felix appears on Let's Make a Deal. While on the show, he says "Hey Monty, let's make a deal."
Veronica Mars, being Character Titled, often has a title drop, but one episode managed to do a Theme Tune title drop/quote, with Veronica saying 'We used to be friends, a long time ago', right before the theme song 'We Used to Be Friends' starts, the first line of which is 'A long time ago, we used to be friends'.
The Closer plays it straight in the pilot episode, as this is how Pope describes Brenda. In a later episode, it's played for laughs, as a funeral director under investigation says "I'm what's known as the closer", meaning he's the one who inspects the bodies and closes the coffins before funerals. Brenda and Sgt. Gabriel share a surprised look when the word is mentioned.
No Ordinary Family nearly does this during the Previously On with "We started out as/We were no longer an ordinary family" and then gets played straight in dialogue during the season finale.
In a 1970s British comedy set in World War II India, a new arrival writing a letter to his mother decides not to tell her how awful the place is, and writes It Ain't Half Hot Mum instead.
In Law & Order, the individual episodes often title drop the names of that particular episode. The title of the show itself has also been said on occasion.
In the pilot Jeff makes a speech announcing they are no longer just a study group but a Community.
Near the end of As the World Turns 53 year run, Bob Hughes (the who started out as the preteen son of the central family and ended up as the patriarch), says in a speech "Every day that the world keeps turning is a gift."
The National Geographic Channel show Taboo does this during every segment of the show. For example, the narrator may say "Some people consider X to be taboo", with extra emphasis on taboo. Arguably justified because that is an actual word.
The Shadow Line has a lot of musings on the theme of shadows, lines and light throughout the series, but the title itself is only dropped once, during a conversation about Gabriel's possible corruption in episode 5.
In-universe examples from Seinfeld: Whenever the gang goes to the movies, the film(s) they watch often feature title drops.
"You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". Both are late Beatles songs written by John, and both have almost no words other than the titles. I want you is almost 8 minutes and only 14 words, so it's more or less the epitome of this trope.
Similar to The Beatles examples, the lyrics to an Indonesian song, I just want to say I love you, is just that repeated over and over, with differing tones.
Almost all of Michael Jackson's songs, especially his bigger hits and singles, have a title drop usually sung repeatedly. In fact, it's difficult to find a song that doesn't.
This goes double for title songs in musicals.
For example, many people think the title of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is actually "Major Tom", but it isn't.
Additionally, most albums are named after one of the songs, which is a type of Title Drop.
And there's also the Album Title Drop, where a song lyric names the album (examples in that page).
DragonForce loves to Title Drop its song titles in other songs: just one example of many is the line "Through the fire, through the flames" in the song "The Flame Of Youth."
The Counting Crows title-drops the band itself on their song A Murder Of One ("as you stood there, counting crows").
On the track "Tempus Fugit" from Yes' album Drama, the word "YES!" is mentioned so often, and with such pathos, that you'd think they were trying to make "Tempus Fugit" the band's title song.
Drama was the first (and as it turned out, only) Yes album not to feature lead singer Jon Anderson, so maybe they were just trying to reassure listeners that they were still Yes.
Many rappers namedrop themselves in their songs.
Quite often, the name of the album will be dropped in one of its song, the most famous example being Pink Floyd 's Dark Side Of The Moon album, title dropped in the song Brain Damage ("I'll see you on the dark side of the moon").
Metallica mentions their own name in the song "Whiplash" on the album Kill 'Em All;
Hotel rooms and motorways Life out here is raw But we'll never stop We'll never quit 'Cause we're Metallica
Rhapsody Of Fire always have a song on any given album with the same name as the album itself, the semi-exception being Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret ("semi" because there is still a track called "The Dark Secret"). of course, this isn't exactly unique. What's a bit more unique is towards the end of 19 minute epic Gargoyles, Angels of Darkness, in which they drop the titles of all their previous albums (Legendary Tales, Symphony of Enchanted Lands, Dawn of Victory, Rain of a Thousand Flames)...
And this is then the epic end Of the legendary tale Of the one who found the light and the dragonflame in inside Of the tragic rain of a thousand flames Of the towns' defenders who faced pain Of symphonies of enchanted lands Of whispers of love and hate The dawn of victory can breathe in the wind...
Manowar's song "Kings Of Metal" features the band's name twice each chorus, as well as throughout the verses. Eric Adams also lets out a number of lengthy screams bringing the total over a dozen. It is, in fact, the first and second word of the song:
Manowar, Manowar, livin' on the road When we hit town, speakers explode We don't attract wimps 'cause we're too loud Just real metal people, that's Manowar's crowd!
The first line of the lyrics of "Chelsea Girl" by Ride is "Take me for a ride away from places I have known". (Incidentally, this is the first song on their first record, which happens to be a self-titled EP, making this also an Album Title Drop.)
The Hold Steady drop their band name several times, including "Positive Jam" ("All the sniffling indie kids: hold steady"), "Slapped Actress" ("Our hands will hold steady"), "Most People Are DJs" ("Hold steady, Ybor City") and "Knuckles" ("It's hard to hold steady when half your friends are dead already")
British rock band Muse uses this in their most recent album The Resistance, with the line "You are my muse," in the song "I Belong to You."
Both Title and Band Name Drop: Iron Maiden's "Iron Maiden", from the album Iron Maiden ("Iron Maiden can't be fought, Iron Maiden can't be sought").
Brave Saint Saturn: In the song "Atropos" from The Light of Things Hoped For: "You are brave in this darkness, Saint Saturn".
AFI, short for A Fire Inside, have a couple: "We are the ones who have a fire inside" from "Keeping Out of Direct Sunlight (an Introduction)" and "Will the flood behind me put out the fire inside me?" from "The Missing Frame."
The Dream Theater album Metropolis Pt.2: Scenes From a Memory gets its title drop in the song Home: "The city- it calls to me/ Decadent scenes from my memory." In addition, the theme of the sleeper and the miracle is a title drop of Metropolis Prt.1: The Miracle and The Sleeper, which in turn contains title drops of various songs in Prt.2 (the dance of eternity, and metropolis to name a few)
Part 3 of "Octavarium" drops various titles of Mike Portnoy's favorite songs
Sailing on the seven seize the day tripper diem's ready Jack the ripper owens wilson phillips and my supper's ready Lucy in the sky with diamond dave's not here I come to save the Day for nightmare cinema show me the way to get back home again
Shiny Toy Guns' "When They Came For Us" doesn't have a song title drop, but does have a band name drop: "And I miss everyone. But most of all the little ones. And their shiny toy guns."
