Tyop on the Cover - Television Tropes & Idioms

There's a tyop... I mean typo, and it's right there on the cover of the movie or book or what have you. Like a zit. Not that we don't all make typos... there's probably a copule on this page... but not all of us have proofreaders on retainer. This trope often serves to embarrass distributors of official materials, as pretty much the only thing they're supposed to do in regards the distribution is make sure that everything is correctly spelled.

Can be your first clue that They Just Didn't Care.

If the misspelling is done on purpose, then it's Inherited Illiteracy Title.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

At least one pressing of disc 3 of The Vision of Escaflowne had this rather bizarre cut-n-paste typo. There are other printings of the same disc that were correct, however.
The back cover of the Kurokami DVD set boasts the slogan "DESTORY DESTINY".

Comic Books

This issue of S.H.I.E.L.D. has something to do with Issac Newton◊.
Cerebus has its origins in this trope. "Cerberus" was the intended name of a fanzine. As Dave Sim recounted: "'Not to worry,' I said, somewhat less than eager to reletter the logo and figure out how to squeeze in an extra letter and transpose two others, 'We’ll just say that Cerebus is the name of the cartoon aardvark mascot.'"

Film

Jack Squad: — It says "ban together" instead of "band together" on the back cover.
Make a Wish: — It says "braniac" instead of "brainiac" on the back. The character in question is not a maniac for bran.
Mexican Werewolf in Texas: They capitalized the T in "the" on the cover where it says, "Terror has just crossed the border." That would be forgivable if it wasn't for the back cover, which reads, "It's hunger knows no bounds." It is hunger knows no bounds?
On the Run: Ally Farson II: A crappy, VERY low budget movie with various spelling errors and punctuation problems on the back.
The MST3K-featured sci-fi film The Eye Creatures was changed to Attack of the Eye Creatures. The title screen was changed accordingly, but they added "Attack of the" instead of "Attack of," making the title Attack Of The The Eye Creatures. B-movie fans have called it by this name ever since.
On one public-domain DVD of the Sherlock Holmes movie ''Dressed to Kill', the spine spells the hero's name as "Sherlok Holmes."
This one on the DVD of the documentary Dust to Glory. "From the creator's of..."
One cheap DVD of Death Rides a Horse has a double example on the front cover: "The Lenghts One Man Will Go to Take His Rewenge".
Extremely common on bootleg copies, for obvious reasons. The Crappy Bootleg DVD Covers pool on Flickr is a treasure trove of these.
Ray Dennis Steckler started making a straight crime movie, but when it wasn't working out, had two principals become low-budget superheroes Rat Pfink and Boo Boo - which would have been the movie's title, but the title artist read it as Rat Pfink A Boo Boo. Possibly this was interpreted as a pun on the mid-60s expression "a go go".
Lynne Truss wrote that her impetus to write Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a book about punctuation and the misuse thereof, was seeing a poster for the film Two Weeks Notice and noticing, to her horror, that there was no apostrophe after the word "weeks".
As pointed out by Obscurus Lupa in her review of it, the back of the cover for the film Blood Red Moon has 'Behind the Sceens' on it.
The blurb on the back of the Collector's Edition of Psycho says "the ill-fated traveler whose journey and in the notorious shower scene," instead of "ends."

