Working Title

Coming after The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind.

"Confusing term for story titles that don't really work at all, and thus are changed."

— Doctor Who: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia

The first step in the creative process is an idea. That part is obvious. Coming up with what to call that idea can be troublesome. And if you don't have a name for it, then talking about it is a chore. This is why a lot of works go through a number of names between production and release. The end result may be that you hear actors talk in an interview about a movie they're doing, and then find it came out under a different name altogether.

Working titles can also be used defensively, allowing the creators to refer to their project without giving much away. It can help camouflage a ground-breaking project against someone else copying the idea, or sneak an anticipated sequel under the media radar until it is ready for the world to hear about it. Also can be used to get lower production costs for big sequels as locations or prop companies overcharge on big name features.

In many other cases, the working title is the originally intended title that was changed because of last-minute Executive Meddling.

Not to be confused with the British production company affiliated with Universal.

See also Market-Based Title (which is what some of the Working Titles are if they contain curse words or are otherwise considered obscene innuendo), Censored Title (same) and Permanent Placeholder (when the Working Title sticks).

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Examples:

Animation

• The Baby Shark's Big Show! episode "All I Want For Fishmas" had its' title given in early listings as "We Wish You A Merry Fishmas", the name of a song sung in the episode.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, early in its development, was titled Lazy Goat and Big Big Wolf. This is connected to an example of What Could Have Been - when the show went by this prototype title, Paddi (known in the original Chinese version as Lazy Goat) was the main character instead of Weslie.

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Several parts have had initial titles that were later replaced. For instance, Stardust Crusaders was first advertised as Heritage for the Future (hence the name of the fighting game), or Golden Wind was known as Golden Heritage, while Stone Ocean was at first known as Jolyne Cujoh as a Protagonist Title.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War was originally going to be called "IQ" in Japan (Aikyuu lit. Love Seeking / Love Longing), before the editor had them change it to the less vague "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen" (Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains).
• Macross was originally pitched by Studio Nue as "Megaroad", but advertising agency Big West wanted to change the title to "Macbeth", as one of Big West's executives was a Shakespeare fan. As a compromise, they changed the title to "Macross". The "Megaroad" name was eventually used for the SDF-2 Megaroad-01, which appeared in the 1987 OVA, Macross: Flashback 2012.
• The first draft volume of One Piece was released under the title Romance Dawn, and did not feature the titular treasure. The name Romance Dawn has since been used a few times in the manga and anime as a Mythology Gag.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica had the temporary title of "Mahou Shoujo Apocalypse Madoka Magica" before they finally decided to get rid of the "Apocalypse" part. ("Puella Magi" and "Mahou Shoujo" are just "Magical Girl" in Latin and Japanese, respectively.)
• Stardust Telepath had a host of various working titles when it first started development in the fall of 2018 at Manga Time Kirara, including Hello Blue and Nice to Meet You, Alien as possibilities. Stardust Rocket eventually became the chosen name, before the head of Kirara editor suggested combining stardust and telepath together, thus forming the series' finalized title.

Comic Books

• One of the working titles for Crisis on Infinite Earths was "History of the DC Universe", which would eventually become a two-issue limited series that tells the Post-Crisis history of The DCU. Another working title that was shown in ads was "DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths".
• Fish Police was originally called Inspector Gill of the Fish Police. The original title can be seen in the Issue 0, and in some concept art in the final issue.
• Gen¹³ was going to be Gen X, but was changed when Marvel was coming out with Generation X.
• The Tintin adventure King Ottokar's Sceptre began its original serialization under the title Tintin in Syldavia.
• Warriors of Plasm was going to be Plasm, but was changed when Marvel claimed the title was similar to the Marvel UK comic Plasmer.
• Watchmen was originally called Who Killed the Peacemaker, as it was written to star characters from Charlton Comics that DC Comics had recently acquired the rights to.
• Before settling for the Ultimate Marvel name, the name "Ground Zero" was also considered.
• While Kieron Gillen was working on DIE, but before it was officially announced, he referred to it exclusively as "Spangly New Thing".
• In-Universe in Foxtrot: Jason's been working on a new OS for a while, and explains that he did so under a codename, as Microsoft did with Windows 95 ("Memphis").
  Peter: You mean every time you had Mom pull me away from the computer so you could do your-
  Jason: "Homework". That's right.

Documentaries

• Clash of the Dinosaurs was going to be called Dino Body.
• Dinosaur Revolution was called Reign of the Dinosaurs for most of its production, and would have received a companion show titled Science of Reign of the Dinosaurs. These got merged to form the show that ended up on screen. The European version re-installed Reign of the Dinosaurs as the title.
• Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony was just known as "The Brony Doc" until late in production.
• 1991: The Year Punk Broke, a rockumentary / concert film following Sonic Youth and Nirvana on a European tour together, had the working title of Tooth or Hair. This was meant as a pun on Madonna's 1991 tour documentary Truth or Dare, which was referenced several times in the film.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The author originally considered calling the story In Your Bones, In Your Soul before choosing the title Abraxas.
• Anyone around at the beginning of The Lion King Adventures would know that the original title for the series was The Lion King: Friends to the End.
• When Kira Is Justice was first published, it was known as C0's Death Note.
• According to the author, the Star Trek: Voyager fic A Fire of Devotion was originally going to be titled Sam & Annie.
• The Black Hearts was originally titled Mercury's Pain to keep up with the naming convention of the series that included the story.^note The solo origin stories had the POV character's first name in the title. However, the writer wasn't too fond of it, so they settled on this story being the Odd Name Out.
• Word of God (who conveniently happens to be a Troper) has it that some stories in The Midnightverse had their titles changed during development.
  • First Date and Last Date were originally planned to be named First Rendez-vous and Last Rendez-vous after two Jean-Michel Jarre tracks.
  • Lost And Found was first named Hackwrench Family Reunion in order to have a name. It was never intended to be published under this name.
  • Diamonds In The Desert had more than two names. It was originally planned as a slapstick heist fic in the tradition of the Aces Go Places series and thus named Mouse Mission. After watching Mission: Impossible which was still before writing a single word, the author reconsidered, changed the genre and started writing it under the working title All The Glitter. Since this title still wasn't fitting enough, the story was eventually renamed again to Diamonds In The Desert.
• It's mentioned in the author's notes on Beyond Heroes: Of Sunshine and Red Lyrium that the story's title, until shortly before it started appearing on AO3, was Varric Tethras and the Continual Nervous Breakdown.
• The Universe Falls version of "Northwest Mansion Mystery" was going to keep its original title, as shown by the list of episode titles the author posted. Come release, however, it is titled Northwest Mansion Nightmare, as it also adapts "Nightmare Hospital".
• Doing It Right This Time was an example that became a Permanent Placeholder.
• In-universe in How the Tantabus Parses Sleep; one chapter has Daring Do working on a book called Daring Do and the Working Titles of Fate.
• The loose collection of ideas that eventually became Enlightenments had the working title That Sad Team ICO Fic until the PS4 remaster of Shadow of the Colossus came out and introduced the Enlightenments collectables that gave the fic its name.
• When production first began, Ma Fille was known as Little Katrina. The name Mr. and Little Miss Beaufort was also used before being published as Ma Fille.

Films — Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters was first teased in the home series episode "Deleted Scenes" under the title of Untitled Master Shake Project.
• Wallace & Gromit:
  • Earlier titles for the film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit included The Vegeburglars and The Great Vegetable Plot.
  • A Matter of Loaf and Death was originally to be named Trouble at T'Mill.
• The Thief and the Cobbler had such titles as The Thief Who Never Gave Up, Once..., simply The Thief, or The Cobbler and the Thief. The film was released after Executive Meddling under two names: The Princess and the Cobbler and the punny Arabian Knight, before being released on VHS as The Thief and the Cobbler. This doesn't even mention the early period when it was about Mulla Nasruddin, and has names such as Nasruddin!, The Majestic Fool or The Amazing Nasruddin.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie originally had the working titles The Powerpuff Girls: Maiden Voyage and The Powerpuff Girls: First Flight.
• Epic (2013) was originally called Leafmen, which is closer to the book the film is based on.
• The movie Once Upon a Forest was originally going to be called The Endangered, but was changed because of Executive Meddling into something Lighter and Softer.
• Fantasia had the rather plain title The Concert Feature while in production. A contest was held to find a better title and the musical term fantasia (meaning a free-form composition using familiar themes) seemed the most appropriate. Its sequel, Fantasia 2000, was originally going to be called Fantasia Continued.
• From Pixar:
  • When it was first pitched in 1992-1994, Andrew Stanton's film WALL•E was known as Trash Planet.
  • Brave was originally titled The Bear and the Bow.
  • Humorously, the working titles for both Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur were Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and were even announced as such: The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside Your Mind/About Dinosaurs. (seen above)
  • Turning Red: According to the "Making Of" video, the film had various developmental names, some of the Pun-Based Title variety.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks had the working title of Equestria Girls 2. This title was still used for advertisements in some countries.
• Barbie: The Pearl Princess was originally called "Barbie in The Pearl Princess" and "Barbie: Pearl of The Sea".
• Happy Smekday! for Home (2015), probably changed because it wouldn't mean much to those who hadn't read The True Meaning of Smekday, the film's source material.
• Home on the Range began production under the title Sweatin' Bullets.
• The Tigger Movie was originally titled Winnie the Pooh and the Family Tree.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, according to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was originally titled "South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose" but the MPAA wouldn't allow it (despite there being plenty of films with "Hell" in the title). Hence the final title, which is arguably even worse. The MPAA does deny this story, however.
• Yellow Submarine had the working title All You Need Is Love. Ringo suggested the name Yellow Submarine (the song which he, of course, sang) because "you can put anything in a submarine."
• The Princess and the Frog was The Frog Princess, after the specific version of ''The Frog Prince'' that inspired it.
  • After that movie didn't do as well as Disney hoped, the studio retitled the next two fairy tale-inspired films on their docket in turn to avoid the Girl-Show Ghetto: Rapunzel became Tangled (though Rapunzel remained the Market-Based Title in some countries), and The Snow Queen became Frozen (again, some countries got the original title in some way).
• Down and Dirty Duck was originally made under the title Cheap!, to the point where there actually are quite a few Title Drops of the old name in the finished product. It can even be quite jarring to viewers not familiar with this fact. According to Mick Garris at Trailers from Hell, producer Roger Corman realized the movie would be promoted as Roger Corman's Cheap!
• The Great Mouse Detective was titled Basil of Baker Street, after the novel it adapted, before the name was changed late in production. Much of the crew was unhappy with the change, leading to a Writer Revolt in which they published a fake memo saying that all of Disney's animated features would be retitled. The rumored reason for the change? Paramount's Young Sherlock Holmes hadn't been a big hit the previous Christmas, and thus Disney wanted to play down their film being a Funny Animal / Mouse World version of a Holmes adventure.
• The Lion King (1994) was titled King of the Jungle before the crew realized that lions don't actually live in the jungle.
• Wreck-It Ralph was originally called High Score, Reboot Ralph, and Joe Jump. (Though it should be noted that those versions of the film, other than involving video game characters, had somewhat different premises).
• Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2, before Disney shortened it to Ralph Breaks the Internet.
• The Emperor's New Groove began as a serious musical drama entitled Kingdom of/in the Sun (sources disagree about the title).
• Mulan was China Doll and Legend of Mulan.
• An interesting case with The Mitchells vs. the Machines: it was retitled to Connected in February 2020, but then the change was reverted in January 2021, and the working title became its final title.
• The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie was originally titled The Great American Chase.

Films — Live-Action

Creators:

• The Beatles:
  • Help!: The name "Help" was taken by something else so the name Eight Arms to Hold You was considered. However, they were able to use the name "Help" anyway by adding an exclamation mark.
  • A Hard Day's Night was originally called The Beatles, then Beatlemania. The final title came from Ringo Starr coining a phrase after a hard day.
• Christopher Nolan's films have names of his children in working titles, except Batman Begins, which was titled as The Intimidation Game and Tenet, which was titled as Merry Go Round. Mostly, these are just titles used to disguise production.
  • Inception was titled Oliver's Arrows.
  • The Dark Knight was Rory's First Kiss. A track of the same name is on the score's bonus disc.
  • The Dark Knight Rises was Magnus Rex.
  • Interstellar was Flora's Letter.
  • Dunkirk was Bodega Bay.
• The working titles for Steven Spielberg's movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial were "Watch the Skies" and "A Boy's Life" respectively. Both were referenced as a Creator In-Joke in Gremlins (which Spielberg produced), as two movies reportedly showing in the town theater when Billy walks past it.
• Woody Allen's films usually have generic working titles during production, such as "Woody Allen Fall Project" or "Woody Allen London Project". In one case, the working title simply remained and became the film's actual title: Manhattan Murder Mystery.
  • Annie Hall was originally called Anhedonia, which is a medical term for the inability to feel pleasure.

Films:

• The first Alien film was known as Star Beast in its earliest stages. When the writer went through the script he saw characters constantly referring to the Alien, and then the title came out at him, noting that is both a noun and an adjective.
• In an interesting example, the original title for the sixth alien film was Romulus, but due to this becoming so intertwined with production that people started calling the film Alien: Romulus, this ended up being what the full film was called.
• All About Eve was originally called Best Actress.
• American Graffiti almost had its title changed. The studio didn't like the name, so they went through a lot of alternatives - Another Slow Night in Modesto, The Hot Time, The Wild Summer, Color Them Wild, The Young Crowd, Summer Blood, Wild Is the Blood, The Young and the Doomed, The Last Free Summer, The Summer Before, The Savage Heart, The Cherry Coke Summer, Look Back Once, The Fast and the Deadly, The Fires of Summer, The Violent Four, Before We Grow Up, No More Rock, The Frantic Heart, The Games of Summer, The Toy Dreams Gone, The Yesterday People, The Boys and Their Girls, Last Knight to Make Out, Burger City Blues, A Night to Get Ready, Make Out at Burger City, A Night in '62, Rock Around the Clock, Last Night Together, Remember '62, Goodbye Burger City, High School's Over, Kids, Buddies No More, Ask Wolfman Jack, Pals 'n Gals, Make-Out, Buddies, Supercola, The Race, Growing Up, Burger City, The Drag Years, Those Were the Days, The Good Times, The Sock Hop, Wine, Women & Song, 1962 Was Some Year, Collage, Class of '62, The Rock Set, Rock Generation, To Learn About the World, A New World Tomorrow, Misadventure and Rebus.
• American Justice was going to be called Get Justice.
• The Arthur (1981) remake was shipped to theaters as On the Rocks — the subtitle of the original film's sequel.
• Attack of the Giant Leeches was Attack of the Blood Leeches.
• Ava was originally going to be called Eve.
• Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III were shot back-to-back as Paradox and Three, respectively.
• Batman film series:
  • Batman Returns were known as Dictel and Batman II.
  • Batman Forever was originally known as Blinko.
  • Batman & Robin was originally known as Batman 4Ever.
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was going to be Man of Steel 2, and then was going to be Batman v. Superman.
• Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's original title for their film Bedazzled was Raquel Welch (who had a small role in the film) — so they could have a poster saying "Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Raquel Welch".
• Beetlejuice was originally going to be called House Ghosts. As a joke, Tim Burton also suggested the name Scared Sheetless, and was horrified when the studio actually considered using it.
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey was originally called Bill and Ted Go to Hell. This was changed due to censorship reasons. Megadeth recorded a song called "Go To Hell" for the soundtrack because the movie was still going to be called that when they were asked to contribute.
• Black Christmas (1974) was Stop Me.
• The original script title for Blade Runner was Dangerous Days. Ridley Scott optioned a short story named 'Blade Runner' specifically so he could use the title (the story itself having nothing to do with the movie), basically because it just sounded cool.
• Blazing Saddles was called Tex X, Black Bart and The Purple Sage at various points.
• Blood Cult was The Sorority House Murders.
• Terry Gilliam originally wanted to call Brazil 1984 1/2 as an homage to George Orwell and Federico Fellini.
• The Breakfast Club went through some alternate titles - Detention, The Lunch Bunch and Library Revolution.
• Bride of the Monster was The Atomic Monster and Monster of the Marshes.
• A Bucket of Blood was The Living Dead.
• The Burning was The Cropsy Maniac.
• The Call was shot under the title The Hive, which is the nickname for the building where Halle Berry's character works (managing to even get a Title Drop). The renaming occurred as soon as the film got a release date, as the film's premise is focused around a phone call that links the two leads.
• Casablanca was Everybody Comes to Rick's.
• Chaos on the Bridge was originally going to be called Wacky Doodle. Inspired by a statement by Maurice Hurley, one of the interview subjects: “Star Trek is not like any other show because it is one unique vision, and if you agree with Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future, you should be locked up somewhere. It's wacky doodle, but it's his wacky doodle.”
• Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things was Zreaks.
• Citizen Kane was The American, then John Citizen, then U.S.A.
• Everyone thought that Cloverfield was just a working title. Then the movie came out under that name.
  • Played straight with the rest of the franchise. 10 Cloverfield Lane was Valencia, while The Cloverfield Paradox was God Particle (and possibly Cloverfield Station). This is partially because the films were not originally intended to be part of the franchise.
• Corvette Summer had Dantley & Vanessa: A Fiberglass Romance, Stingray, and The Hot One.
• Creep was originally going to be Peachfuzz. The "Peachfuzz" wolf mask doesn't become a plot point until halfway through the film, so the creators decided that viewers would be too distracted by what the significance of the odd title was until The Namesake was dropped.
• The Creeping Terror was The Crawling Monster.
• Deadpool (2016)'s working title was Wham!, as a shout-out to George Michael's former group. Their album, Make It Big, and their song, "Careless Whisper", appeared in the movie.
• Lampshaded with a 1960s comedy starring cast members from The Dick Van Dyke Show titled "Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title" (probably the one clever part of the movie).
• The film adaptation of Greg Sestero's book The Disaster Artist about the production of The Room (2003) was originally announced as under the same title as the book, but it was later renamed The Masterpiece. It was ultimately released under the original title.
• Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead was shot as The Real World, but the title was changed to avoid confusion with MTV's then-upcoming reality show of the same name.
  • The same thing happened with Reality Bites.
• Elfie Hopkins: Cannibal Hunter was originally called Elfie Hopkins and the Gammons.
• Warner Bros. wanted to call Enter the Dragon Han's Island because they thought international audiences would be confused by an action movie titled Enter the Dragon. Other alternate titles were Blood and Steel, this was a first draft script title, and The Deadly Three.
• EuroTrip was originally called The Ugly Americans, but was changed by DreamWorks SKG, likely to cash in on the success of Road Trip.
• The Evil Dead (1981) was Book of the Dead.
• The Fast and the Furious (2001): Racer X, Redline and Race Wars.
• 50 First Dates was 50 First Kisses. It's possible the casting of Drew Barrymore had something to do with the change: She starred in Never Been Kissed five years earlier and maybe it was thought that viewers would have confused it for a sequel.
• Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) was filmed under the title Bad Cupcake.
• Freaky was filmed under a title that made the X Meets Y clear, Freaky Friday the 13th.
• Ghostbusters (2016) had the code name Flapjack, probably derived from the last lines: as the Ghostbusters lost the hearse Patty's uncle borrowed, Patty says he has to make do with one hearse and double up on the bodies. He replies “What? I’m not stacking them like flapjacks!”. (given "Flapjack" is an Inherently Funny Word, the blooper reel has a montage of the cast shoehorning it into dialogue)
• Ed Wood's first major movie, Glen or Glenda, was slated to be called I Changed My Sex, as it was designed to cash in on a sex change operation that had just made the news.
• The original script for Fear (1996) was developed under the title No Fear: It's possible the word "no" was dropped to avoid confusion with athletic apparel company No Fear.
• Godzilla:
  • Godzilla (1954)'s working title was The Giant Monster From 20,000 Miles Under the Sea... as if the film being heavily influenced by The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms wasn't obvious enough.
  • In the Monsterverse, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) had the working title of Fathom, while fifth entry, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire had the working name of Origins.
  • Godzilla Minus One had the working title of Blockbuster Kaiju Movie.
• Halloween (1978) was called The Babysitter Murders.
• The Happening was originally titled The Green Effect, which arguably better fits its theme.
• Heaven's Gate was originally called The Johnson County War.
• He Knows You're Alone was Shriek and The Uninvited.
• Hellboy (2019)'s title was Hellboy: The Blood Queen initially, before reverting to simply Hellboy.
• Henry & Verlin was originally called Eyes That Went Away.
• High School Musical was meant to be a working title, but the title was still being used in post-production and it stuck.
• I Come in Peace was Lethal Contact.
• Idiocracy used both 3001 and The United States of Uhh-merica.
• Imagine Me & You was originally going to be called Click, after the French term for Love at First Sight. However, they had to change it to avoid confusion with the other movie called Click.
• The Ides of March was originally called Farragut North, after the play it's based on. The original title still gets a Title Drop a few times.
• The Invention of Lying was originally going to be called This Side of the Truth. Ricky Gervais' blog would indicate that changing it was a voluntary attempt to get the point across better, but that hasn't stopped people from complaining about Executive Meddling and "dumbing down" and stupid American audiences that need everything spelled out for them.
• It Could Happen to You was originally called Cop Gives Waitress 2 Million Dollar Tip, an attempt to emulate a sensationalist tabloid headline.
• James Bond:
  • The sixteenth official James Bond movie Licence to Kill was originally titled Licence Revoked (with plenty of printed material using the name) before it was changed - presumably because too many people were associating it with driver's licences, or simply didn't know what 'revoked' meant.
  • The eighteenth film Tomorrow Never Dies was originally called Tomorrow Never Lies, which ties into the plot about a newspaper that makes the news. But there was a typo and the name stuck.
  • Modern Bond movies tend to start off just going by their official numbering before they end up getting official titles. Die Another Day was originally referred to as Bond 20, Skyfall as Bond 23, and No Time to Die as Bond 25.
• Jurassic World was filmed under the title Ebb Tide, while Jurassic World Dominion used Arcadia.
• King Kong (1933)'s original draft title was The Beast, but the film executives disliked such a generic, bland-sounding title, and after a number of suggestions, it was eventually named after the ape-monster himself, Kong, before being changed late in production to King Kong (he's never actually referred to as "King" Kong in the film itself) so that audiences wouldn't confuse it for one of the director's one-word titled documentaries (like Chang and Grass). One of the scrapped title suggestions, The Eighth Wonder, would become Kong's most famous nickname as "The Eighth Wonder of the World".
• The King of Marvin Gardens was The Philosopher King.
• Kingsman:
  • Kingsman: The Secret Service was Kingsman and Sons and The Secret Service.
  • The working title for Kingsman: The Golden Circle was Kingsman: The Golden Triangle, but it was changed because test audiences didn't understand what it meant (it's a reference to the real-life area where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet).
• The Last House on the Left was Krug & Company and Sex Crime of the Century.
• Last Train To Christmas was originally The Age of Tony.
• The Legend of Frenchie King: According to an article published in the Evening Standard while the movie was in production, its initial English title was Love on Horseback.
• The Lesson was initially titled The Tutor.
• Life of Brian started out as a joke made by Eric Idle when asked what Monty Python's next film would be - Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.
• Disney's live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch was given the working title Bad Dog, referencing the titular mischievous alien who gets adopted as a dog. More amusingly, the production company established just for this film was named "Blue Koala Pictures, Inc.", so named after the blue Stitch's resemblance to the marsupial.
• Live Free or Die Hard was first announced as Die Hard 4.0, tying into the films cyber-terrorism plot. When shooting actually began, 20th Century Fox announced the title would be Live Free or Die Hard, although the film was released everywhere but America as 4.0. Director Len Wiseman and star Bruce Willis can be heard on the DVD commentary mocking the change.
• Lolly-Madonna XXX is referred to in 1972 magazines as The Lolly-Madonna War, which is the title of the original novel.
• The Long Good Friday was originally called The Paddy Factor. This was changed to avoid spoiling the plot. After suggesting Harold's Kingdom, Havoc and Citadel Of Blood, The Long Good Friday was chosen, due to its similarities to Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and the Easter setting.
• Love Again, the American remake of SMS für Dich, was originally titled Text for You (a rough translation of the original title) then changed to It's All Coming Back to Me after the Céline Dion^note who plays herself in the filmsong "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", before settling on it's final title.
• The Mad Monster was The Mad Monsters.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe hides every production since 2010 under a fake working title such as "Freezer Burn" (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and "After Party" (Avengers: Age of Ultron).
  • Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were originally titled Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, respectively. The Movie Multipack aspect was later dropped.
• The two The Matrix sequels were shot back to back under the code name The Burly Man. Possibly in reference, the two major Neo vs. Smith fights in the two sequels are referred to as the "Burly Brawl" and the "Super Burly Brawl".
• The Jackie Chan movie The Medallion was originally titled Highbinders during filming. It's easy to tell by looking at the outtakes during the closing credits, since the working title is written on the clapperboard.
• Monsieur Verdoux was The Ladykiller and A Comedy of Murders.
• Monster a-Go Go began production under the title Terror at Half Day.
• Monster in the Closet was The Incredible Closet Monster.
• Mortal Engines was shipped to cinemas under the name Squeaky Wheels.
• When Paul Bogart signed to direct Mr. Ricco, it was just called Ricco.
• The Muppets:
  • The Great Muppet Caper was originally called simply The Muppet Movie 2.
  • The initial script for The Muppets Take Manhattan by Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses was called The Muppets: The Legend Continues. Another title was Muppet Movie III.
  • Muppets Most Wanted was originally announced as The Muppets ... Again! The opening number ends with a repeated Title Drop of the original title.
• My Bloody Valentine was The Secret.
• Nothing but Trouble was originally called Git, then Road to Ruin, then Valkenvania.
• O Lucky Man! was originally titled The Coffee Man. Nobody liked that title, so Lindsay Anderson changed it to Lucky Man.
• October Sky is an interesting case. The working title, "Rocket Boys" — also the name of the memoir which the movie is based on — is an anagram of October Sky.
• Pacific Rim: Uprising was initially called Maelstrom.
• Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) had the working title of Cinematography.
• Please Turn Over was originally Book of the Month.
• Predator was Alien Hunter, Hunter and Primevil.
• Mel Brooks originally wanted to call The Producers Springtime for Hitler, but he wasn't allowed to have Hitler in the title (though some overseas markets ended up using that title). Someone even suggested calling it Springtime for Mussolini.
• The Prowler was Most Likely to Die.
• While directing Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, likely to keep the nature of the film a secret, used the working title "Wimpy" (the nickname of a crew member).
• Psych-Out was originally called The Love Children. It was changed so audiences wouldn't think it was a film about bastards.
• Pulp Fiction was Black Mask.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark was The Adventures of Indiana Smith and Indiana Jones.
• Raising the Wind was originally The Happy Band.
• Rio Bravo was originally called A Bull by the Tail.
• Rocketship X-M was originally None Came Back.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was originally going to be called Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the title of the first volume of the comic. It was changed to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (the title of the second volume) because that was thought to be a more exciting title.
• Scream (1996) had the working title of Scary Movie. Scary Movie, made later to parody it, was put together from scripts titled Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween and Last Summer I Screamed Because Friday the 13th Fell on Halloween.
• Sicario: Day of the Soldado went though multiple titles. Originally, it was going to just be Soldado. But then it was changed to Sicario:Soldado, presumably to make it clearer that it was a sequel to Sicario. But then for whatever reason, the title was changed again to it's final title.
• Silent Fall had Indian Summer.
• Silent Night, Deadly Night was Slayride.
• The original title for Smile (2022) was There's Something Wrong with Rose.
• Subverted with Snakes on a Plane, which was only an Exactly What It Says on the Tin working title. Samuel L. Jackson liked the name so much that it he threatened to quit if they changed it (the proposed final title was the horribly generic Pacific Air Flight 121), while the public reaction to it created so much viral interest that they'd have been stupid to do so anyway.
• Some Like It Hot was Not Tonight, Josephine.
• Song of the South went into production under the title Uncle Remus.
• Starship Troopers (the film) was originally known as Bug Hunt, an unrelated script that was later changed into an adaptation of the novel.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan went through a lot of working titles as the story took shape. The earliest draft was titled Star Trek II: War of the Generations, as it involved Khan backing a youth revolt against the Federation led by Kirk's son. Next it became Star Trek II: The Omega System as the story had Khan get hold of a doomsday weapon; when art director Mike Minor suggested making the movie revolve around something more positive, it became Star Trek II: The Genesis Project. When director Nicholas Meyer did his (uncredited) rewrite of the script, the title became Star Trek II: The Undiscovered Country (a reference to Hamlet) –- an Executive Veto changed this to Star Trek II: The Vengeance of Khan.^note Meyer later got to recycle this title for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Then finally the word "Vengeance" was changed to "Wrath" as it clashed with the then-upcoming Star Wars Episode VI: Revenge of the Jedi (which itself was later changed to Return of the Jedi anyway).
  • Star Trek: Generations started development as Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Movie. It was probably changed because that is a very awkward name for a movie.
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope had the working title The Star Wars for the first drafts, including the May, 1973 story synopsis, May, 1974 Rough Draft, and July 1974 Revised First Draft. The January 28, 1975 second draft was titled The Adventures of the Starkiller (episode one) "The Star Wars", or, Adventures of the Starkiller (episode one) "The Star Wars", or, The Star Wars - Episode One - "The Star Wars". The August 1, 1975 Third Draft is The Star Wars – From the Adventures of Luke Starkiller. The January 1, 1976 Fourth Draft, titled Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the “Journal of the Whills” (Saga I) Star Wars, is no longer called The Star Wars, as well as the January 15, 1976 Revised Fourth Draft, titled Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, from the Journal of the Whills.
  • Return of the Jedi had Blue Harvest as a working title to keep the production hidden — besides from overeager fans, they really didn't want to repeat the experience of being overcharged by location managers for The Empire Strikes Back. When Family Guy made their first Star Wars special, they called it Blue Harvest. The film was later going to be named Revenge of the Jedi, which was changed due to revenge not being what a Jedi usually does. Revenge of the Sith gave this a Call-Back.
  • Attack of the Clones had the working title Jar Jar's Great Adventure, even though he isn't there nearly as much as last time.
  • The sequel trilogy (VII-IX) has "Foodles", "Space Bear", and "Black Diamond" as the three films' working titles.
• Stone Cold was The Brotherhood.
• Superman Returns was planned to have a sequel, titled Superman: The Man of Steel. The next movie still used part of the title.
• Teenagers from Outer Space was, at various points, Ray-Gun Terror, Killers from Outer Space, The Boy from Out of This World and Invasion of the Gargon.
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was originally called Head Cheese, then Leatherface.
• Brad Bird's Tomorrowland was originally known as 1952.
• The Toxic Avenger was filmed under the working title The Monster Hero — which gets a number of Title Drop moments, as it was changed at the last minute.
• Trading Places was originally called Black and White.
• Tremors was Land Sharks, Beneath Perfection and Dead Silence.
• TRON: Legacy was going to be called TR2N (or possibly T2.0N). The stylized 2 can still be seen, notably when Rinzler is looking for clues by the End of Line club.
• Twice Round the Daffodils was Ring for Nurse.
• The Vampire was It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn.
• Voyage of the Rock Aliens: Attack of the Aliens, and later Attack of the Rock 'n' Roll Aliens.
• Walking on Sunshine was originally going to be called Holiday.
• What a Girl Wants went through two other song titles in its development: American Girl and London Calling. The latter namesake song remained on the film's soundtrack, while the former song and "What A Girl Wants" weren't used at all.
• When Harry Met Sally... was originally called "Harry, This is Sally...".
• Wicked Little Things had two: The Children and Zombies.
• Wild Things was Sex Crimes, which was its actual title in multiple countries. This makes the intro of the movie also a Title Drop when Sam gives a lecture on the topic.
• Wrestlemaniac was The Mexican Porn Massacre.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: "Project 166" was used to refer to the movie by its crew when it was being worked on for the 2021 release.
• About Scout was originally called Scout.