The Stone Roses song 'Where Angels Play' is an odd case, as the demo contains the title but the version considered 'finished' (itself little more than a demo) featured on the 'I Wanna Be Adored' single and the 'Turns Into Stone' compilation album, does not.
Another band name drop is the song "Talk Talk" by...Talk Talk! Which was written by Mark Hollis to be recorded by a proto-Talk Talk group, supposedly.
Very subtle example: in Come to Daddy (Mummy Mix) by Aphex Twin, at about 1:30 you can hear a voice say "Aphex Twin" on the stereo right channel. Listen.
The Finnish power metal band Nightwish loves doing this. A few examples are: Nightwish (from Angels Fall First. It's a demo, and consequently, also the band's namesake.), Nemo, Stargazers, Amaranth, Bless the Child, and Planet Hell.
And that's why they call me Bad Company I can't deny Bad Bad Company till the day I die
Bad Religion do their own wry twist on the band-name drop in the song No Direction:
I don't believe in self important folks who preach / no Bad Religion song can make your life complete
The Spin Doctors drop their band name twice in "What Time Is It?" The first verse ends with the line "Use a little English to doctor the spin"; the second verse ends with the line "Spin doctor, it's oh so sad".
Interesting example : "Up the Junction" by the British band Squeeze has no chorus, and the title doesn't appear at all - until the very end:
I'd beg for her forgiveness But begging's not my business And so it's my assumption I'm really up the junction
Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" is sort of the same, although it does have a chorus (albeit one that consists solely of "lie la lie" repeated endlessly). The title is not acknowledged until the final verse.
In a glorious version of this trope, Swedish power metal band Sabaton's first album Primo Victoria ends with the song "Metal Machine", the lyrics of which are built around the titles of songs by other metal bands (as well as its own):
Riding on this crazy train I'm going paranoid Watch me lose my mind And break the law I'm a metal machine It's close to midnight and He's barking at the moon I'm a metal machine the rainbow in the dark is shining
The song "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves" from Ritchie Blackmore'sRainbow has Dio randomly throwing in the title from the back row.
The Lover Speaks dropped their name in their only hit "No More I Love You’s" ("The lover speaks about the monsters"). If that song title sounds familiar, it’s because Annie Lennox’s cover version is better known.
While Prince had the Love Symbol as his name, one of his songs was actually titled "Love Sign".
The first episode of The BBC's 1981 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings begins with a pre-credit narration giving the history of the Ring, ending with the words:
Narrator: There it was hidden, even from the searching Eye of Sauron - The Lord of the Rings! (Underscore swells into opening theme tune)
Theatre
Frequently done with title songs in musicals (too many to list).
When the curtain opens on the prologue of Fiddler on the Roof, we see and hear the fiddler playing, and a Title Drop is the very first line in the show. The fiddler, who plays no part in the plot, is explained by Tevye to be a metaphor for the tenacious existence of Anatevka and its people.
The opening scene of the musical Damn Yankees has one Title Drop in dialogue (what Joe says when Meg asks him if the Washington Senators won the game he was watching) and another in the song "Six Months" ("Those damn Yankees! Why can't we beat 'em?")
The Importance of Being Earnest is both the title of Oscar Wilde's play, and what one of the main characters announces that he has learned in the very last line of that play.
"There are no angels in america" re: the lack of spiritual or ethnic history in the nation's culture—it's a big rant about how everything is political.
Although, in the context of this play, there are totally angels in America, and Louis is, as Belize says "so full of piping hot crap that the mention of [his] name draws flies" in the monologue/monolith in which he makes the above statement.
In the opening scene of The Music Man, one of the salesmen on the train calls Professor Harold Hill a "music man" during the "Rock Island" patter.
Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet does this unabashedly, as the script calls for a lightning strike for emphasis upon delivery of the line.
Les Misérables is generally considered to be an untranslatable title. It is dropped in the finalé in the original French version of the musical; it is translated as "the wretched of the Earth" in the more widely-heard English libretto, but this is a loose translation and loses the effect of the Title Drop.
In Drew Hayden Taylor's Someday, the word "someday" is pronounced exactly twice: at the very beginning of the play, by the mother, Anne, who states that she'll be rich "someday." She wins the lotto and also fulfills her dream of meeting Grace/Janice, her daughter who was taken away by children's aid 35 years earlier. The family reunion seems to be going well until Grace, now the rich lawyer Janice, asks why she was taken away and Anne tells her the truth, that it's because they were Native Canadian and poor. Janice can't accept that answer and realizes how different she is from her birth family, having been raised by an upper-middle-class family while her mother and sister live on reservation. She leaves quite brutally and merely states "I'll be back...someday." This is the most chilling line of the play, especially since it started set up as a play about dreams being fulfilled. Made even more poignant since in the sequel, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, she does come back... for Anne's burial.
Given that the word "Wicked" is spoken often in the 2nd act of the eponymous show, there is one conversation where Elphaba emphasises to Glinda that she is now "the WICKED witch of the west," which is important.
More whimsically: "For the first time, I feel...wicked."
And of course, the very first song of the show is 'No One Mourns the Wicked', which ends with the ensemble shouting the title in unison.
In Up The Down Staircase, the title (an offense one of the protagonist's students is detained for) is rather painfully dropped twice, once near the beginning and once at the play's "climax."
"When he died—- and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston—-when he died, hundreds of salesman and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that."
Subverted in Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill: the character is interrupted just before getting to that line in a poem.
Arthur Miller's All My Sons: Joe says at the end, "Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were."
"You're a good man, Charlie Brown." Not only the first song, but the last line of the play (said by Lucy, of all people).
The Cole Porter musical Out Of This World drops its title in the song "No Lover."
A Streetcar Named Desire has a literal Title Drop in its first scene, where Blanche tells how she came to the house on Elysian Fields. Later, there is a less literal but more meaningful reference:
Stella: But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of making everything else seem—unimportant. Blanche: What you are talking about is brutal desire—just—Desire!—the name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another...