Literature

As old as print: an early anecdote goes that one of the first printed books, Codex Diplomaticus was going to be printed without any errors whatsoever. On a bet, the contestor spent days poring over the text of the book, but didn't notice the massive typo on the cover - Podex Diplomaticus. The fact that Podex means 'butt' only makes it worse.
The British paperback edition of Jack Vance's Marune: Alastor 933 misquoted the title as Marune: Alastor 993.
One paperback printing of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Second Stage Lensmen (plural) gave the title as Second Stage Lensman (singular). It's not hard to see how they were caught out, though, because it's singular on all the other books in the series.
Rouge Queen by L. Spraque De Camp. Had an error in both the title and the author's name. (rogue, sprague)
One paperback edition of Leslie Charteris' The Saint And Mr. Teal was printed on both the front cover and the spine as The Saint and Mrs. Teal.
Anne Rice, thanks to Protection From Editors, has A NOVAL printed on the cover of Blood and Gold.
Angels' Blood had a sequel called Archangel's Kiss, (by Nalini Singh, New York Times Bestselling Author of Angel's Blood◊) (Note the apostrophe.)
Your Golden Opportunity is Comeing Very Soon◊ by R.J. Haughnessy.
Not on the cover, but the front inside flap of the Unseen Academicals jacket refers to "Lord Ventinari." The character's name is, of course, Vetinari, with only one N.
- Book club members in the UK were able to buy exclusive leather-bound Discworld books; two have had typos on the cover. Witches Abroad was subtitled "The twelth Discworld novel", and Maskerade was originally printed Maskarade. The latter was corrected and reprinted.
- Inverted in the blurb for the American edition of Interesting Times which describes Rincewind's hat as being embroidered with the word "Wizard", when in fact it's a plot point that it's misspelled as "Wizzard". Poor copy-editor. Some days you can't win for losing.
Pink Floyd: Bricks in the Wall by Karl Dallas: the back cover says "part history" when obviously "past history" is what is meant. This error (and numerous others, but this was the only obvious one on the cover) went uncorrected when the American publisher reprinted it without Dallas' permission almost a decade after the original printing.
And even if they did change it to "past history", that would seem a little redundant.
Jane Austen's Love And Freindship. She wrote it when she was fourteen, in 1790, and didn't intend for it to be published.
The back cover of a paperback edition of Catch-22 contains the quote "he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes it's title".
The book jacket of Alan Dean Foster's Mid-Flinx spells the author's name as Lan Dean Foster.
One edition of Mark Billingham's Scaredy Cat spells the author's surname as "Billngham" on the spine. The author's surname is also "Billngham" on the spine of Sleepyhead, the first book in the series.
On the back cover of the fantasy novel On Fire's Wings, the main character is referred to several times as 'Kelva'. Throughout the entirety of the book itself, she is consistently called 'Kevla'.
There is a book by Sharon Eliza Nichols called I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar that features various newspapers, company signs, billboards, and other very public writings that feature errors, and many examples are shown on the front cover of the book. On a special note, the back cover features a shocking lack of commas, and a dangling participle.

Music

The American release of My Generation, the first LP from The Who, misspelled the surnames of Pete Townshend and John Entwistle — dropping the silent H from the former's name, and apparently inserting it into the latter's.
On some printings of Starflyer 59's self-titled first album, the text on the disc itself reads "Starflier 59".
The cover for Rofo's Flaslight on a Disconight◊
Cappadonna's cover for Slang Prositution◊
Jethro Tull's first single "Sunshine Day" had the band's name spelled "Jethro Toe" on the label.

News

Yahoo News posted this◊ article on their homepage for all to see, about Sentator Kerry.
This newspaper cover.

Tabletop Games

One sourcebook for the pen-and-paper RPG Exalted was accidentally titled the Roll of Glorious Divininty.

Video Games

The French version of Halo ODST tells you to use your skills to attain vcitory.
Disgaea's title screen tells us it's "Publishied by Atlus Inc."
The PC version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 listed in its system requirements that it requires a 800GHz processor to run.
The Color Dreams/Bunch Games NES title Tagin' Dragon.
The Resident Evil title for the 3DS is, if you go by the side of the box, Resident Evil "Revelaitons".
There was an interactive DVD game released to tie in with the BBC TV spelling bee Hard Spell. The original cover was hastily withdrawn after the producers sent a batch to host Eamonn Holmes to autograph - and he pointed out they'd spelled his name wrong.

Fictional Examples:

Literature

In The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Callah, there is a minor plot point about a first-edition printing of the novel The Hogan... which has the misspelled title The Dogan.

Team Shot

Cover Tropes

V Formation Team Shot

Two Words: Obvious Trope

This Trope Name References Itself

Vampire Vords

Two of Your Earth Minutes

Language Tropes

Unusual Dysphemism

Two Worlds

Self-Demonstrating Article

Unconventional Formatting