Literature

• Alex Rider:
  • Eagle Strike was variously known in its early stages as Eagle Eye, Gameslayer and Never Play Dead (the last of which appears to be an Orphaned Reference).
  • The original title for Crocodile Tears was Endurance Point, which received a negative response when Horowitz mentioned it to schoolchildren.
• Played for Laughs when Allegiant, the third Divergent book, received the working title Detergent.
• Discworld:
  • Unclear Physics for Interesting Times
  • Words in the Head for Feet of Clay
  • Uberwald Nights for The Fifth Elephant
  • For Fear of Little Men (as in "We dare not go a-hunting...) for The Wee Free Men
  • The Science of Discworld IV was actually available for pre-order on Amazon with the subtitle The Magic of Roundworld, before a fan at a convention suggested Judgement Day.
• The Great Gatsby had a few working titles: Trimalchio (after a character who throws an elaborate party in Petronius's Satyricon), Trimalchio in West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby (after the dedication quote) and Under the Red White and Blue.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a rather interesting case. The working title was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which, as you may recognize, is now the title of the sixth book. Originally, the second book would have contained the Chamber of Secrets plotline and the Half-Blood Prince plotline side-by-side. Ultimately, J. K. Rowling decided to keep the Chamber of Secrets plotline and move the Half-Blood Prince plotline to a later book, hence the sixth's re-use of various plot points from the second, such as a mysterious old schoolbook.
  • After the fourth book's working title, Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament, was leaked, Rowling changed it to Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament. Finally she settled on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had two other possible titles, switching "Deathly Hallows" out with the Elder Wand or the Peverell Quest. Rowling admits that she rejected the latter pretty quickly, though, since "Quest" sounded corny.
• The first book in The Hunger Games trilogy had the working title The Tribute of District Twelve.
• Non-Discworld Terry Pratchett: Dodger had the working title of Happy Families.
• James Bond:
  • The Undertaker's Wind for Live and Let Die.
  • Meltdown for Licence Renewed.
  • Tomorrow Always Comes for No Deals, Mr. Bond. Much like the previous example, the change was forced by the publisher.
  • No Tears for Hong Kong for Zero Minus Ten. The original name ended up being used as a Market-Based Title in some countries.
  • The World Is Not Enough for The Facts of Death.
  • A Better Way to Die for High Time to Kill.
  • Doppelganger for DoubleShot. The title comes from the old legends about seeing one's double, which was seen as a bad omen.
  • Red Widow Dawn for The Man with the Red Tattoo, which is the name of the bad guys' Evil Plan.
• The Lord of the Rings was going to be six books. The first book was going to be The First Journey, The Ring Sets Out, or The Return of the Shadow. Book two was going to be The Journey of the Nine Companions, or The Ring Goes South. Book three was going to be The Treason of Isengard. Book four was going to be The Journey of the Ring-bearers, or The Ring Goes East. Book five was going to be The War of the Ring. Book six was going to be The End of the Third Age.
• Young Bond
  • Out of Breath for SilverFin. Before settling with the current one, there were also other Silver[Something] titles for the book; SilverBack, SilverSkin, SilverHead and SilverFist.
  • Shoot the Moon, The Big Smoke, and Six Days in December for Double or Die.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four was at one point intended to be titled The Last Man in Europe.
• In an example that now proves quite Hilarious in Hindsight, William Faulkner's working title for The Sound and the Fury was Twilight.
• Twilight itself had the working title Forks, the name of the town that it's set in. Word of God admits that it wouldn't be a very good title, but she didn't know what else to call it. They came up with "Twilight" while listing words with a nice, mysterious feel; originally they tried coming up with another word to pair with it, but eventually decided Twilight was good on its own.
  • The final book of the series, Breaking Dawn, was originally going to be titled Forever Dawn.
• Rogue Leaders: The Story Of LucasArts reveals the working titles of several cancelled projects, including Star Wars: Dark Jedi, Star Wars: Darth Maul, Star Wars: Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith, Star Wars: Han Solo, Star Wars: Jedi Knight III: Brink of Darkness, Star Wars: Jedi Hunter, Star Wars: Jedi Master, Star Wars: Jedi Outlaw, Star Wars: Jedi Rebel, Star Wars: Rebel Agent, Star Wars: Rebel Fury, Star Wars: Rebel Jedi, Star Wars: Rebel Scum, Star Wars: Rebel Warrior, Star Wars: Rise of the Rebellion, Star Wars: Rogue Jedi, Star Wars: Scum and Villainy, Star Wars: Smuggler, Star Wars: Underworld, and Star Wars: Vader.
• Wagons West: Most of the novels would announce the title of the next book in the series on the next page after the end. Three of those got changed from what was announced to what they were published by.
  • Oklahoma Sooners became Oklahoma Pride.
  • Taos Homecoming became Homecoming.
  • The Awakening of India Blackstone became simply Awakening.
• Warrior Cats has several.
  • When the second series was set to be just a trilogy, the working title for the trilogy was "Warriors: The Next Generation". Vicky said she had files on her computer with "TNG" in the name for years after they were out.
  • The Curse for Dark River, as seen in advanced-release copies of The Sight.
  • Cruel Season for Sunrise.
  • The Fourth Apprentice for the Omen Of The Stars series; the first book (which ended up getting the name The Fourth Apprentice) would have been Ambush.
  • Betrayal or Dark Betrayal for Night Whispers. (Vicky and the US editor Erica were "fighting most sweetly" about it, according to Kate.)
  • Crookedstar's Secret for Crookedstar's Promise, as HarperCollins' catalog originally listed it as such.
  • Strangers in the Snow for Shattered Peace, according to illustrator James Barry
  • Goosefeather's Curse had the working titles Goosefeather's Past (per a listing on a HarperCollins website) and Goosefeather's Madness (according to Vicky before its release).
  • Squirrelflight's Kin for Squirrelflight's Hope, according to a comment from Kate on her blog
  • Leopardstar's Salvation for Leopardstar's Honor, based on one of Kate's social media posts.
• White Noise had the working title Panasonic.
• The Wicked Lovely series had a few:
  • "Shiver" for Fragile Eternity
  • "Skin Starved" for Radiant Shadows
• Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon was going to be called At Least I Didn't Blow Up OUR Moon, but the publishers wanted something that matched the title of the previous book to make it clear that they were connected. The author considers the working title to be the "real" title.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "Robbie": "Robbie" was the title Dr Asimov used to submit the story to Astounding Science Fiction (rejected by John W. Campbell) and several other magazines. The story wasn't published until Dr Asimov's friend, Frederik Pohl, became the head editor of two new magazines. He changed the title to "Strange Playfellow". Dr Asimov changed it back when publishing I, Robot.
  • "The Callistan Menace": Dr. Asimov used "Stowaway" as the title when he was submitting it to various Science Fiction Pulp Magazines. Editor Frederik Pohl, who accepted it, changed the name for publication.
  • Pebble in the Sky: The original draft was written as Grow Old with Me (alternatively, Grow Old Along with Me), a Literary Allusion Title to the first lines of "Rabbi Ben Ezra", by Robert Browning. Joseph Schwartz is quoting the poem to himself in the opening (and closing) chapters.
  • "The Ugly Little Boy": Dr. Asimov used "The Ugly Little Boy" as the title when he was submitting it to Galaxy Science Fiction. It was published under the name "Lastborn", but Dr. Asimov changed it back when given the opportunity.
• This Is Not a Werewolf Story originally had a different title, though the author hasn't revealed what it was. Apparently she changed it out of frustration that, despite the protagonist insisting that he's Totally Not a Werewolf, one would-be agent rejected it with the message "I'm not taking any werewolf stories.”
• Words of Radiance, the second book of The Stormlight Archive had the working title "Book of Endless Pages" for a while. It was changed because the publisher thought the title was just a bit too on the nose given its length.
• Miracle Creek: Angie Kim and her editor wanted to call the book Miracle Submarine, but changed it because some booksellers thought it was too weird.
• The Someday Birds was originally called Chicken Nuggets Across America.
• Rachel Hawkins:
  • Hex Hall series: The original title of the first book, Hex Hall, was "Too Near the Glass". It went on submission as "Demonglass", which ended up being the title of book 2 instead.
  • Prince Charming, the first book in the Royals series, was first published as Royals. Before that, it had a working title of "We'll Never Be Royals''.
  • The Wife Upstairs was originally "Mrs. Rochester".
  • Before the title was announced for The Ex Hex, the author often referred to it on Twitter as "Hocus Pocus (But They F***)".
  • Reckless Girls was originally referred to as "Boat Murder".
• Keeper of the Lost Cities: Book one (Keeper of the Lost Cities) was originally named "Chasing Everblaze", and then briefly "Everblaze", which would become the title of book three instead.
• Where Are the Children?: The original title Mary Higgins Clark came up with was Die a Little Death, taken from a memoir of one of King Louis XIV's mistresses, specifically the part where she describes her grief over the death of her baby ("And I with my baby died a little death"). Higgins Clark later changed it to Where Are the Children? at the request of her editor, as she felt Die a Little Death was too suggestive of a "hard-edged crime story", whereas Where are the Children? was agreed to be more compelling and tonally-fitting.