A double title drop is done in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tell Me on a Sunday. There's the title song of course, bu tit also contains the lyrics "let me down easy, no big song and dance". Tell Me on a Sunday was combined with Variations to form the reworked show Song and Dance, consisting of one "song" act (Tell Me on a Sunday) and one "dance" act (Variations), so this one is a retroactive title drop as well.
Sweet Gay Baby Jesus: Used as an exclamation during the course of the play, rather than a character name, as some had hoped.
In The Cat and the Canary, no cats or canaries are brought up until the second act, when Annabelle starts flipping through a random book and finds herself reading about fear and how to overcome it through understanding:
"Take a bird—a canary in a cage—put it on a table—then let a cat jump up and walk around the cage, glaring at the canary. What happens? The canary, seeing its enemy so close to it, is frightened almost to death. But if it had understanding, it would know that the cat couldn't reach it while it had the protection of the cage. Not knowing this, it suffers a thousand deaths—through fear."
In the last line of the Brandon Thomas comedy "Charley's Aunt", Jack(who had been impersonating Charley's aunt so Charley could tell his sweetheart's father that he had a chaperone) gratefully tells Dona Lucia(Charley's real aunt) that from now on, "I will gladly cede to you the title of Charley's Aunt."
George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell has no less than five Title Drops, all by the same character, who considers it philosophy.
Several characters in Dog Sees God title drop the scene titles, and Beethoven mentions in The Vipers Nest that it's said "a dog sees god in his master." Interestingly, the play also drops the title of another Charlie-Brown themed work in the final monologue, as CB reads a letter from his mysterious pen pal CS (Charles Shultz) who tells him that despite his struggles, he is a good man.
"The sight is dismal, and our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
Was Lampshaded in the I Am Not Making This Up page, as many entries used Pot Holes to the page for no really sensible reason. Now that page is gone. Title Dropwith care.
Well, 358/2 Days is never dropped by any character, but you see a counter ticking off the days Roxas has been alive. The final battle occurs on day — you guessed it! — 358.
And what day does the last level of the game take place on? — 359! (Take the average and guess what number you get?)
Carla: Do you have any idea how difficult it is to escape from Monkey Island? Guybrush: No, how difficult is it to [with overly dramatic emphasis]Escape from Monkey Island™? Carla: ...Well, it's really difficult!
He does the same thing twice later while talking with Meathook.
Also, in the second and the third games, Guybrush askes LucasArts (via telephone) and Le Chuck what's The Secret of Monkey Island, dropping the first game's title.
In Metroid Prime, you can tell the creature the Space Pirates have been studying will turn out to be pretty nasty once you learn that it's been code-named...well, take a wild guess.
The World Ends with You — welcome in that we get to find out what the hell they were smoking when they came up with that one. (Turns out it's suggesting that the parts of the world you ignore might as well not exist, and with Neku (who is told this) that means a lot might as well not exist. Thank you, Title Drop!)
As a bonus, the game also namedrops the Japanese title, What A Wonderful World, ad nauseum near the end of the game.
In the English version, we got the English title explained. The Japanese title was explained at that same point in the Japanese version (FYI, it means the world was always an amazing place; Neku just refused to notice)
Dante's demon-hunting business in Devil May Cry shares its name with the game.
And there's a more direct Title Drop in the third game, which explains that Dante named the shop after a line spoken by Lady at the end of the game during a Sand In My Eyes moment, telling him that even a demon might cry over his brother (seemingly) dying.
As just almost every single game in the Elder Scrolls series is named after an ingame setting*
the intro to Arena notes that Arena is an alternate name for Tamriel
, none of the games' subtitles should count. But Daggerfall however, does in a much very blatant and glorified manner in it's epic opening FMV.
Uriel Septim: "Rest well this night...for tomorrow, you set sail...for the kingdom of DAGGERFALL!"
The Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind mentions the Bloodmoon event. Some of the games mentions the actual Elder Scrolls, but never in situations relevant to the main plot.
The phrase "Sonic Heroes" was apparently rammed into the game of the same name for no reason. Both Sonic and Eggman use it to describe Team Sonic, but it also appears in Team Chaotix's theme song, meaning that it might describe all the main characters...even though they have completely different reasons for fighting Eggman and actually fight each other every so often.
Don't forget in the same game, Sonic's explanation to Metal Sonic as to why he lost to them
Metal Sonic: It's no use...why can't I defeat you...? Sonic: Because we're SONIC HEROES! (strikes a pose)
Metal Sonic then promptly faint/powers down, possibly due to being beaten, but one must wonder if it was of that being the only reason he got...
In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, when Luke Atmey insists on describing himself as an "Ace Detective," Phoenix awkwardly introduces himself as "Phoenix Wright...Ace Attorney." Of course, being Phoenix Wright, the whole scene is not an especially important conversation, especially because Pearl and Maya insist on also being an "Ace"...spirit medium and apprentice, respectively.
Boktai: The Sun is In Your Hand has a Title Drop that's unusually hard to spot. During the final boss fight, Django and Sabata refer to the power of "Our Sun". (You know it's important because there's a voice clip and because Django, who's usually a Heroic Mime, speaks.) So? As it happens, the game's original Japanese title — Bokura no Taiyou — means "Our Sun". The English title is a sort of orphaned abbreviation for this that means nothing in the game.
In John Woo's Stranglehold, Damon Zakarov tells Big Bad Wong, in his demands that he hand over Hong Kong to him, "Your stranglehold has lasted far too long."
While the ARMs in Wild ARMs have always been an important plot element in every game, the series never did a full Title Drop...until the fourth game where ARMs are weapons made from Nanomachines, and the most powerful of them assimilates the inmates of Illsveil Prison, turning them into, you guessed it, Wild ARMs.
Planescape: Torment doesn't use "planescape" — but then, the game is properly called Torment. (Calling it Planescape: Torment is like calling another game, for example, Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate.) Torment starts getting dropped at about the midpoint of the game, increasing in frequency from there.
On that subject, Baldur's Gate mentions the city fairly early on, and as the latter third of the game takes place mainly there, it's hard to avoid it being mentioned. Throne Of Bhaal has the war between Bhaalspawn be around and for the title location, so it gets mentioned as well. On the other hand, Shadows of Amn doesn't use the title, though the nation of Amn it takes place in is mentioned; nor does Tales of the Sword Coast, with similar mention of the region.
Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter do this — Icewind Dale, the name of the region it takes place in, much more easily, of course. Heart of Winter, on the other hand, does it much more subtly:
Seer: A woman knows a woman's heart, and a strange, beautiful, and cruel thing it is. But the cruelest of all is a heart of winter, for it beats not with love, but with loss, and nothing may comfort it.
Clearing four lines of blocks in Tetris is called a Tetris.
In Tetris: The Grand Master, the highest rank obtainable is Grand Master.
Olivia's poems seem nothing but a cute character moment until she recites the final stanza of her last: "But now we dance this Grim Fandango..." It refers to the four year journey to Eternal Rest taken by all but the most virtuous souls.
Strong Bad: Onward to Strong Badia! Strong Badia the Free! Homestar Runner: Hey, that's the name of this— Strong Bad: Shut up!
On the Subject of Telltale Games — in the the last episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse:
Max's Superego: Sam, Sam. They say that idle hands are the Devil's playthings, but there is something far, far worse. An idle mind is the Devil's Playhouse: a stage for the most vapid, horrible, and destructive stories to be made real.
Seconds later, he then goes on to lampshade it by saying "Didn't think I'd be able to work the title in, did you?"
In MGS3', the subtitle Snake Eater is taken from the operation Snake carries out for the most of the game, named as such because he's taking on the members of the Cobra unit.
Said "Guns of the Patriots" being Ocelot's plan to hijack the SOP (Sons Of The Patriots) system.
For fairly obvious reasons, Portable Ops didn't manage. It tried hard, though, and involved an optional scene where Snake commented about how the operation felt 'portable'.
Probably the most meta one in the series, though, is a repeated series acronym drop from Drebin in Metal Gear Solid 4, as he screams (about a tank that is chasing them) 'we've got an MGS on our asses!' and 'We've gotta shake off the MGS!'. The scene ends with the MGS getting flipped into a ravine as the characters carry on. Interpret that as you may.
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel averted this as well. There is a "Project Babel" in the plot, which forms half of the subtitle, but the subtitle Ghost Babel was mainly chosen because it conveniently shared the same initials as the Game Boy.
Oh, and don't try to count the number of times Snake says "Metal Gear".
Grand Theft Auto III has a mission called "Grand Theft Auto", which also happens to be one of the most difficult Watch the Paint Job missions in the series. It later plays with the title in a mission where you must steal a package from the airport, called "Grand Theft Aero".
Even before then, there was the rap song "Grand Theft Auto" written for the first game's soundtrack - a remixed version of which is also in III.
Take a wild guess what Grand Theft Auto IV lists the player character's criminal records as in the LCPD Database.
Skillfully used in the first Geneforge game—the title initially seems to be just an oblique reference to the series' essential conceit—bioengineering in a fantasy environment by use of magic. However, when it turns out to actually be the name of the Lost Technology that serves as the series' ongoing MacGuffin and Artifact of Doom, the player instantly recognizes his goal for the remainder of the game.
Mega Man Battle Network 4 manages to shoehorn its subtitle (Red Sun or Blue Moon, depending on the version) in twice — once for the tournament and once for the giant laser. Near the end we learn that the tournament was a front for finding a netbattler to stop the asteroid, except this falls through because that was the BACKUP plan.
Ironically, the game as it exists in localization is technically called Super Robot Taisen. Getting Crap Past the Radar for naming rights disputes, Atlus?
The feat is duplicated twice for Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier: the party acquires the not-so Humongous Mecha Gespenst Phantom, Alt Eisen Nacht, Weiss Ritter Abend as backup units, and they are dubbed "Support Robot Weapons". "Endless Frontier" is immediately used following a prologue real describing the multiple worlds connected by dimensional gateways.
Some older SRWs would Title Drop the game during the final scenario, as in the case of Super Robot Wars Compact, where the last scenario is called "Super Robot Wars".
Dead Space has the final chapter in the game rather appropriately titled, er, "Dead Space". Which is kind of funny when you realize it's the only chapter that takes place on a planet instead of a ship in space.
Of course, the actual significance of the title is made clear when it's explained that the Marker create a sort of "dead space" around itself that keeps the Necromorph bacteria and the resultant creatures dormant.
From Ace Combat Zero: "We'll start over from 'zero' with this V2..." (complete with quotations in the subtitles). The EU non-numeric titles Distant Thunder, Squadron Leader and The Belkan War all show up in their respective games.
And of course, Shattered Skies as the name of AC04's eighth mission, and part of your commander's speech before the final mission.
The main heroines of Tsukihime and Fate/stay night has the title of the game, or part of it, as the name of their true ending. Actually makes a lot of sense in the case of Tsukihime (Moon Princess) since the title is direct reference to her.
Tsukihime's "sequel", Kagetsu Tohya, has a character in a side-story named Souka Tsukihime. Incidentally, she's the graphic designer's favorite character.
Despite Sion being technically the main heroine of Melty Blood, being the main heroine of the entire series gets Arc the title drop in that game. Her Blood Heat Arc Drive is named "Melty Blood."
Golden Sun has a title drop, but if you play only the first game you wouldn't know it, since the term only shows up in the lead-up to the final battle of the second game.
That said, the very first true "dungeon" of the first game featured a puzzle involving a golden sun icon.
Throughout the entire history of the Final Fantasy series, the only time those words are mentioned together is in Dissidia: Final Fantasy, when Chaos refers to the ten warriors and Cosmos' journey as being the Final Fantasy.
Dissidia's secret ending is concluded with the Narrator saying:
"We shall journey on the road that continues...to the Final Fantasy."
Although in Gilgamesh's Final Fantasy XII boss cameo, his ultimate attack is called Ultimate Illusion, a synonym to Final Fantasy.
Additionally, the 5-person Band Attack used by the the final party of Final Fantasy IV in its sequel The After Years is called "Final Fantasy."
Also, in Final Fantasy VIII, the Japanese version of Edea's speech in Galbadia plays out a little differently from the English translation, and includes a line referencing the series.
Edea: You and me. Together, we'll bring about this final fantasy.