Live-Action TV

• Andy Richter Controls the Universe was originally titled Anything Can Happen.
• Babylon 5 was originally pitched with the title The Babylon Project.
• Better with You went through the titles Better Together, Couples, and Leapfrog.
• Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson originally wanted to call Bottom Your Bottom, purely to have people say, "I saw Your Bottom on TV last night". They also considered My Bottom, purely to annoy the continuity announcer ("Coming up next, My Bottom").
• Breaking In went through the working titles Security and Titan Team.
• Danger Man was originally called Lone Wolf.
• The short-lived CBS series Danny was originally tiled American Wreck, before it was decided that the name would paint a negative picture of the mild show.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation was originally conceived as Ready, Willing and Wired. When Stephen Stohn suggested the eventual title, apparently Linda Schuyler disliked the sense of rehashing past successes and felt the Star Trek reference sounded forced at first. But, since name recognition both in the U.S. and abroad is always an uphill battle for a Canadian Series, tying it in with the still-popular previous efforts made good business sense.
• Many episodes of Doctor Who were filmed under a different name to the one they were broadcast under.
  • Due in part to the tendency to use working titles and the fact that each individual episode had titles at first, there is some debate as to what some early Hartnell stories should be called. For instance, the second serial had seven episodes, titled "The Dead Planet", "The Survivors", "The Escape", "The Ambush", "The Expedition", "The Ordeal", and "The Rescue", and the story as a whole used the titles "The Mutants" and "The Dead Planet" during production. Despite all this, the title most commonly used for marketing is "The Daleks".
  • Three separate stories were originally known as "Return of the Cybermen", with at least one being changed so the Cybermen would be a surprise.
  • "The Claws of Axos" was known as "The Vampire from Space" right up until transmission, with the first episode being listed in the Radio Times under that title.
  • "The Deadly Assassin" was originally "The Dangerous Assassin", until Robert Holmes decided it didn't "sound right".
  • "The Face of Evil" was originally "The Day God Went Mad", apparently just to wind up the Moral Guardians.
  • "The Caves of Androzani" was originally called "Chain Reaction".
  • "The Long Game" was "The Companion Who Couldn't", giving away how short Adam's story arc was going to be.
  • When the first series of New-Era Who was in production, all the production materials gave the series name as "Torchwood" - an anagram of Doctor Who - in an effort to keep it secret. The title eventually acquired its own series because Russell T Davies liked the way it sounded.
  • "Silence in the Library" was originally known as "A River Song Ending" because Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies were having a game of coming up with titles with rude acronyms. And yes, this is how River Song got her name to begin with.
  • In his Doctor Who Magazine column for March 2011, Steven Moffat announced what some of the upcoming episodes wouldn't be called: The first episode of the new season wouldn't be "Year of the Moon" ("I really like that title, but absolutely nobody else does in the whole wide world"), the second wouldn't be "Look Behind You!", and the mid-season finale either wouldn't be "His Darkest Hour" or it wouldn't be "A Good Man Goes to War". Neil Gaiman's episode, meanwhile, had a story so secret Moffat couldn't even tell us what it wasn't called. ("Bigger on the Inside", and before that "The House of Nothing").
  • In a later column, Moffat mentions that "The Eleventh Hour" was originally "The Doctor Returns" before "some smartarse" pointed out he hadn't gone anywhere.
  • One two-parter of Series 9 was first announced as "Invasion of the Zygons"/"Inversion of the Zygons", but subsequently changed to "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion", probably because it was catchier.
  • Sarah Dollard's "Trap Street" was a standalone script subsequently revised into a Story Arc-critical Wham Episode and retitled "Face the Raven".
  • "The Pilot" was originally announced as "A Star in Her Eye", but subsequently given a Double-Meaning Title referencing both the antagonist and the episode being written to serve as a jumping-on point for new or lapsed viewers since it introduced a new companion.
• For Your Love, a sitcom that started on NBC and was continued on The WB, had the working title You Send Me. It would have been Titled After the Song either way.
• Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights was originally called Deal With This, Retards. This was changed by Channel 4 to avoid offending people.
• Getting Together is referred to in some early articles as The Bobby Sherman Show.
• The Goldbergs's working title was "How the Hell am I Normal?"
• Grange Hill was originally called Grange Park, which would go on to be used as the name of the school in Phil Redmond's other series Brookside.
• Quiz show Have a Go was originally called Quiz-Bang.
• The Australian drama series headLand had the working titles of Away From Home, Campus and Ten Degrees South. The first title is explained by the fact it was originally intended as a Spin-Off from Home and Away, but with UK broadcaster Channel Five having no interest in the spin off, Channel 7 decided to make it a separate series altogether.
• House of the Dragon: "Red Gun: Fire Unit" was used to refer to the series on the set.
• The short-lived NBC series Imagine That was originally titled What Are You Thinking? and later The Hank Azaria Show, before getting the final title.
• The pilot for The Inbetweeners was titled Baggy Trousers. In a radio interview, Joe Thomas (who plays Simon) revealed a working title of 1, 2, 3, 4. This is presumably a reference to the song of the same name by Feist, which appears predominantly in the soundtrack of the first and second series.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was originally slated to be It's Always Sunny on Television when initially developed. The final title was developed as another working title, but they couldn't think of a better one so they just left it.
• Merv Griffin pitched Jeopardy! as What's the Question? in 1964 and Wheel of Fortune as Shopper's Bazaar in 1973. Both shows were pitched to NBC.
• Kickin' It had the working title Wasabi Warriors; perhaps it was changed to clarify that it's a martial-arts rather than Cooking Duel show.
• The short-lived Fox series Life On A Stick was originally titled Related by Family.
• Each of the Marvel Cinematic Universe shows on Netflix shows used a different working title for shooting, with the title being in some way related to something in the actual show. This practice continues with the MCU shows on Disney+:
  • Daredevil (2015): Season 1 filmed under the working title "Bluff". Seasons 2 and 3 used the working title "Ringside", alluding to Matt being the son of a boxer.
  • Jessica Jones (2015) used the working title "Violet", reflecting Jessica's main theme color.
  • Luke Cage (2016) filmed under the working title "Tiara", a reference to Luke's comics outfit.
  • Iron Fist (2017) filmed under the working title "Kick", since Danny is a martial artist.
  • The Defenders (2017) filmed under the working title of "Group Therapy", a lampshade on how dysfunctional the four main heroes are.
  • The Punisher (2017) filmed under the working title of "Crime".
  • The first season of Loki (2021) was codenamed "River Cruise". The yet-to-be-released second season has the codename "Architect".
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters filmed under the title Hourglass (referencing the titular organization's logo), and working titles included Godzilla and the Titans and just Monarch.
• Various proposed titles for Monty Python's Flying Circus included Whither Canada?, The Nose Show, Ow! It's Colin Plint!, A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin, The Toad Elevating Moment, Owl Stretching Time and even Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus. Several of these titles were later used for individual episodes.
• NCIS: Los Angeles was called NCIS: Legend when being developed.
• One Piece (2023) used the working titles "Project Roger" for the first season and "Project Renaissance" for the second season.
• The short-lived NBC series The Paul Reiser Show was originally titled Next.
• Peep Show was originally titled POV.
• Perfect Strangers was originally called "The Greenhorn", likely in reference to how new and exciting was for Balki.
• Power Rangers and Super Sentai:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was originally pitched as Galaxy Rangers, which is also the international title used for its source series.
  • During development, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive was originally titled Drive Force and later Relic Hunters.
  • Power Rangers Jungle Fury was titled Beast Fist early on in its development (a translation of the term "Juken", used in its parent show Gekiranger).
  • Power Rangers Dino Fury, as revealed by director Simon Bennett, was originally titled Dino Knights, fitting with the heroes of Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger. By this point, Hasbro have final approval of all names, and it was ultimately changed.
  • Hikari Sentai Maskman was titled Fiveman, which explains why their team symbol is the number 5. It was changed during post-production of the first episode, and the Fiveman name was used three years later.
  • ''Choujin Sentai Jetman, evidently, had at least a couple; director Keita Amemiya gave the tentative title of "Jumpman" in a magazine before the premiere, while Toshihide Wakamatsu (Gai Yuki) would recall that it was originally "Birdman".
  • As revealed by Tom Constantine, a proposed title for Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger was Sentai Sentai Sentaiger. The name "Sentaiger" ended up being used by the Geardalinger as the generic sound used when activating Sentai Gears for previous teams.
• Pointless was originally pitched under the title Obviously.
• The Price Is Right was given the working name Auction-Aire when NBC optioned and piloted it in 1956.
• Roseanne was going to be Life and Stuff. The title was used for the pilot episode.
• The Nickelodeon TV movie Rufus was originally titled Manny's Best Friend.
• Seinfeld was going to be Stand Up, The Jerry Seinfeld Show, or The Seinfeld Chronicles, which was used for the pilot episode.
• Shine a Light was originally The Lighthouse Keepers.
• Soap was only supposed to be the working title but after getting the show done they couldn't think of a better title so left it.
• Squid Game was first announced as Round 6. (Brazil still used it as the eventual title)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation had a number of these including Star Trek A New Beginning, Star Trek A New Generation, Star Trek The New Generation and Star Trek Enterprise 7 (the latter title is explained by the fact the ship was to be known as the Enterprise 7 rather than the Enterprise D).
• Stranger Things was originally going to be called Montauk, and be based on the experiments that supposedly happened in the real-life New York town. Later the Duffer Brothers went through a list of other possible titles, settling on Stranger Things due to its similarity to Needful Things by Stephen King. They continued to have "a lot of heated arguments" about this afterwards, though.
• Both Tattletales and its beta edition He Said, She Said had developmental titles. He Said, She Said was first planned in 1966 for NBC as It Had to Be You, but was shelved for three years and was eventually syndicated. It was redeveloped for CBS under the name Celebrity Match Mates in 1973 and had Gene Rayburn as the host. Rayburn landed the Match Game reboot, so as the show made it to the air in February 1974 as Tattletales, Bert Convy was tapped as host.
• That '70s Show had the working titles The Kids Are Alright and Teenage Wasteland, but everyone just kept referring to it as "that '70s show" and the title stuck.
• To Tell the Truth had come about when Monty Hall brokered a meeting for producer Bob Stewart with Goodson-Todman in 1956 with a concept he called Three of a Kind. It went to pilot as Nothing But the Truth and was eventually renamed To Tell the Truth upon debuting on CBS.
• Torchwood: Miracle Day was originally going to be named The New World, as evidenced by early promotional materials before changing to Miracle Day. However, the first episode keeps the original name and one character name-drops it in the season finale.
  • Torchwood itself takes its title from what was the anagram code name for the first season of the Doctor Who revival.
  • The episode Torchwood S1 E9 "Random Shoes" was originally called Invisible Eugene, and the working title was used in some promotional material.
• The Train Now Standing... was originally Whistle Stop.
• Ultra Series:
  • Ultra Q was going to be called Unbalance. But with the popularity of the word "Ultra" in Japan at the time, it was changed, with the "Q" added to stand for "Question" or "Quest" to fit the mystery themes of the show. The title of Unbalance was later recycled by TsuPro for a horror series.
  • Ultraman had several as it went through multiple drafts. Among the more notable of these are Bemlar: Scientific Investigation Agency and Redman (the latter of which was later recycled for a different show).
  • Ultraseven was produced under the name Ultra Eye, which later became the name of Dan's Transformation Trinket.
  • Ultraman Ace was originally to be named Ultra A. This was changed because it turned out the name was already copyrighted. Incidentally, this is also when the franchise began using Character Titles as the franchise naming convention, as all the previous series were just called Ultra ___.
• The short-lived Fox series Unhitched was originally titled The Rules for Starting Over.
• When VR Troopers was still in development as a one-hero show, it was going to be titled Psycon. Later it was renamed Cybertron. It was probably changed after that to avoid stepping on Hasbro's toes.
• Weirdsister College had a working title of The Worst Witch: The College Years (and ended up being used in an autumn CITV promo).
• The short-lived CBS series Welcome To The Captain was originally titled The Captain.
• What's My Line? had the working title Occupation Unknown.
• Without a Trace was originally called Vanished, but the name was then changed when CBS picked up the series.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? had the working title The Cash Mountain.
• The UK version of Who Wants to Be a Superhero? had the working title of The Ultimate Superhero at one point. This is evidenced in the episode where the superheroes visit BBC Television Centre and their guest passes read "The Ultimate Superhero".
• The short-lived Fox series The Winner was originally titled Becoming Glen.
• You, Me and the Apocalypse was originally known as Apocalypse: Slough, but was changed as it was feared the Americans would not get the joke ("Slough" rhymes with "now", as in Apocalypse Now). It was changed to ''You, Me and the End of the World" before gaining its final title.

Magazines

• Analog: [Invoked] In the April 1941 issue's "In Times To Come" column, the Chief Editor explains renaming one of the next month's stories, originally submitted as "Foriegn Policy", would be named "Solution Unsatisfactory".

Music

• Aerosmith: The song "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" was originally being written under the title "Cruisin' for a Lady", with different lyrics. However, someone misheard the line "Do the lucky lady" as "Dude looks like a lady", and when Steven Tyler found out, he decided to change the song's title and lyrics to match the mishearing.
• The Beatles:
  • The working title of "Yesterday", when Paul McCartney first came up with the music, was "Scrambled Eggs", because it fit the rhythm. According to McCartney, the tune came to him in a dream, and for weeks he thought it must be an old song that he had heard somewhere, so he sang it to everyone he knew to see if it was familiar, using the lyrics "Scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs." Obviously those were never intended to be the song's final lyrics. McCartney, as a joke, applied full lyrics to "Scrambled Eggs" and performed it with Jimmy Fallon on Fallon's NBC late night show.
  • "With a Little Help from My Friends" had the working title of "Bad Finger Boogie", because while it was being recorded John Lennon had injured one of his fingers. Badfinger, who were the first non-Beatles project signed to Apple Records, ended up taking their name from this.
  • George Harrison apparently had trouble coming up with song titles, at least during the Revolver sessions. "Love You To" had the working title of "Granny Smith." When asked what he was going to call another song, George replied "I don't know," so John exasperatedly suggested "Granny Smith Part Friggin' Two!" An engineer went with "Laxton's Superb," after another apple cultivar, before it was humorously decided to just call it "I Don't Know," and finally, "I Want to Tell You."
  • "Mark I" (also referred to as "The Void") became "Tomorrow Never Knows" after Ringo casually came up with the phrase as a malapropism.
  • Revolver was originally called Abracadabra.
  • The White Album was originally called A Doll's House, after the Henrik Ibsen play of the same name. The release of Music in a Doll's House by the British band Family in the middle of the recording sessions forced a title change. It was Richard Hamilton, who designed the album art, who suggested a Self-Titled Album.
  • "Rocky Raccoon" was originally written as "Rocky Sassoon". Paul changed the name to make it more Western-sounding.
  • The album Let It Be was originally called Get Back.
  • The band themselves also had this. They originally formed as a skiffle group called The Blackjacks, before quickly changing their name to The Quarrymen after they discovered another group was already using that name. Later they changed their name to Johnny and the Moondogs. When Stuart Sutcliffe joined, he suggested changing the name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They then went through a few variations on this name, first changing it to The Silver Beetles, then The Silver Beatles, and finally shortening it to just The Beatles.
• According to one of many stories, the band Derek and the Dominos were supposed to be called Eric and the Dynamos, but someone misheard their name and the new name stuck.
• Dream Theater formed under the name Majesty, but had to change their name because another band were already using that name. A track on their debut album When Dream and Day Unite was titled "The Ytse Jam" in reference to this. They went through several other names, including Magus and M1, and even spent a week under the name Glasser, before finally settling on the name Dream Theater.
• Kings of Leon originally wanted to title their hit song "Set Us on Fire", but someone misheard the title, so it became "Sex on Fire".
• Starflyer 59: Jason Martin was initially going to call the band Starflyer 2000; his brother Ronnie even gave a shout out to "Jason Martin and Andrew Larsen and their brilliant new group, Star Flyer 2000!" in the liner notes of his Rainbow Rider album. Jason mentioned in some interviews that he was working on a new album called The Sad Lives of the Hollywood Lovers; it ended up getting released as The Fashion Focus. "Major Awards" from the album Old was initially called "The Sheriff". "The Brightest of the Head" from the album Dial M was originally a demo titled "God Forbid" on the Ghosts of the Future vinyl series; Jason says he changed it because he feared it might be sacrilegious.
• blink-182's "What's My Age Again?" was originally titled "Peter Pan Complex", but was eventually changed at the label's request.
• Spoon's "The Ghost of You Lingers" had the working title of "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga", a title that was supposed to sound like its staccato piano part. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ended up becoming the name of the album it was on instead.
• Faith No More's "Ricochet" had the working title of "Nirvana", and sometimes appeared on their setlists under that name even after it was released under another title. This inspired its share of Wild Mass Guessing among fans at the time — it doesn't help that the song includes the lines "And I'd rather be shot in my face/than hear what you're going to say". However the band maintain that the working title was chosen because it happened to be written on the day of Kurt Cobain's death (and thus slightly before he was actually reported dead), not because the lyrics actually had anything to do with him.
  • An instrumental jam that eventually became the verse section of "Zombie Eaters" was informally known to the band as "Surprise! You're Dead". While the finished song ended up being called something else, Mike Patton liked the title "Surprise! You're Dead" enough that he used it for a totally different song on the same album.
• Both fans of The Killers and the band itself have taken to referring to unannounced future albums as "TK#", with "#" being the album number. For example, Pressure Machine was known as TK7.
• The Megadeth song "Set the World Afire" was originally called "Megadeath," and was written by Dave Mustaine shortly after he left Metallica. Mustaine took this word and removed the A to name his band "Megadeth", and changed the song's title to "Burnt Offerings" for the shows it was played at in 1984 and 1985. It was later renamed to "Set the World Afire" when he rediscovered it for So Far, So Good... So What!.
  • The working title of "Into the Lungs of Hell" was "Quicksand", and it too appeared in 1984 and 1985, though he did announce it under the former title at least once. Bootlegs often list them as different songs because "Quicksand" is not as musically developed.
    • Other working titles (sometimes with different lyrics): "Blood and Honor" became "Wake Up Dead", "Conjure Me" became "The Conjuring", "Black Friday" became "Good Mourning...Black Friday", "Next Victim" became "My Last Words", "Evil That's Within" became "Sin" and "Bullprick" became "FFF".
• Metallica's Demo Magnetic shows the Death Magnetic songs, aside from "The Unforgiven III" ("UN3") and "My Apocalypse" ("Ten", because it is the tenth song), had amusing ones: "Hi Guy" ("That Was Just Your Life"), "Neinteen" ("The End of the Line"), "Black Squirrel" ("Broken, Beat & Scarred"), "Casper" ("The Day That Never Comes"), "Flamingo" ("All Nightmare Long"), "German Soup" ("Cyanide"), "Gymbag" ("The Judas Kiss"), and "K2LU" ("Suicide & Redemption" - like "The Call of Ktulu", an instrumental).
  • "Until It Sleeps" from Load had the working title of "Fobd", because the song reminded the band of Soundgarden's "Fell On Black Days" - an early demo, recorded before the band had worked out real lyrics, was released as a B-Side under that title.
  • Kill 'Em All was originally called Metal Up Your Ass. It was changed as the label thought it would impede the band's commercial success, though the original artwork was later re-used for a T-shirt.
• Richard Strauss originally intended to title his Alpine Symphony after Nietzsche's Der Antichrist.
• Beck's "Broken Train" was originally going to be called "Out of Kontrol" before a last-minute title change — basically shifting the Title Drop from the pre-chorus to the chorus itself. The reason for this was to avoid having Similarly Named Works — The Chemical Brothers' "Out of Control" was released as a single a month earlier. Some promo copies of Midnite Vultures still had the song listed as "Out of Kontrol".
• Stephen Malkmus intended to call his solo debut Swedish Reggae, as a humorous Non-Indicative Title (since it's a rock album by an American performer) — it came out as a Self-Titled Album instead, supposedly out of concern that the title would be taken at face value and it would be filed under the reggae section at record stores.
  • The working title of Pavement's Terror Twilight was Farewell Horizontal. Bob Nastanovich hated the working title and came up with Terror Twilight as an alternative, later saying "there was no way I was going to be on the Farewell Horizontal tour for the next year."
• The Pink Floyd song "Echoes" started life as a set of experimental pieces, collectively known as "Nothing, Parts 1-24", worked on separately by the band members. The pieces were assembled into "The Son of Nothing" which was developed further by the band as a whole. It was taken on stage as "The Return of the Son of Nothing" before being released on the album Meddle under its final name.^note Roger Waters, being far more humourous than events a decade later made him seem to be, wanted to name the song "We Won the Double" in celebration of Arsenal's 1971 victory.
  • Proposed titles for A Momentary Lapse of Reason included Signs of Life, Of Promises Broken, and Delusions of Maturity. Signs of Life was supposedly rejected as a title because it would be too easy for Caustic Critics to make quips about the band showing "no signs of life".
  • The Animals songs "Dogs" and "Sheep" begun being called by their opening lines, "You Gotta Be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling" (in the latter's case, the opening of what became the post-breakdown verse - and even then, changed to "Bleating and babbling").
  • The Dark Side of the Moon was originally called Eclipse. This was actually something of a back and forth - The Dark Side of the Moon was their first choice, but when they learned a group called Medicine Head released an album with a nearly identical title while they were still working on theirs, they settled on Eclipse. However, Medicine Head's Dark Side of the Moon proved to be a commercial flop, so it was decided they could use the name again.
• The Police's debut album was at one point going to be called Police Brutality - Their manager, Miles Copeland III, proposed the title, presumably thinking it would emphasize the band's early Punk Rock image. Outlandos d'Amour came about when Copeland heard "Roxanne" and decided the band should have a more "romantic" image instead.
• Phil Collins' hit song "Sussudio" came from a nonsense word he invented as a lyric for a drum track he was working on. All attempts to find a better word with the right rhythm failed, so "Sussudio" stayed.
• Fifth Harmony's "Work from Home" was initially going to be called "Work", but then Rihanna's "Work" was released a month earlier. Tellingly, the word "work" is repeated much more often in the refrain than the full phrase "work from home".
• Chris Cornell's solo debut Euphoria Morning was originally going to be titled Euphoria Mourning, but he decided that the fact that "mourning" and "morning" are homonyms would cause confusion about the title when it was said aloud on the radio. He later regretted this decision (citing friends telling him the album title sounded like an air freshener scent) and went back to the working title 16 years after the fact: A 2015 reissue restored the original intended spelling to the artwork.
• Pearl Jam's Vs was very nearly Five Against One (after a lyric from "Animal"). The change in title came so late that some promo cassettes still bore the original title, while the very first pressing didn't have an album title anywhere on the packaging, making it a de facto Self-Titled Album. Follow-up Vitalogy was also known as Life by the time lead single "Spin the Black Circle" was released.
• Green Day originally wanted to title their album Insomniac Jesus Christ Supermarket.
  • The album Dookie was originally going to be called Liquid Dookie, inspired by a time when the band all had diarrhoea while on tour. However, the label wouldn't let them use the name, thinking it would put people off, so they shortened it to just Dookie.
  • Father of All Motherfuckers was originally going to be titled American Idiot Part 2: Father of All Motherfuckers as a joke. This is why the cover art is reminiscent of the cover art for American Idiot.
  • The band themselves were originally called Sweet Children when they formed. They changed their name after recording their debut EP to avoid conflict with another band named Sweet Baby, settling on the name Green Day due to their fondness for cannabis (the phrase "green day" being Bay Area slang for spending a day doing nothing but smoking marijuana).
• Armed Forces by Elvis Costello was originally called Emotional Facism.
• Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones was originally called Tropical Disease.
• Tommy by The Who was originally called Deaf, Dumb and Blind.
• The Beach Boys:
  • Pet Sounds was originally called Remember the Zoo.
  • Smile was originally called Teen Angel.
• The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths was originally called Margaret on the Guillotine. Morrissey did use the title for a track on his first solo album Viva Hate.
• Young Americans by David Bowie was originally called Shilling the Rube.
• Led Zeppelin did use the working title of the song, even if it had nothing to do with the lyrics:
  • "Black Dog" was named for a dog hanging around while writing the song.
  • "Four Sticks" was named as John Bonham played the song using four sticks at the same time.
  • Presence was originally titled Obelisk.
• Nigga Please by Ol’ Dirty Bastard was originally called Black Man Is God, the White Man Is the Devil.
• Kilimanjaro by The Teardrop Explodes was originally called Everybody Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes.
• Hysteria by Def Leppard was originally called Animal.
• Planet Waves by Bob Dylan was originally called Ceremonies of the Horsemen.
  • Blonde on Blonde was originally called I Want You.
• Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys was originally called Don't Be a Faggot, wisely changed at Columbia's behest.
  • "Sabotage" evolved out of an instrumental jam the band started referring to as "Chris Rock". That Chris Rock was well-known at the time, but it was a Creator In-Joke rather than a direct Shout-Out - there was a studio engineer named Chris who never had anything to say about the music they were recording until he heard them play "Sabotage", which he was enthusiastic about, seemingly because it was more of a rock song... So it was "Chris Rock" because it was the "rock" song that Chris liked.
• The River by Bruce Springsteen was originally called Ties That Bind.
• Hotter Than Hell by KISS was originally called Harder They Come.
• Permission To Land by The Darkness was originally called Thank You, This Will Suffice for Me. Now If You Please, Have Sex with My Friend.
• Weezer's Make Believe could have been One Thousand Soviet Children Marching Towards the Sun, as per drummer Patrick Wilson's suggestion, or Either Way I'm Fine, after a comment lead singer Rivers Cuomo would frequently make when asked his opinion about arrangement or production choices.
  • Pacific Daydream could have been Somebody's Daydream - Rivers initially came up with the latter, but Patrick suggested the former.
• Slayer's God Hates Us All was originally going to be Soundtrack to the Apocalypse. Tom Araya decided the latter sounded more like a title for a retrospective box set than an album, so they named it after a lyric from the song "Disciple" instead... At the same time, they decided a box set was actually a good idea, so two years later they put one together and did in fact call it Soundtrack to the Apocalypse.
• Both Nevermind and In Utero from Nirvana had working titles. The former was Sheep, so named because Cobain thought sheep would be the only people who bought it. The latter was I Hate Myself and Want to Die, which was dropped because Cobain thought people would take the title seriously instead of the intended joke.
• The Breeders' "Cannonball" was initially referred to by the band as "Grunggae" (a Word Purée Title combining "grunge" and "reggae") - a demo of the song was released under that title as a B-Side, wherein Kim Deal shouts "grunggae!" as Studio Chatter.
• Parklife by Blur was originally called London.
• Nine Inch Nails's album With Teeth had the working title of Bleedthrough, referencing the album's early stages as a straight up concept album about different layers of reality blending together, but changed to its final title as Trent Reznor thought that the title made people think of a 'tampon commercial'.
• Stratovarius originally formed under the name Black Water. When Timo Tolkki joined, they changed their name to Stratovarius, a portmanteau of the Fender Stratocaster model of electric guitar and a Stradivarius violin, intended to represent the fusion of classical and power metal elements in the band's style.
  • Their second album had the working title Stratovarius II, before it was released as Twilight Time.
  • A crossover with What Could Have Been — The album Polaris was being developed under the codename R...R..., with Timo Tolkki as the main songwriter. However, after a long period of high tension between Tolkki and the other band members, he eventually left the group, forming a new band named Revolution Renaissance, which would have been the name of the album. The remaining band members decided to rework the album entirely, releasing it as Polaris.
• Sonata Arctica formed as a hard rock band under the name Tricky Beans, before changing their name slightly to Tricky Means. Later, they changed their style to power metal (emulating fellow Finnish symphonic power metal band Stratovarius, who were already quite popular at the time) and renamed themselves Sonata Arctica.
• One of the more famous examples is "Chop Suey!" by System of a Down, which was originally called "Suicide". At the beginning of the song, you can hear Serj Tankian announce, "We're rolling 'Suicide'."
• Eminem's 2002 album was originally planned to be called The Eminem LP to close off the trilogy with The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, but Em felt that the theme had gotten old, so the album was renamed The Eminem Show.
• Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" was originally "God Blessed America for Me."
• Noah's song "Kupeluk Hatimu" was called "David Slow" at first, referring to its slow tempo and the fact that it's one of two songs that David wrote for Keterkaitan Keterikatan.
• Jhariah said on Twitter in 2022 that "DEBT COLLECTOR" was originally called "LIE! LIE! LIE!"
• Static-X initially formed as Drill, then became Static - the "X" was added once they realized there were already multiple other bands calling themselves Static. At one point they had also wanted to call themselves Wisconsin Death Trip, after a historical non-fiction book the band had become fascinated with - when their label told them the name was too long, Wisconsin Death Trip became the title of their first album instead.
• Underworld's Beaucoup Fish could have been titled Tonight Matthew I'm Going To Be Underworld - the group ultimately decided that the title, referencing a catchphrase from British talent competition tv show Stars In Their Eyes, would be incomprehensible to international audiences. Instead they titled the album after a Spoken Word in Music sample from the song "Jumbo".
• Silverchair wrote three uptempo, somewhat Punk Rock influenced songs during the sessions for their album Freak Show and gave them the placeholder titles "Punk Song #1", "Punk Song #2", and "Punk Song #3" - "Punk Song #1" appeared on Freak Show itself as "Lie to Me", "Punk Song #3" became "Satin Sheets" on the followup album Neon Ballroom, and "Punk Song #2" kept its working title and appeared as a B-Side to "Freak", as well as on the soundtrack to Scary Movie.
• Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" had three alternate World War II-influenced titles that the composer considered but rejected: "Fanfare for the Spirit of Democracy," "Fanfare for the Rebirth of Lidice" and "Fanfare for Paratroops."
• Pop rock / Alternative Rock group Deep Blue Something started out calling themselves Leper Messiah as a Shout-Out to "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie. A possibly apocryphal story has them changing their name after some of the audience at their first headlining show expected them to play Heavy Metal - "Leper Messiah" also happens to be a Metallica song title.
• Grimes's album Halfaxa was originally titled Glossolalia.
• Charli XCX's CRASH was originally titled Sorry If I Hurt You and had a corresponding Title Track, but she changed it to CRASH as an homage to the film by David Cronenberg. The song was released on the deluxe edition.

Podcasts

• '80s All Over had the working title Klytus, I'm Bored, which the producer judged a bit too obscure, as discussed in the December 1980 episode.
• Escape from Vault Disney! had two potential titles before the show launched with its current name, that being Disney Minus, which was rejected for being too negative, and Once Upon a Stream, which was already taken by a Disney+ podcast starting at around the same time.
• Face Jam went by The Michael, Jordan Podcast in its test and pilot episodes, after the hosts Michael Jones and Jordan Cwierz. They fought the producers all the way to keep that name, although they eventually settled for a Space Jam shoutout and keeping a basketball-esque theme for the show. It's a food review podcast, by the way.

Pro Wrestling

• Project 161 was the working title for The Age Of The Fall.
• Vince McMahon originally wanted to call WWE's flagship event "The Colossal Tussle". Yes, really. Thankfully, Howard Finkel blurted out "WrestleMania" in a company meeting and the rest was history.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: Jim Henson first conceived of the series with the temporary title of The Woozle World. It was also called Fraggle Hill for a while.
• Sesame Street went through various working titles, including 123 Avenue B, which was rejected for being too New York specific. This was even parodied in the show's 1969 pitch reel, where Muppets suggest various bad titles. The creative team ultimately settled on Sesame Street because it was "the least bad title" they could think of.
• The Puzzle Place was known as The Puzzleworks in its pilot episodes, and before that, it was announced as The Puzzle Factory.
• Donkey Hodie: The PBS Kids app and the schedule of one PBS affiliate listed "Duck Duck's Great Adventure" under the title "Duck Duck Can't Choose".

Tabletop Games

• Averted in the case of Steve Jackson's Generic Universal RolePlaying System, which was never intended to be released under that name, and was always supposed to get an evocative, marketable title at some point... but it never happened. The working title was its joke name at the company: Great Unnamed RolePlaying System = GURPS for short - was used as a placeholder while waiting for someone to think of a better name. But no one did, and GURPS, became the title it was released as.
• Every set of cards for Magic: The Gathering gets a code name. When sets were grouped in blocks, this was something that made sense in threes (since blocks usually have three sets) such as Friends, Romans, Countrymen, with the actual names turning up once flavour has been fully assembled. Occasionally they came up with clever things to do with this; Lorwyn was announced with the code names Peanut, Butter, Jelly, but Lorwyn's unique schtick was that every fifty years it would flip between "sunlight happyland" and "Deep One merfolk freakyland", with a large and small set for each version - so the block wasn't "Peanut, Butter, Jelly" but "Peanut, Butter" and "Jelly, Doughnut". When blocks were abandoned, the "premium" sets went to sports-themed code names in alphabetical order, since the code names need to be assigned well before the set gets any design work. (Strixhaven, the sixth set under the new naming scheme, was "Fencing".) "Supplemental" sets, since they're typically given code names after some work has been done on them, may have code names that are more specific to what the set is based on.
• The board game Trivial Pursuit was originally going to be called Six Thousand Questions.

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Parks:
  • The concept for what would evolve into Disneyland started out as a 16-acre amusement zone referred to as "Mickey Mouse Park" or "Mickey Mouse Village".
  • Walt Disney World was originally given codenames "Project X", "The Florida Project" and "Disney World", the latter being updated to honor Walt Disney following his death in 1966. Other proposed names for the resort include "Walt Disney's Vacationland", "Disneyrama", "Walt Disney's Wonderworlds", "Disneyworlds" and "The Walt Disney World".
  • Before EPCOT Center came to be, what would become the Future World and World Showcase areas were originally going to be separate entities called the "Future World Theme Center" and the "Walt Disney World Showcase", respectively.
• Universal's Epic Universe was initially known as "Universal's Fantastic Worlds"; this name change reportedly happened because Warner Bros. objected to the name's similarity to Fantastic Beasts, which was originally planned to be an area in the park but did not make up the entirety of it. Individual parts of Epic Universe were known by innocuous project codes during development and construction:
  • P900 are the rides in Celestial Park.
  • P901 is the rest of Celestial Park.
  • P902 is a Dark Universe
  • P903 is How to Train Your Dragon: Isle of Berk.
  • P904 is Super Nintendo World.
  • P905 is The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic.
  • P910 is the Helios Grand Hotel.
  • P912 and P913 are two additional hotels, the Stella Nova and Terra Luna.
  • P920 is the entrance, security and ticketing zone.
  • P931 are the behind-the-scenes warehouse and staff areas.