There's an old Real Time Strategy game by Sierra called Castles: Siege and Conquest. They had a basic version, and one on CD. The CD has an opening cinematic with full voice and FMV in game discussing the history of various castles. And wouldn't you know it, the ending of the cinematic says: "To become king you must conquer...CASTLES SEIGE AND CONQUEST!" The most awkward title drop (that wasn't a [[lampshade]]) ever.
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom features two drops of the subtitle, with first the veteran in the bar, and later Admiral Tolwyn, giving the full line, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." At the end, Blair asks Tolwyn, after stating that his plan would cause many deaths and force humanity to become barbaric, "Is that the price of freedom?" in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Hobbes addresses Blair as, "Wing Commander" in Wing Commander II when, despite being higher-ranked, he orders him to lead the mission they're on.
In Wing Commander: Prophecy, Maniac toasts, "to the free and easy life of the Wing Commander."
In the film, Angel describes herself to Blair as, "your Wing Commander."
The third game's subtitle, Heart of the Tiger, is Blair's title among the Kilrathi, which also serves as the phrase to awaken Hobbes' true personality.
X: Zero! Hang in there, buddy! Zero: X...I'm always telling you...to be more careful...but now look at me... X: Don't waste your energy talking, Zero. We've gotta fix you up. Zero: There's...no time for that...Sigma is close...Very close... X: Zero... Zero: Go now...Maverick Hunter X...
In the Touhou Project games, Spell Cards have names which generally take the form of something like Love Sign "Master Spark", and this is used for a Title Drop a few times for the final Spell Card of the Final Boss. In Perfect Cherry Blossom, Yuyuko's final spell card (before her Desperation Attack) is titled Cherry Blossom Sign "Perfect Cherry Blossom of Sumizome"; in Mountain of Faith, Kanako's final attack has no "sign" part of its name (though it is far from unique in that regard) and is simply called "Mountain of Faith"*
Only on Easy and Normal mode though; on higher difficulties it is "Virtue of Wind God"
.
Also, Tenshi from the Fighting GameSpin-OffScarlet Weather Rhapsody gives us Scarlet Weather Rhapsody for all Mankind.
In Imperishable Night, the "sign" parts of all of Kaguya's Last Spells are called Imperishable Night's End. Furthermore, the "sign" parts for her five normal spellcards are all called Impossible Request, which matches her stage title "Five Impossible Requests".
There's also Mokou's spell card Imperishable Shooting.
And if you survive enough of her Last Spells, Kaguya will drop it in dialogue in a much more meaningful way than just naming:
Utsuho Reiuji has "Subterranean Sun" on Hard and Lunatic, and Koishi Komeiji has "Subterranean Rose".
Played a bit differently in Ten Desires. The final boss's power is listening to ten people at once, or rather, to their Ten Desires.
Also, her last Spellcard is called "Falling Stars on Divine Spirit Mausoleum", "Divine Spirit Mausoleum" being the game's Japanese title.
You know that stuff just got real when humans bring in their Sword Of The Stars dreadnought class. No other space conquest game has a suitable name.
The original game and its Expansion Packs also perform a Title Drop at the end of their intro voiceovers:
"We learned to wield the Sword of the Stars." (cue previously mentioned dreadnought firing its Wave Motion Guns) "Born of fire, born of steel, born of science, Born of Blood." "My people are no longer hiding, and now we darken your skies, like A Murder of Crows."
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri doesn't really count, as Planet orbits the star system, so it comes up quite frequently. The expansion, Alien Crossfire, does the drop in the cinematic, explaining that two opposing alien factions have landed on Planet, and the humans will thus be caught in the alien crossfire.
The second Another Code game pulls it off near the end, though in a variation it only mentions the subtitles (Gateway of Memory in Japan, A Journey Into Lost Memories in Europe):
Ryan Gray: Do you understand why your father brought you here, Ashley? It was to open the doorway to your memory. To open that door and embark on a journey into lost memories.
In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Jill ends her opening monologue stating that her escape from Raccoon City will be her "last escape"; a reference to the Japanese title, Biohazard 3: Last Escape.
House of the Dead. Guess what the last chapter's name is, as well as where it takes place?
"DonPachi" means "leader bee." Throughout the series, you collect bee icons, and upon fulfilling certain requirements for one of the games, you get to fight the True Final Boss: a flaming bee, the leader of the enemy forces you've been decimating. And in the first game, the elite air force you're training for is known as DonPachi Squadron.
The penultimate quest in the last content patch for World of Warcraft, which involves the players and one of their faction's leaders escaping an encounter withArthas Menethil. This leads directly into the raid on Icecrown Citadel, and is named "Wrath of the Lich King".
In the final patch of Cataclysm, Deathwing yells "IAMTHECATACLYSM!" at the start of the Madness of Deathwing encounter, in which he attempts to use an attack called Cataclysm that essentially is him finishing the job he started by breaking out of Deepholm, and which the raid must interrupt to avoid instantly wiping.
Glory of Heracles was title dropped by one of the playable characters, Heracles, who muses that great muscles means nothing to the 'glory of Heracles'.
Happens a couple of times in Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom with a couple of the character's Hyper Combos and the games they come from: Batsu's Ultimate Hyper Combo is called 'United By Fate', while Frank West has his 'Dead Rising' Hyper Combo.
Castlevania: Rondo of Blood: While the furigana in the game's subtitle reads Chi no Rondo for "Rondo of Blood," the literal reading is Chi no Rinne, meaning "Metempsychosis*
(Reincarnation)
of Blood." The latter is also the title of the game's final stage, as well as its reenactment in the sequel.
In the English versions of both Symphony of the Night and the PSP port of Rondo, the stage's name is simply rendered "Bloodlines", dropping a different title entirely.
In City of Heroes, Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are refered to as the City of Heroes and the City of Villains, respectively, numerous times.
The meaning behind the title of Suika is only revealed in the true ending, where it becomes Ojou's new name by combining the kanji for water and summer.
You get to find the Mask of the Betrayer in Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer, but it isn't actually referred to anywhere in dialogue as such.
And in dialogue with Deekin, he mentions that he's going to be writing a book about your adventures in the above expansion pack, and asks the PC to give it a name. Naturally, one of the options is Hordes of the Underdark. Or "Anything but Hordes of the Underdark." Prompting some scribbling on Deekin's part.
Mass Effect refers to a category of technology that is the main Applied Phlebotinum of the game series, which is critically important for galactic civilization in the game.
The opening title consists of a short description of the events that led humanity into the interstellar field, culminating with "They called it the greatest discovery in human history. The civilization of the galaxy call it...Mass Effect".
Dragon Age pulls its Title Drop in the Codex, of all places, as part of the description of the Chantry's practice of naming each century as "____ Age" after a significant event. Since dragons reappeared in the world (after being hunted nearly to extinction by the Tevinter) at the beginning of this century, the game is set in the Dragon Age.
God of War drops it many times, first with Ares and then Kratos being referred to as "God of War".
No More Heroes is the name of the motel that Travis lives at, and is also written on the wall in any of the bathrooms that act as the game's Save Points. It's also delivered in a Take That by Travis's ex-girlfriend Jeane before the Rank 1 boss fight:
Jeane: What if the game gets delayed? You don't want this to become No More HeroesForever, do you?
The sequel title drops both the series and subtitle name. First in the opening...
Narrator: This is Travis Touchdown's desperate struggle. Travis: Hold it, you violence-loving bastards. Before you start your desperate struggling, you should drop a nice save.
After Bishop is murdered, the words Desperate Struggle is seen written in blood. Also, near the end of the game, Travis is reffered to as the No More Hero.
King of Sorrow: So I used the ark to lift Lunatea's Veil. All so that you could save the Kingdom of Sorrow. So that Lunatea can once again remember...
The V in "Veil" is even capitalised in the subtitles, to make it obvious it's a Title Drop.
The song When You're Gone does this for the most recent Silent Hill game.
"I know, I know, there's something I've forgotten! A time, a place, a shattered memory!"
At the end of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield it is explained that the Big Bad was like a raven picking the bones of an old war and the other Big Bad his shield protecting him until his children were ready to fly.
"While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I overheard the guards talking about this ring world. They call it...Halo."
Strangely enough, in later games they're referred to as "the Sacred Rings" by the Covenant.
In the first game, Cortana drops the title of one of the soundtrack pieces during a cutscene in the first level. "With all respect, Captain. This war already has Enough Dead Heroes". Later, the first chapter of "Two Betrayals" is named after another song, "The Gun Pointed At the Head of the Universe".
In most games The Legend of Zelda series, the subtitle inevitably gets dropped early on, pointing a giant neon arrow at something important. No points for guessing the Ocarina of Time is going to be important in a game called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Subverted in The Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword. To quote Groose "Nice going, you two. You guys were totally amazing in this little adventure I like to call the Legend of Groose". So close, yet so far.
In The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess, Midna refers to Zelda early on as the "Twilight Princess," mocking the fact that her kingdom has descended into Twilight. Turns out she was just screwing with everyone—Midna is the real Twilight Princess.
A case 2 happens Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (called ...and the Last Time Travel in Japan and ...and the Lost Future in Europe), where the second part is the last words said by Claire, Layton's girlfriend, before being sent back to the moment of her death 10 years ago by a faulty time machine. The phrase was slightly changed with each version to match each localized title.
In Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, the last of the secret puzzles is called "The Diabolical Box" (for good reason, being an especially difficult block-pushing puzzle).
Larry Wachowski: You see, at this point in the story, Neo stands on the verge of satori; ready to resolve the paradox of choice and choicelessness; free will versus fate, but that can only be achieved through an act of surrender after an abandonment of the perspectile nature of truth, accepting the totallity of present consciousness which ultimately allows an evolutionary transition; transcending the Cartesian dilemma through emergence of de-limited spirit which then provides the world with a third path, the Path of Neo, the path of peace.
Last line of the second expansion pack for Quake, Dissolution of Eternity:
Your consciousness fades as you realize you have halted Quake's plans for...the dissolution of eternity.
The Command & Conquer franchise has two title drops. Once in the final Soviet cutscene of Yuri's Revenge where Yuri drops the franchise name and once in Tiberian Sun where Kane yells "THE TIBERIAN SUN HAS RISEN!"
Tiberium Wars may have one as well: in-game and even in cutscenes, the events of the various games in the Tiberium franchise are referred to as the First, Second and Third Tiberium War. Then there's the Firestorm Crisis, the events of the titual expansion pack.
Yugo of Bloody Roar has a move named "Bloody Roar".
Dawn of War 2: Retribution does this on the last level. "Whether I am victorious, or slain. My sins will know retribution. such is the final testimony of Gabriel Angelos"
Kara no Shoujo is named for a piece of art that appears in the story that has some eerie similarities to the murders going on. It's the masterpiece of a painter named Mamiya Shinzo. The similarities stop being eerie when the explanations start coming and instead turn disturbing.
This happens quite often in the Mortal Kombat series, particularly Mortal Kombat 9. Among others, Liu Kang to Shang Tsung, prior to their battle from the first tournament. Justified as the story is a retelling of the first three games, which featured a Mortal Kombat tournament and an attempt to merge Outworld and Earthrealm together whilst ignoring the rules of Mortal Kombat.
Liu Kang:Face me in Mortal Kombat.
The First and Second Reconstructions in The Reconstruction. Subverted in that they're only minor backstory events that are only briefly mentioned once each throughout the entire game (and you won't get any details unless you read Ques' glossary).
And then played straight with a Wham Line in chapter 6:
"Everything we once knew and loved has vanished from this world. We are the only surviving chance for reconstruction."
In Master Of Orion 2, the movie that plays after the player wins declares him or her the Master of Orion.
Besides containing the book the Tome ofEternal Darkness, the game of the same name works the term into dialogue fairly frequently.
At first, Hellsinker just seems like a flashy title. That's until you reach the final boss.
In Red vs. Blue Reconstruction, Agent Washington tells Church and Caboose that they can get back to their little Red Vs. Blue battles after they help him. Caboose quickly chimes in and says that they're called Blue Vs. Red battles and that it sounds stupid when you say it backwards.
In Goodbye Kitty, the title is what Black Kitty says every time he tries to kill White Kitty (which is always).
Web Comics
Ten years in, and Pete Abrams still hasn't revealed just what "Sluggy Freelance" actually means. That hasn't, however, stopped him from dropping one of the two words without the other here and there like delicious, fan-baiting sprinkles.