TV Networks

• NBC: In a 1922 letter to RCA, David Sarnoff pitched his idea for a national radio "network" that he called the National Radio Broadcasting Company. The "Radio" part would be dropped when it finally launched in 1926.
• Turner Classic Movies: Among the possible names tossed around in the planning stages were TNT 2 and TNT Classic. It was Ted Turner himself who came up with the final name.

Theatre

• Tell Me More!, a largely forgettable Gershwin musical of 1925, was originally titled My Fair Lady. Apparently the producer didn't think it was commercial enough.
• Speaking of My Fair Lady, its working title was Lady Liza, but the song of that name was cut. My Fair Liza was allegedly considered too.
• The musical Something for the Boys began production as Jenny Get Your Gun. It's no coincidence that the same star and same writers next joined forces on Annie Get Your Gun.
• Oklahoma! began production under the title of its source play, Green Grow the Lilacs, but started its out-of-town tryouts as Away We Go.
• Ayn Rand originally titled her first play Penthouse Story, but producers changed it first to Woman on Trial and then finally to Night of January 16th.
• When Aaron Copland received a commission to compose music for a Martha Graham ballet, his composition bore the heading Ballet for Martha. The Literary Allusion Title Appalachian Spring was apparently decided on by her shortly before the premiere.
• Stephen Sondheim's Road Show went through three of these during the long time it spent in Development Hell: Wise Guys (which had unintended Mafia associations), Gold! (after a song that was already in the show; Sondheim had wanted the show to be retitled Get Rich Quick!) and Bounce (with a new title song, which became "What A Waste" in the show's final revision).
• Annie Warbucks, the sequel to Annie, was originally Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge. The title change was partly because Miss Hannigan was written out of the show, but also necessitating changing the lyrics to one of the songs: "Above the Law" originally had the punny refrain "You can be Annie, too!"
• Follies was originally to have been titled The Girls Upstairs.
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever began production under the Epunymous Title I Picked a Daisy.
• Musicals produced in the 1920s and 1930s by Alex A. Aarons and/or Vinton Freedley very often changed titles during production:
  • Lady, Be Good! was originally Black-Eyed Susan.
  • Oh, Kay! was Mayfair, then Miss Mayfair, then Cheerio!.
  • Funny Face was Smarty.
  • Heads Up! was originally Me for You. The title changed when the book was completely replaced, though the former title song was retained.
  • Anything Goes was Hard to Get, then Bon Voyage.
  • Red, Hot and Blue! was But Millions! and Wait for Baby at various stages.
  • Leave It to Me! had the earlier titles I Am an American and First in the Hearts.
• Death of a Salesman was originally conceived as The Inside of His Head.
• City of Angels was originally Death is for Suckers, a phrase that occurs near the start of the Private Eye Monologue; Double Exposure was an intermediate title.
• Strange Interlude was originally titled Godfather.
• One Touch of Venus was originally titled One Man's Venus.
• Love Life originally bore the unlikely title A Dish for the Gods.
• Milk and Honey was originally titled Shalom.
• Closer Than Ever began as a one-act nightclub revue titled Next Time Now!. When the show grew to two acts, the authors realized that it needed a proper finale as well as a better title, and thus wrote "Closer Than Ever" to fulfill both requirements.
• The Rocky Horror Show was originally going to be called They Came From Denton High and then The Rock Hor-Roar Show.
• Awake And Sing was originally titled I've Got the Blues.

Toys

• BIONICLE was Boneheads of Voodoo Island. This was the "defensive" variant, as LEGO is very protective of its intellectual property. While the franchise did have heavy Polynesian themes at first, the BIONICLE canon does not contain a setting called Voodoo Island, (or voodoo of any description) and none of the characters have ever been referred to as "Boneheads". The title was, for a short period of time, shortened to just "Doo Heads".
  • Another, but earlier, working name that crossed the minds of the creators was "B4◊", as in "before". The "B" part was carried over into the finalized BIONICLE logo.

Video Games

• Adventure C: Ship of Doom had the planned title of Alien Space Ship Adventure, as stated in the ending of Adventure B: Inca Curse.
• Atari's Arcade Game Akka Arrh was canceled after two other titles had been rejected: Target Outpost and The Sentinel.
• The first Alone in the Dark (1992) game went through many working titles, such as "Nightmare in Derceto" (from the name of the mansion), "Doom in Derceto" and simply "In the Dark".
• Angry Birds 2 was soft-launched in Canada under the name, "Angry Birds: Under Pigstruction".
• ANNO: Mutationem's early title when it was in development was called ThirtySeven - 37.
• Audiosurf 2 had the working title of Audiosurf Air (most likely emphasizing its Wakeboard mode). This title is still used in a few places (Steam's music library being one of them).
• The Bard's Tale Trilogy was intended to be the Tales of the Unknown series with three parts: The Bard's Tale, The Archmage's Tale and The Thieves' Tale.
• Battalion Wars, a Nintendo GameCube installment of Nintendo's Advance Wars series, was initially titled Advance Wars: Under Fire, keeping the Advance Wars moniker the series was introduced to internationally. Amusingly, the Japanese version was titled Totsugeki!! Famicom Wars, which used the original Famicom Wars moniker.
• Battle Racing Stars was known as Booster Raiders for the entirety of its soft-launch. The name was changed less than a month before its global release due to not being very indicative of what the game is about.
• The Binding of Isaac went by Love Sick then later Mom in early development. The current title was chosen as a reference to the Biblical story of the same name, as well as a play on The Legend of Zelda, which the gameplay is inspired by.
• Blood Bros seems to have had the working title Cabal II in West. This was confirmed by Dummied Out text not present in Blood Bros. but in a different Arcade Game running on the same hardware, Sky Smasher.
• Around 2005, Steven Spielberg began collaborating with Electronic Arts to develop three gaming projects. One had the working title PQRS and eventually became Boom Blox. The other was a 3D action adventure code named LMNO, tentatively referred to as "Eve" (as in the name of the alien-looking female sidekick), but then cancelled in 2010. Nothing is known about the third project, whose working title was presumably "HIJK".
• The first few demo versions of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm were titled BoxxyQuest 2: Storm Gathering. When it was decided to release the game publicly (it was originally intended for a small private forum, like the original), it was renamed to avoid putting off new players.
• Bug Fables was initially titled Paper Bugs (what with it being an homage to the Paper Mario series set in a world of civilized bugs) before the finalized title was revealed in January 2018, alongside the IndieGoGo campaign.
• Cannon Dancer was first going to be called "Killing" while in development. There's still a crash error screen in the game that, when activated, prints the otherwise nonsensical phrase "This PCB is not Killing".
• Cel Damage began development under the title of Cartoon Mayhem.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale was called Drawdog prior to it being promoted on Kickstarter.
• Chrono Cross was called "Project Kid" at one point while in development. Like Xenogears, this was actually a thing in the game.
• City of Titans was originally announced under the working title Plan Z: The Phoenix Project. This didn't prevent at least two other projects on Kickstarter from using very similar names, so the final title was apparently decided on earlier than planned.
• Code Vein is referred inside the game's files as God Eater Zero, but it changed to avoid spoiling a major plot twist that happens late in the game's story.
• Konami initially planned to release Contra Spirits in America as Contra IV, since they originally intended to market Contra Force (a localization of an unrelated game titled Arc Hound) as the third game in the Contra series. However, Contra Force got delayed and Konami decided to bump down the title of Contra IV to Contra III.
• Before an official title was decided on, Crash Bandicoot was jokingly referred to as The Sonic's Ass Game in development, as it was a mascot platformer where the character moved away from the screen, making their backside visible. The "serious" title was "Willie the Wombat" — though they had never planned on using that for the final game, the player character model is still internally labeled "willie". The final name came from the way that the eponymous character would "crash" his way through the crates and other objects found in the levels.
  • Crash: Mind Over Mutant was going to be called Crash: Invasion of the Bandicoot Snatchers, but it changed due to problems translating while keeping the joke.
• Crüe Ball was known as Twisted Flipper before acquiring the Mötley Crüe endorsement.
• The third game of the Dark Parables series, Rise of the Snow Queen, was originally teased as being titled Snowfall Kingdom.
• Deadly Premonition was first announced in 2007 under the title Rainy Woods.
• Disco Elysium was originally given the working title Torson & McLaine at the project's beginning. For a while, the game was going to be released under the title No Truce with the Furies, but it was changed into its final title in early 2018.
• Donkey Kong Country was codenamed "The Country Project" due to Rare's headquarters being in the countryside.
• Doom: An early name for Doom was "Attack Of The Attackers". There were planned to be six episodes instead of three. The first episode would be called Evil: Unleashed, later used for the name of the Jaguar port. Knee-Deep in the Dead was supposed to be the title of the third episode.
  • Doom 64 originally went by "The Absolution" but was changed to "Doom 64" to stay on-brand (although this caused confusion as it implied it was a conversion of a Doom game for the Nintendo 64 instead of a completely original Doom installment). The name was used as a map name in the game itself instead.
• Double Fine names the codenames of their games after bars in San Francisco's Chinatown. This includes "Li-Po" for Psychonauts, "Reds" for Broken Age, and "Grasslands" for Psychonauts 2.
• Downland for the Color Computer was developed under the title Cavern Climber. It was changed to avoid confusion with the already-released game Canyon Climber.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition was originally just known as Dragon Age III, and then as Dragon Age III: Inquisition. The developers quickly realized that DAIII:I was a rather clumsy abbreviation, and dropped the number.
• Dragon Rage was originally going to be called Dragon Wars of Might and Magic.
• Duke Nukem was going to be Metal Force.
• Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout:
  • The original one-page pitch for the game has the title "Fool's Gauntlet". "Stumble Chums" was also considered as a title at one point.
  • Some rounds have different working names than their final release: Hoopsie Legends was "Hoops Blockade", Pegwin Pursuit was "Chicken Chase", The Slimescraper was "Slime Climb 2", Power Trip was "Territory Control", and concept art for Season 5 reveals that Bubble Trouble was called "Bubble Poppers" at one point.
• Fallout had a weird situation. After Fallout 2, the team created a project for a prequel and code named it "Van Buren." Then Black Isle went bust and Van Buren never saw the light of day. After Bethesda bought it up, they made Fallout 3, which reused nothing from the Van Buren project... and then Bethesda farmed out their next project, Fallout: New Vegas, to Obsidian, the successor studio to Black Isle, who reused a lot of elements from the discarded Van Buren project for New Vegas and elevated Van Buren to Broad Strokes canon. However, all the remaining old material is still called Van Buren.
  • The first Fallout game had the working title of Vault 13, the underground bunker the game starts in. According to the creator Tim Cain, the title was changed specifically because it wouldn't work for the title of the sequel. Subsequent brainstormings with the developers gave several alternate names, including The Vault, Ground-Zero, Survivors, Warriors of the Apocalypse, Radstorm, Nuclear Winter, Doomsday Winter, After the Bomb, and many more. It was the founder of Interplay, Brian Fargo, who suggested the name Fallout, and while Cain wasn't fond of it at first, he found that it perfectly described the post-apocalyptic setting of the game.
• The first Fatal Fury game had the working title of Real Bout, which had several title drops thorough the backgrounds of the game's stages. It was eventually used as the actual title for a later sub-series of Fatal Fury games.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy had the working title Fighting Fantasy, but the name was already being used for a tabletop game. Even before that, the game's original project name was simply "FF", with the full name being decided later in development—while "Fantasy" was always part of the title, any word could have been used instead of Final as long as it kept an Alliterative Title.
  • The Mobius Final Fantasy working title was Mevius Final Fantasy.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade ("The Sword of Seal"), the first Game Boy Advance game in the Fire Emblem series, was originally titled Fire Emblem: Ankoku no Miko ("The Maiden of Darkness").
  • Both Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance are internally known as Fire Emblem 8. Path of Radiance began development first, but Sacred Stones was scheduled to release first.
• Final Fight was original titled Street Fighter '89, but was changed after play testers criticized the game of being a Dolled-Up Installment. Ironically enough, members of the Final Fight cast would later migrate into the Street Fighter series.
• Gears of War was originally called Geist, named after the original name for the Locust. It was close to becoming a Permanent Placeholder too, until Nintendo released an unrelated game also named Geist, causing Gears of War to be adopted instead.
• The first Gradius game was named Scramble 2 during development, as it was originally meant to be a direct sequel to Scramble. According to this interview, it was only changed to Gradius after the core gameplay was nearly finalized, motivated by the need to make the game's instruction sheet.
• Gojira-kun for the MSX was originally titled Godzilland.
• Planning documents for Gunstar Heroes use the titles Blade Gunner and Lunatic Gunstar.
• Hades was originally known as Minos, back when the main character was Theseus and he was venturing through the Cretan labyrinth to hunt down the Minotaur. The concept changed due to the developers struggling to come up with enough story to stretch out the idea into a full-length game.
• Half-Life was developed under the code name Quiver.
• Halo: Combat Evolved had many proposed names, including stuff like Covenant and even Red Shift. Two titles it went under before being named were Monkey Nuts and, when Bungie co-founder Jason Jones wanted to tell his mother about the new game they were working on, they changed it to Blam!. In the end, an anonymous Bungie employee (nobody knows who did it, even today) wrote on the whiteboard for names "Halo". It worked, and the rest is history.
• Head over Heels was titled Foot and Mouth for most of the time it was in development.
• Ikaruga was known in development as Project RS2.
• Illusion of Gaia, the localization of Gaia Gensōki (The Gaia Fantasy Chronicles), was going to be released as Soul Blazer: Illusion of Gaia, due to being developed by Quintet, developer of SoulBlazer.
• According to the early design docs, one of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist's many prototype names was Princess of Mars.
• James Pond: Underwater Agent had the working title Guppy.
• Jetpack Joyride was originally known as Machine Gun Jetpack, named so after the default jetpack. Lead designer Luke Muscat claims that the name change was the very last tweak they did before the release and the reason for that was the game presenting itself on the app list as "Machine Gun...", which made it more ominous than intended and not very indicative as to what the game is about. Machine Fun Jetpack was a known alternate Halfbrick Studios almost went with, but was quickly rejected in favor of the current name.
• Just Dance 2014 was originally called Just Dance 5.
• Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road was announced on Twitter / X under the working title of Project Xehanort, along with a contest to guess the name of the game.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby's Dream Land was originally proposed as Popopo of the Spring Breeze, and then renamed Twinkle Popo. The latter name is a somewhat famous trivia point, as it was used late enough in development that box art and advertising material was produced using that name. They eventually delayed the release to decide on a more internationally-appealing name, and landed on Kirby of the Stars in Japan and Kirby's Dream Land internationally.
  • Kirby's Adventure was originally announced in Nintendo Power as Kirby's Adventure: Nightmare in Dreamland. The subtitle would be reworked for the game's remake, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land.
  • Kirby Super Star was known as Kirby: Active during development. Shigesato Itoi came up with the final Japanese name, Kirby Super Deluxe. The working title for Kirby Super Star Ultra was Kirby Super Deluxe Plus, which was tweaked to Kirby Ultra Super Deluxe. The filenames are still labeled "sdx_plus".
  • Kirby Air Ride started out as a Nintendo 64 game called Kirby Ball 64 — indicating it as a sequel to Kirby's Dream Course, which is Kirby Ball in Japan — and later Kirby's Air Ride before ending on the final name. The Japanese name is Kirby's Airride, which is pretty close.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land was announced as Kirby Wii, which is a more literal translation of the Japanese name. An earlier considered name was Kirby: Super Friends.
  • The working titles for Kirby Fighters Deluxe and Dedede's Drum Dash Deluxe were respectively "Royal Rampage! Pink Fighting Championship" and "Sorry, No Kirby! Dedede's Drum Dash".
  • The original working title for Kirby: Planet Robobot was "Kirby: HAGANE" (hagane means "steel" in Japanese). That was felt to be too edgy, so it was changed to "Robot Planet," which seemed too simplistic. It was tweaked to "Roborobo Planet", and then "Robobo Planet", the final Japanese name. The English version then tweaked that further to "Planet Robobot".
  • Kirby Star Allies was announced as Kirby for Nintendo Switch.
• The Last Guardian went by the working title "Project Trico", the name of the griffon-like creature that accompanies the playable character, before getting its official name at E3 2009.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV was initially announced to have the subtitle of The Last Saga during the ending of Cold Steel III, but the subtitle had morphed into The End Of Saga by the time Cold Steel IV was finalized and officially announced to the public. The reason of the change is as of yet unknown, but is nonetheless perplexing as the former was actually grammatically correct, while the latter is not.
• The Story of Thor was going to be published in North America as Legend of Thor instead of The Legend of Oasis.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The first game began development with the working title Adventure or Adventure Title.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask began development under the title Zelda Gaiden.
  • The original trailer for Hyrule Warriors listed the title (in an plain font on a white background) as this. The name stuck.
• Legends Of Aria was in development as Shards Online.
• Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!: On Al Lowe's site, the page "Larry 7 Rejected Titles" lists thirty seven alternate titles.
• Little Tail Bronx:
  • Tail Concerto went by the name Little Tail during the prototype stages. It can be presumed that this is where the franchise name came from.
  • Solatorobo: Red the Hunter was originally announced as Solarobo (note the lack of the "to") and was presented at France's Japan Expo as Project Coda. The latter title ended up a plot point in the game.
  • Its prequel, Fuga: Melodies of Steel, went under a very generic codename of Tank, judging from the PC executable.
• The American release of Magical Doropie was to have been titled Francesca's Wand; it became The Krion Conquest instead.
• Major Havoc went by two working titles, Tollian's Web and Alpha One.
• Mega Man & Bass was called Rockman 8.5, and a reference to this title still exists in the final game's coding.
• Metal Gear:
  • The original title for Metal Gear was titled "Intruder". In the MSX2 version, pausing the game and typing "intruder" and then resuming play will increase the ammo capacity of every weapon to 999, providing something of a Title Drop.
  • Metal Gear Solid was originally titled Metal Gear 3 (back when the game was being made for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer) until Kojima figured that not many people played the original MSX2 games.
  • During the early development of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the game was actually titled MGS III (skipping a number).
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was originally known as "Metal Gear Solid 5". Unlike the previous PSP game in the series, Portable Ops, Peace Walker was directed by Hideo Kojima, who considers PW to be just as important as the numbered console entries.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was first announced at E3 2009 under the title Metal Gear Solid: Rising.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was being developed under the code name of Project Ogre, a reference to the shrapnel impale on Big Boss' forehead (which makes it look like an oni's horn).
• Subverted with Monster Hunter. The story goes that "Monster Hunter" was the working title and was intended to be changed later in development, but the developers liked the sheer simplicity of it so much that the name stuck.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat (1992) was originally Dragon Attack, after the Queen song of the same name, which co-creator Ed Boon had a fondness of. It is from this title that the franchise's iconic dragon logo comes from, and the colours mentioned in the song served as the base for the colours used in the game's arcade cabinet.
  • Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance would have been called Mortal Kombat: Vengeance, according to its Concept Art Gallery.
  • Mortal Kombat X was originally called Mortal Kombat 2, keeping in line with the previous installment, one part Continuity Reboot and one part Alternate Continuity, simply being titled Mortal Kombat.
• The ZX Spectrum budget game Mutant Fortress was originally titled The Muties Stole My Truck. Sinclair User wasn't informed of the title change before publishing their review of it.
• Mutant Mudds was originally planned as a Third-Person Shooter called Maximillian and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds.
• Multiwinia was originally meant to be a working title with users suggesting the title of this game. However, the original stuck.
• The 18th Mystery Trackers installment, Fatal Lesson, was originally going to be called Tragedy in the Training Camp.
• The codename for the PC Port of Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds is Project N, according to the game's assets folder.
• Ninja Gaiden may have been the tentative title of Ninja Ryūkenden (Ninja Dragon Sword Legend) in Japanese, and in English, was tentatively titled Dragon Ninja.
• No More Heroes was originally to be called Heroes (no relation to the TV show, though that might be why it changed).
• Subverted with Octopath Traveler, which was originally announced as "Project Octopath Traveler". By the time the demo came out, Square Enix had just lopped off the word "Project", and that ended up becoming the final title. The follow-up game, Triangle Strategy, followed the same pattern (started life as "Project TRIANGLE STRATEGY" and then finalized by dropping "Project").
• PAYDAY: The Heist was initially called Stonecold, and later, PAYDAY: Crime Wave. Both titles were reused as names of songs in the soundtrack, and the "Crimewave" subtitle was also used for the sequel's release on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
• Pillars of Eternity was announced on Kickstarter as Project Eternity.
• Plants vs. Zombies had almost one hundred alternate titles during development before the final title was selected, almost all of them either Pun-Based Titles or referencing other zombie media. These alternate titles include Bloom & Doom, Zom-Bottany and Lawn of the Dead (this last one being a personal favourite of one of the developers). Some of these alternate titles would be reused in-game; for example, Bloom & Doom became the name of the company producing the seed packets for your plants.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver were originally known as Pocket Monsters 2: Gold and Silver. Pokémon Crystal, their Updated Re-release, was once known as Pokémon X. The working title was later repurposed for Pokémon X and Y.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon's code name was Pokémon Niji (Japanese for rainbow)
• Power Bomberman was originally released as Rho Bomberman, but it was changed to its current title a few months later, with the release of version 0.3.1.
• Prince of Persia (2008) was originally going to carry the subtitle Prodigy.
• Project Gotham Racing's codename was... Project Gotham Racing. The predecessor was Metropolis Street Racing, and PGR was chosen as their codename, but a wrong billboard commission (where it was supposed to be announced with a proper name instead of the codename) prior to its reveal forced Microsoft and Bizarre Creations to move forward with this name. The developers revealed that due to this, their next projects had profane codenames, just to avoid this mistake.
• Putty was still known as Silly Putty when demos were released on magazine coverdisks. Writing Around Trademarks is the obvious reason why the title was reduced.
• The original title for Puzzle Bobble may have been intended to be Bubble Buster, which is at least what appears on a Dummied Out title screen.
• In the lead up teaser animations for Puyo Puyo 7, Sega referred to the game as Project Ringo, named after the then new protagonist to be introduced to the Puyo Puyo series, Ringo Ando.
• Q*bert was originally called Snots and Boogers by its character designer. Gottlieb threw out a lot of ideas for a better title, and one executive nearly succeeded in changing it to @!#?@!.
• In-Universe Example in Quantum Break; you can find the outline of a book Will is writing called A Civilian's Guide to Time Travel (Cliché Working Title).
• Raiden Fighters was originally titled Gun Dogs, a name still stamped on some of the arcade cartridge ROMs. This would normally be evidence that it was a Dolled-Up Installment, but an early Japanese flyer for Gun Dogs already associated the game with the Raiden series.
• Rescue on Fractalus! was developed and almost released as Behind Jaggi Lines.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was originally intended as a side-story to the series and was known under a variety of working titles such as "Biohazard Gaiden" (not to be confused with the later Game Boy Color game of the same name), "Biohazard 1.9/2.1" and "Biohazard: Last Escape". The "3" was added to the last title, as Capcom wanted to release a final numbered Resident Evil game before moving on to the next-generation platforms.
  • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica was originally titled "Biohazard 3" during its early drafts, until Capcom decided to keep the numbered installments on the PlayStation. Ironically enough, Resident Evil 4 ended up being made for the GameCube.
  • Resident Evil: Gun Survivor 2 had the working title Biohazard: Fire Zone.
• Road Blaster had the prototype title Turbo Blaster.
• Road Blasters was titled Future Vette during development.
• The Sega Genesis game Saint Sword was originally developed under the title Macress.
• Nintendo's NES Power Pad game Short Order was originally titled Jump Burger.
• Signs of the Sojourner was called "Project Thunder" during production.
• The Sims:
  • The original game went through several working titles when it started development in 1995, including Project X and Dollhouse Simulator. Electronic Arts decided against the latter name because they didn't want to potentially alienate a male audience.
  • The Sims 4 was originally developed as a multiplayer game with the codename Project Olympus.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The first game was originally called "Mr. ハリネズミ" ("Mr. Hedgehog"), which is often translated as "Mr. Needlemouse" (a literal translation of the Japanese word for "hedgehog"). Sega has acknowledged the Needlemouse name many times; as a Development Gag, Sonic the Hedgehog 4's Working Title was "Project Needlemouse". Humorously, an official Japanese quiz even gave "Mr. Needlemouse" a Japanese Recursive Translation (ミスター・ニードルマウス) to the disbelief of Yuji Naka, one of Sonic's creators.
  • Knuckles Chaotix began development as a Sega Genesis game titled Sonic Crackers, with the ROM header referring to it as Sonic Studium. Note that the title was likely meant to be Sonic Clackers, since the game's main gimmick works exactly like the toy of the same name. As Sonic Crackers was built in April 1st it led many to believe to be a hoax when it was first discovered, but the text "SonicCrackersS32X" can be found in one early prototype of Chaotix, proving its legitimacy.
  • According to the main programmer Jon Burton, Sonic 3D Blast was titled Sonic Spindrift in development. He says he does not know why the title was changed, though we can assume that after the cancellation of Sonic X-Treme Sega wanted to release a Sonic game that would emphasize the "3D" aspect of the gameplay.
  • Sonic Unleashed was originally going to be the third installment in the Adventure series, but got renamed to Sonic World Adventure, before reaching its final name. The Japanese version kept the original title though.
  • The name Sonic Generations was originally thought to be the Working Title for a new Sonic game, but this was averted and confirmed as the game's official title. Oddly enough, the game did have a working title, being marginally leaked as Sonic Anniversary.
  • Sonic Mania had the working title of Sonic Discovery. Iizuka Takashi, head of Sonic Team, suggested the new name, as he felt it was a game made "for the mania, by the mania".
  • Sonic Forces was titled Sonic Resistance in development.
  • Sonic Frontiers was originally Sonic Rangers according to press release and metadata of the initial unnamed teaser.
  • Sonic Superstars was named "Sonic Orion" internally prior to its full reveal. The save game on Switch still references this name and some screenshots with the Orion name had appeared on the official site before being eventually removed.
  • The working title of Sonic and the Secret Rings was "Sonic Wildfire".
• Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4 had the working title Spider-Man PS4.
• The Puzzle Game Split Personalities was originally developed as Splitting Images, but was retitled shortly after its initial ZX Spectrum release to avoid infringing on the trademark for Spitting Image.
• For a brief time before release, the English version of Strider was known as "The Falcon" due to Capcom's marketing dept. not being sold on the word "Strider" at first, but later conceded it was fine and reverted the decision. "Ninja Dynamics" was another English name considered.
• Subnautica had the working title of Descend.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. was very briefly considered to be renamed Mario's Adventure for the US market. The arcade port, Vs. Super Mario Bros., was going to be called Vs. Mario's Adventure.
  • Super Mario 3D Land was announced as Super Mario.
  • Mario Kart 7 was announced as Mario Kart.
  • Paper Mario 64 was going to be known as Super Mario RPG 2. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was originally known as ​Paper Mario 2, and Mario Story 2 in Japan. Paper Mario: Sticker Star was announced as Paper Mario.
  • Super Mario Maker had the working title of Mario Maker.
  • Super Mario World was known in development as Super Mario Bros. 4; though the name was changed, it nonetheless stuck as a subtitle for the Japanese release.
  • Similarly, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was originally titled Super Mario Bros. 5: Yoshi's Island in a prototype build. Both titles are still sequels to Super Mario World. Subverted in Japan, where it was changed to Super Mario: Yoshi's Island.
  • Subverted with New Super Mario Bros., where the working title was kept.
  • Dr. Mario had the simple Working Title of Virus and originally didn't feature Mario at all.
  • Super Mario Odyssey: The "Steam Gardens" area was originally known as Kogwald. The rename was likely made to better match the locale, since cogs are mostly absent from its steam-based machinery.
• Subverted with Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. When the game was announced at E3 2013, everyone assumed that the name was a working title, but once the game was released, it still carried the name of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (the latter half is obviously split across the game's two versions).
• The open source piano game Synthesia was going to be called Piano Hero until receiving a cease and desist from Activision, publishers of Guitar Hero.
• Tabula Rasa, early in development, was referred to as Ultima X.
• Tales of Phantasia was originally intended to have the less English-sounding title Tale Phantasia.
• As Team Fortress 2 had been in development in some way since before the release of Team Fortress Classic, the game has had many working titles. These include Half-Life Team Fortress, Valve's Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms and Team Fortress 2: Invasion. The last title was later reused for an alien themed update in the final TF2.
• Tekken was originally titled Rave War. Law's "Rave War Combo" move may be an homage to that.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE: Formerly known as Fire Emblem X Shin Megami Tensei, due to being a crossover between those two franchises. It was also known as Stainless, perhaps as a reference to the preferred reputation of an Idol Singer (the game being all about the idol business).
• Tomato Adventure went by the title of Gimmick Land when it was originally in development.
• Touch Dictionary, a South Korean virtual dictionary for the Nintendo DS, was originally announced under the name Touch Dic. The rename happened after the proposed title generated widespread ridicule in the Anglosphere for its unintentionally sexual-sounding name.
• Twisted Metal was originally High Octane, as seen in the original FMV endings.
• According to a Rare Revealed video, Viva Piñata was originally just called Piñata until they realised it was too generic to trademark. Other title ideas included Piñata Paradise, Loco Piñata, Lots o' Piñata, and Whole Lotta Piñata.
• The proposal for what eventually became Wing Commander was named Squadron^note A nod to this is featured in the single player portion of Star Citizen, titled Squadron 42. and Wingleader.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: As revealed in the Developer's Note for Time's Shadow:
  This was the working title of the game for a long time.
  I ended up changing it because I hated saying it out loud.
• The Wonderful 101 was named "Project P-100" during its early stages.
• The Wii U Xenoblade Chronicles 1 game, called Xenoblade Chronicles X, initially had the project name of X.
• Xenogears was originally to be called -Project Noah- after Krelian's plan to restore Merkava, walk with god and revive Deus, but it was changed for unknown reasons mid-development to the name of Weltall's ultimate form. Presumably, Square didn't want the already stretched controversial religious theming to extend to the title.
• In late 2010 Egosoft announced they were working on a project which they called TNBT, short for The Next Big Thing. In 2011, it was announced as X: Rebirth.
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors reached the beta stage with the title Monsters, but LucasArts demanded a more trademarkable title. The manual includes a long list of rejected alternate titles for the game.