Chapter titles often get dropped as well in a visual gag, as in "Punch Dracula" (guess what the good doctor finds himself forced to do?) and "Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja" (appears on a theater marquee at the beginning of the strip)
Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.
Teased again when examining the Cruxtruder early in Act II
"Of all the places for Rose to drop the infernal thing. More than ever you feel...what's the word you're looking for?" "Of course. Housetrapped."
The titles of Homestuck's acts are all dropped with the exceptions of Act 4, Intermission 2 (which doesn't even have any text, as it consists only of a single flash), and Act 6 Act 1.
No Need for Bushido does this at least twice, once very early in the comic and once a hundred or so strips in.
Several indirect mentions in There Will Be Brawl; the title drop actually refers to the "brawl" that eventually erupts in the last episode. It also refers to the fact that the series is a dark Affectionate Parody of Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a whole. In order, it's mentioned by Luigi in the fourth episode, Dedede in the fifth, Olimar in the eigth, and Bowser in the ninth.
The serial web-novel Fine Structure (here) is somewhat sporadically updated; one of the chapters is titled simply "this is not over and I am not dead" in all-lowercase. It seems as though the author is commenting in the title on his somewhat sporadic update-schedule, and apologizing (such as it is) for the relatively late update, right up until the Big Bad (an Sufficiently Advanced Alien in human form) says those exact words and then proceeds to shoot himself.
Also, in the very first chapter, the title of the series itself is referenced. It's rather stealthy, however:
Then it's over, Heaven number seventy-nine dopplering into our wake, torn bodily from its extradimensional moorings, fine structure bucking, scattering and shattering.
This is made more interesting by the fact that this chapter was incorporated retroactively. However, the author had apparently written it with the intention of adding it eventually.
Another web-novel, Fragile, features this trope in two different parts that use the title in them — once in the middle and another time at the very end. Both times, the title refers to Severin, with the latter referring to his mental state and the former just generally referring to Page's perception of him.
Retsupurae pointed this out in their Trapped retsuflash.
Later, during the third game of the series they throw in forced title drops to all three games in the series—Trapped, Pursuit and Escape—in immediate succession.
It was also done during their Arise 2 retsufrash: "Once more...I'm arising to kill whoever did this to me."
In Darwin's Soldiers, the first RP does a title drop with the last line of the last post.
Neku: This is more...than anything I could have asked for. From now on...we're a team. We are, I guess, in a way...Darwin's Soldiers. The next evolution of warriors...
Protagonist: Explicitly stating the moral of the story, and awkwardly working in...the Movie Title.
Orion's Arm is in fact set in that arm of our galaxy but the real title drop is the mention of a worldbuilding project in the setting meant to simulate the world of Orion's Arm which is itself named Orion's Arm.
Among Phelous's many running gags is "Name...Drop!" when a title is mentioned mid-movie...though more often it's inverted to highlight something silly, like using the wrong name.
The attack launched by the big bad of Chaos Fighters II-Cyberion Strike is called as such.
In Blogger Beware, whenever the book does a Title Drop, Troy deliberately cites another book's title. Except once in the I'm your Evil Twin review.
Or in some cases he uses the actual title in a way that's grammatically inappropriate, such as "Max doesn't believe he really Let's Got Invisible.".
Parodied hilariously in the (fake) Pac Mantrailer.
Police Officer: It seems to be some kind of man...some kind of Pac Man.
Ed Glaser's series Deja View has a title drop every episode worked in as an Incredibly Lame Pun. For example, in Turkish Captain America:
Ed Glaser: "So get ready for a triple-punch of Red, White...and Deja View.
Early in season 1 of We're Alive, Pegs makes a sign to hang outside the Tower to announce that there are survivors inside. Guess what it says, yep: "We're Alive"
Happens all the time in Pay Me, Bug!. Ktk is the titular bug. It will bet on anything and everything with Cyrus. When Cyrus wins...
Xandir: There is hope! As long as we're together. Drawn to— Spanky: You say "drawn together," and I swear to Christ, I'm gonna cave your skull in with a tire iron, and eat what drips out. Xandir: Alright, fair enough.
In the third season episode, "The Avatar and the Firelord", Firelord Sozin's final testimony ends with him expressing regret that he never found and defeated the greatest threat to the Fire Nation, "the Avatar, the last airbender".
The second season finale is called "The Crossroads of Destiny", with Iroh using the title almost exactly when he tells Zuko that he is at a point where he has to choose which path in life to take.
In the third episode of the first season, Aang remarks, "I really am the last Airbender."
"Let the fight take place here, on this strange, primitive world. And let it be called...the Beast Wars!" The conflict is then referred to as such occasionally throughout the series, Megatron claiming that he's won the Beast Wars as he reaches the climax of an Evil Plan, for example. Doesn't apply for viewers watching it on Canada's YTV where, due to discomfort with the word "War" in its title, it was called "Beasties".
Several episodes feature title drops. For instance, in "A Better Mousetrap", after Rattrap sets off the Sentinel defense system, leaving him stuck inside, Dinobot remarks "It seems as though you [Rhinox] have built a better mousetrap."
War Planets (a.k.a. Shadow Raiders) gets a Title Drop during a Rousing Speech in the first season, before the attack on planet Remora: "We've stopped being planets at war and become planets of war!"
An episode of G.I. Joe had an awesome Title Drop. In the episode "Money To Burn", Cobra...burns United States money, but as usual, GI Joe beats them.
Ripcord: Like Cobra, you have money to burn.
The end of the first arc of the Justice League cartoon has both a Mythology Gagand a Title Drop. Superman wonders if they shouldn't start a team, and give it a name they can be called by collectively.
In the same series (or rather, in the Unlimited season), a Title Drop was given to another DCAU series: Batman Beyond refers to Amanda Waller's project to continue the Batman legacy, resulting in the conception of Terry Mcginnis, Batman of said series.
Strawman Atheist: It's the Rapture, Shawna, the Rapture. The virtuous have gone to Heaven and the rest of us have been...left below! Homer: "Left below"...where have I heard that before? Lisa: Dad, it's the title of the movie. Homer: Gasp! It's everywhere!
And in Fear of Flying, Marge watches a certain movie:
Man: No thanks to the plane, many of us are still... Everyone:Alive!
With the name of the show also being the name of the title-character, title drops are common in Kim Possible, but in the first movie, A Sitch in Time, they also manage to drop the title of the opening lyrics of the theme-song into casual dialogue.
Referenced in a Family Guy episode, where Peter is at the movies and hears the drops in Clear and Present Danger and As Good As It Gets (and also a parodic one, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace). Later in the episode, a cop says "I don't appreciate drug addicts in my town. I'm a family guy!", much to Peter's delight.
Superman: The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Peter: So that's why it's called that...
There was that early episode where the Griffins watch Eight Is Enough where the father hits the daughter multiple times then another character says "Dad! Eight is enough!" and then they all laugh. Even the Griffins were shocked.
In the episode "The Invisible Hand of Fate", said episode's title is said twice by two different characters to Billy Quizboy.
"Powerless in the Face of Death" opens with Jonas Venture Jr. announcing "But we're the Venture brothers!"
The Danny Phantom episode "Flirting With Disaster" had Tucker and Sam finish a sentence that involves the title; "Long night...of flirting with disaster?" Obviously it refers to Danny's dangerous Dating Catwoman relationship with Valerie.
The scene is turned a little funny when you realize that the episode writer was Joseph Kuhr and Batman is talking to The Red Hood a.k.a. Earth 3's Joker.
Batman also makes a Title Drop as the final line of the first season finale.
The Ren & Stimpy Show lampshades this shamelessly in the episode "Marooned!" After their spaceship crashes on a distant planet, Ren confirms that they have no way to get home.
Ren: We're marooned! Stimpy: Just like the title of this cartoon!
In an amusing aversion, in the finale of the third season of ReBoot, the cast makes a gamble to have the User "reboot" the computer and thus restore Mainframe. When the screen goes blank, however, the User types in "ReStart". In a convention panel the creators lamented that they didn't think to title drop at that oh-so opportune moment.
On a more general note, the title is regularly dropped as the command word for characters changing format to interact inside of a Game.
"Don't be hasty. Not until I see those Street Fighters pummelled to dust, which should be any moment now" YES!! YES!!!
Scooby-Doo Where Are You!. In the episode "Foul Play in Funland" Shaggy says "Scooby Doo, where are you!"
At the beginning and end of every episode of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Shaggy provides the narration and always includes "My pal, a pup named Scooby Doo!" Scooby is rarely, if ever, referred to that way outside of Shaggy's narration.
Battle tanks are for hardened soldiers, and you're trained only as an invader, Zim!
Carl:(beat) Your emergency brake is on! Shake: Don't tell me how to drive, jackass!
Occasionally done in Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? The ACME agents might say, "Where on Earth is she now?" or villains trying to outdo Carmen would say, "Where on Earth is..." and insert their names instead. In the episode "Shaman Spirits," a news reporter said the title outright.
Utrom Shredder: So long as Ninja Turtles exist somewhere in the multiverse, they will interfere in the plans of the Shredder! Our epic battle is never going to end...unless I put an end to Turtles...FOREVER!
also, in the 1987 series, after recounting their origin to April, Splinter finishes with, "...and that is how they became The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!"
Lampshaded in one of the Billy & Mandy movies where Grim immediately follows up his Title Drop with an aside, "like how I worked the title in?"
Some individual episodes can have this too, such as "The Real You" (and some like "Her Parents" that are meant to be generic). Interestly subverted with "The Real You"—at one point a temporarily-insane Finn screams that everyone was "BORN TO DIE!," which was the original title of the episode before it was changed.
In an episode of Beavis And Butthead, the title duo are arguing over what to name their newly-formed garage band. Beavis suggests "Beavis And Butthead", but Butthead insists it sounds better the other way.
The first Daria movie's title, "Is It Fall Yet?," is Link's first line, given when Daria asks him if he has anything to say when they arrive at the Okay to Cry Corral.
In the first episode of the Spiderman the Animated Series version of the Secret Wars arc, the episode ends with Spider-Man declaring his intentions to keep a record of the events he witnesses, so that the battle will not become "a secret war."
Also, part one of the Grand Finale two parter is called "I Really, Really Hate Clones." Spidey doesn't wind up saying it: it's the evil alternate Spidey who is bonded with the Carnage symbiote who gets to say it, thinking our Spidey is a clone.
"No Billy, hearing you talk was Annabelle's Wish."
From My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, "Fall Weather Friends": "Welcome to the official coverage of the Running of the Leaves! You know Spike, despite the name, the leaves don't do any of the running. That's left to my little ponies!"
Also used rather more gratuitously in "The Show Stoppers", where Twilight twice refers to the Cutie Mark Crusaders as "my little ponies".
In Episode 22, "A Bird in the Hoof", Fluttershy asks Celestia if she will be banned, to which Celestia responds: "Of course not, my little pony".
And, of course, Discord uses it too.
And, despite making sense as an in-Universe expression of affection it still sounds awkward and out of place every single time they say it. Probably because of the possessive.
Not only does The Spectacular Spider Man mention the show's title, but in some episodes it references past episode titles.
Transformers Prime tends to apply this in it's episode titles, such as in "Rock Bottom".
Megatron: The fact is, Starscream, despite your treachery, I allowed you to carry on this long because I took a certain delight in following your string of failures...But you've finally become tiresome, predictable! You've hit Rock Bottom.
Recess has episode title drops within a number of episodes:
"Jinxed"
"Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye"
"I Will Kick No More Forever"
"Operation Field Trip"
"The Girl was Trouble"
"Recess is Cancelled"
"Me No Know"
"Good Ol' T.J."
Some of the episode of House of Mouse such as "Thanks to Minnie" and "Pluto Saved the Day."
The ending of the Season 1 finale of Xiaolin Showdown, "In the Flesh."
Also shouted whenever a Woo-Fu item is contested. "Xiaolin Showdown!"
Phineas and Ferb, "Summer Belongs to You!" In addition to the song of the same name near the end, we get a title drop near the middle, when Phineas is trying to give Candace a pep talk:
Phineas: The gist of it was that you have to believe in yourself. Candace: That's easy for you to say. Look at all the things you've done! Summer belongs to you! Phineas: Summer doesn't belong to me. It belongs to everyone, and that includes you!