Video Game Consoles

• The Aladdin Deck Enhancer was initially The Aladdin System.
• The cancelled M2 console was going to be called the 3DO II, code named Bulldog, and was going to be released as the 3DO M2 before being sold to Panasonic.
• Most of Nintendo's gaming platforms had code names during development that were different from the names Nintendo actually used on the market. The model numbers of most of the hardware that Nintendo has released more often than not reflect the original code name of the platform (e.g. every Game Boy-related hardware has a model number that begins with the letters "DMG").
  • The Famicom (Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System was originally going to be called the "Home Video Computer", which is reflected by the hardware code used by Nintendo (HVC). Likewise, the Super Famicom uses "SHVC."
    • In the Western Hemisphere, the Nintendo Entertainment System was originally going to be called the Nintendo Advanced Video System. Unlike the other examples here though, the hardware code for the NES used the acronym for the final name (NES) and not the working title (AVS), and this was repeated for the SNES (shortened to SNS, "Super Nintendo System").
  • The "DMG" in the Game Boy's model number stands for "Dot Matrix Game".
  • The Virtual Boy was originally called the "Virtual Utopia Experience" (VUE), and VR32.
  • The Nintendo 64 was originally called "Project Reality" and then changed to the "Nintendo Ultra 64" (NUS) for a while before it got its final name.
  • Most of the Game Boy's revisions follow a similar naming scheme. The Game Boy Pocket was "Mini Game Boy" (MGB); the Game Boy Color was "Color Game Boy" (CGB); the Game Boy Advance was "Advanced Game Boy" (AGB).
  • The code name for the Nintendo GameCube was "Dolphin" (DOL).
  • The code name for the Game Boy Micro was "Oxygen" (OXY).
  • The code name for the Nintendo DS was "Nitro" (NTR). "Nintendo DS" itself was a working title, short for "Developers' System". When initially revealed, journalists reported that it was short for "Dual Screen", and Nintendo—realizing the system was marketing itself—opted to stick with it.
  • The code name for the Wii was the "Revolution" (RVL).
  • The code name for the Nintendo 3DS was "Centair" (CTR).
  • The code name for the Wii U was "Zii" (Zii also being the name used on The Simpsons as a Bland-Name Product), then later "Project Café". Oddly enough, the console's product codes use "WUP" (Wii U Project).
  • The code name for the Nintendo Switch was the "NX" (short for "next", but can also be "Nintendo X"). Its hardware code is "HAC" (short for "handheld and console").
• Most of Sega's consoles developed during the 1990s had planet-based code names:
  • Mercury: Game Gear
  • Venus: Sega Nomad
  • Earth: Was never used, but commonly thought to be the Sega Genesis (which was codenamed "Mark V")
  • Moon: Mega Drive Mini, referencing the above
  • Mars: 32X
  • Jupiter: A Saturn-like system with games on cartridges instead of CDs (development abandoned)
  • Saturn: Originally announced as a code name, but this one stuck.
  • Uranus: Was never used, because it sounds like "uranu" ("will not sell") in Japanese.^note Additionally, Sega, being a company with American roots, were likely well aware of the childish puns that may ensue.
  • Neptune: Genesis/32X integrated hybrid (unreleased, though memorialized in Neptunia)
  • Pluto: Sega Saturn with integrated modem (only a few prototypes produced)
• Two competing architectures were developed by Sega to become the basis of the Dreamcast. One was called Katana and the other was called Dural. Sega decided to use the Dural design, but 3Dfx, the company that made that design's GPU, leaked its specs so they chose the Katana to be the Dreamcast instead.
• The Xbox hardware:
  • The original Xbox was originally named Project Midway, named after the decisive battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II, since Microsoft aimed to surpass Sony as the leading console gaming company. It later had another working title, the DirectX Box.
  • The Xbox 360 was Xenon (The Other Wiki also includes the title Xbox 2) while the Kinect was code named Project Natal.
  • Xbox One was codenamed Durango, and the Xbox One Kinect was Petra.
  • The Xbox One X was codenamed Project Scorpio. This lives on as a special edition version of the console with the Project Scorpio branding on the face and a gradient gray color scheme.
  • The Xbox Series family was originally collectively codenamed "Project Scarlett" before the two tiers were differentiated as "Lockhart" (S) and "Anaconda" (X).
• The original name for the PlayStation Vita was the "NGP", or "Next Generation Portable".
• The PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 was codenamed “Project Morpheus”.

Visual Novels

• "Summer School" for Double Homework.

Web Animation

• Inanimate Insanity Invitational had the working title of Inanimate Insanity: Fans vs. Favorites, as shown by Adam during the storyboard phase of the opening.

Webcomics

• The Monster & The Girl was originally named this as a working title; the author considered other names, but decided in the end to use the working title.
• Bicycle Boy was intended to be the working title, for obvious reasons. But the author could not think of anything better.
• ReBoot: Code of Honor was originally pitched as "ReBoot: Arrival".
• El Goonish Shive: On multiple occasions, Dan has named storylines provisionally as "Title pending" before replacing them with appropriate titles partway through. This was turned into an in-joke during the storyline with "party" in its URL, which never got a proper name and eventually was divided into the chapters "Title Pending 2 - Even More Pending", "Title Pending 3 - Untitled Party", and "Title Pending 5 or 6". The final strip of the arc retroactively named it "Reflections", but it's still listed as "Title Pending" in the archive.
• The Skin Horse storyline "Yes, Virginia" was intially "Playing Pilgrims", before Shaenon and Jeff realised there was a much better title for a story about Virginia Lee on a Secret Santa. The Official Fan-Submitted Content storyline "Ghosts I Have Been" was intially "Be the Jeff 2017".
• Sleepless Domain: As seen in early promotional materials, the comic was originally going to be named Umbra Rising. This was changed to the comic's current name several months before it began publication, as Sleepless Domain was determined to better suit the concept.
• Poison Ivy Gulch revealed here that early titles included "Pig Iron Peak", "Pasta Western", "Lasagna Western" and "Tortellini Western", the last three being a play on the term Spaghetti Western.

Web Videos

• Funhaus was originally considered being named Dude Soup. This was instead reused for their news podcast. This was a Running Gag early on their Q&A show, which was given a new increasingly Non Sequitur working title in each episode, before Open Haus was settled on.
• To Boldly Flee originally had the working title Star Space: The Search for Plot. Many Channel Awesome producers have said in various commentaries that most of them had no idea the film's title had been changed until the trailers started coming out. According to said commentaries, Linkara seems to be the only producer who liked the working title better.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Distant Lands had the working title of Rumble Jaw to hide its existence from not only fans, but also anyone at the studio who wasn't a member of the production team. The producer even had artwork commissioned to hang on the studio walls in place of new Adventure Time artwork to help sell the deception until the miniseries was officially announced.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: The show was originally going to be called Gumball and was not a reference to the main character's name, as the name came from Ben Bocquelet thinking of random things a boy would have in his pocket. Meanwhile, some of the episodes in his series underwent changes in title:
  • "The World" ^note (the season two episode where the objects of Elmore come to life and the show is temporarily called The Amazing World of Elmore) was originally called "The Objects"
  • "The Extras" ^note (the season three episode where the background characters, minor characters, and living prop characters scare off Gumball and Darwin and have their own episode) was originally called "The People"
  • "The Fraud"^note the season three episode where Principal Brown thinks Gumball and Darwin are going to expose him for having a fake diploma and not being qualified to be a principal was originally called "The Phoney"
  • "The Boss"^note the season three episode where Rocky the janitor takes an office job to pay for his father's operation was originally called "The Heart"^note possibly because the episode was originally written with Mr. Robinson having a heart attack instead of suffering from a stuffing deficiency
  • "The Void"^note the season three episode where Gumball, Darwin, and Mr. Small venture into Elmore's dimension of mistakes to save a character who disappeared after season one was originally called "The Hole"
  • "The Question"^note season three episode where Gumball and Darwin find the meaning of life was originally called "The Answer"
  • "The Origins"^note season four episode — and the first two-parter episode — showing how Gumball and Darwin became brothers was originally called "The Roots".
• Amphibia was originally called "Amphibiland", but the name was changed because it was already being used in Kulipari, another show set in a world of amphibians. This title was still used in some dubs of the show, however.
• The final season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force was initially to be known as Aqua TiVo Avoidance Plan, but was later given a Meaningful Rename into Aqua Teen Hunger Force Forever.
• Archer was originally called Duchess, after Sterling Archer's code name, but was changed just a few days before the opening sequence was finished.
• The sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender was originally going to be Avatar: The Legend of Korra, taking the basis of the British name for the original series. However, legal issues about the term 'Avatar' meant that it was changed to The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra. After fan complaints about its bulk and lack of in-universe sense (she is no longer "the last airbender"), it became simply The Legend of Korra, maintaining the "Avatar" prefix overseas.
  • From the original series, two episodes went through this: "The Blue Spirit" was originally called "The Red Spirit" and "The Blind Bandit" was originally called "The Earthbending Tournament".
• Ben 10:
  • Ben 10: Alien Force was originally called Ben 10: Hero Generation, though this was due to that version having an entirely different concept.
  • Ultimate Alien was originally called Evolutions before shortened to Evolution until finally became Ultimate Alien.
  • The Ben 10: Omniverse episode "Rook Tales" was originally titled "Separation Anxiety".
• In-universe example in BoJack Horseman: Mr. Peanutbutter's House was initially simply "Unnamed ''Horsin' Around'' Knockoff".
• Classic Disney Shorts:
  • The Silly Symphony short "Bugs in Love" had the working title "Bug Symphony".
  • "Pluto's Judgement Day" was originally titled "Pluto's Nightmare".
  • "Polar Trappers" was originally titled "Arctic Trappers" and "Antarctic Trappers".
  • "The Fox Hunt" was originally titled "Master of the 'Ounds".
  • "Mr. Duck Steps Out" was originally titled "Donald's Date" and "Donald in the Groove".
  • "Pluto's Playmate" was originally titled "Big-Hearted Pluto".
  • "The Art of Skiing" was originally titled "How to Ski".
  • The Donald Duck cartoon "Der Fuehrer's Face" was originally titled "Donald Duck in Nutzi Land", but was changed when the song became a runaway hit (though some people call it "Donald Duck in Nutzi Land" regardless).
  • "The Flying Jalopy" was originally titled "Mr. Duck Gets His Wings".
  • "The Simple Things" was originally titled "Boy Meets Gull" and "Gull Crazy".
  • "Canvas Back Duck" was originally titled "Forgot to Duck".
• Early development artwork for Close Enough featured the titles Splitting Rent and Almost Family.
  • During Candice's nightmare in "Halloween Enough", in which she wanders through the show's production offices, a piece of paper can be seen listing "potential series titles", including 20's and 30's, Half Past 30, Apartmental, Joint Tenants, Experirenting and Rentaled.
• Code Lyoko was originally Garage Kids, with a darker theme and lacking Aelita. The digital world was called "Xanadu" instead of "Lyoko". Also, Yumi could use telekinesis in the real world. It was later revamped, with a clearer boundary between the digital world and the real world.
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood:
  • "Someone Else's Feelings" was originally called "Daniel Learns About Empathy". This title is retained on several TV listings.
  • Early television listings for "Daniel Sits On The Potty" called it "Daniel Takes His Time On The Potty", with the current name being chosen to avoid confusion with "Daniel Takes His Time".
  • "Daniel Stops Himself From Hurting Someone" was the original name of "Circle Time Squabble".
• Several Family Guy episodes have had working titles:
  • "FOX-y Lady" was originally titled "Anchorwoman: The Legend of Lois Griffin".
  • "We Love You, Conrad" was originally titled "An American Dog in Paris".^note The change is due to the fact that Brian was originally going to date Paris Hilton in the episode, but she turned down the offer to voice herself, leading to the show being rewritten so that Lauren Conrad is Brian's date.
  • "Spies Reminiscent of Us" was originally titled "Road to '85".^note This was because the episode was originally in development as a "Road to..." episode before "Road to the Multiverse" became the one for that season.
  • "Excellence in Broadcasting" was originally titled "Peter Griffin is a Big Fat Idiot".^note This was probably because the episode was about Peter becoming friends with Rush Limbaugh rather than Brian.
  • "Tiegs for Two" was originally titled "Famiry Guy".^note The change was actually a good thing, because the story of Peter antagonizing a Chinese launderer is actually the B-plot.
  • The third Star Wars parody, "It's a Trap!", was originally titled "The Great Muppet Caper".
  • "Lottery Fever" was originally titled "Powerball Fever".
  • "Ratings Guy" was originally titled "All in the Nielsen Family"
  • "Jesus, Mary & Joseph!" was originally titled "Jesus Christ!"
  • "Baking Bad" was originally titled "Peter and Lois Open a Store" (the episode is still called that on the DVD set and on Netflix).
  • "Papa Has a Rollin' Son" was originally titled "Crip Off the Old Block".
  • "A Shot in the Dark" was originally titled "Stand Your Brown".
• The Flintstones was originally going to be called The Flagstones and had a brief working title of The Gladstones (GLadstone being a Los Angeles telephone exchange at the time).
• According to Matt Groening, initial titles chosen for Futurama included Doomsville and Aloha, Mars!.
  • "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" was originally titled "We Got Everybody But Scotty".
  • "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" was originally titled "Emperor Benguin".
  • "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" was originally titled "Holiday Val-U-Pack".
  • "Zapp Dingbat" was originally titled "Blue Munda".
  • "Game of Tones" was originally titled "Breaking Through to the Mother Side".
• Godzilla: The Series was referred to as Heat Seekers to hide the fact it was a tie-in with Godzilla (1998). Early concept art and storyboards of Godzilla for the cartoon were referred to as "Gorgon" or "Thingy"/"Thingie", and drawn as a vaguely Spinosaurus-like creature to further disguise the true premise (and the fact even many of the show's producers were not allowed to see Godzilla's redesign until the movie came out in theatres).
• Go Jetters was initially pitched under the name Titch Hikers.
• Help! It's The Hair Bear Bunch! (1971) had the working name "The Yo-Yo Bears".
• Hong Kong Phooey was originally penciled on ABC's Saturday morning schedule as Kung Phooey. A Charlton comic story actually called him that.
• King of the Hill's original show titles included: Hank Hill and His Clan, The Hank Hill Comedy Hour, Dale Gribble and The Other Guy, I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass!, Citizen Hank, and Propane Man.
• Let's Go Luna! went by the name Luna Around the World when it was originally announced.
• Looney Tunes:
  • "Porky's Badtime Story" was originally titled "It Happened All Night", but was changed because it was considered too suggestive (when really it was a reference to the screwball comedy It Happened One Night).
  • "Get Rich Quick Porky" was originally titled "The Oily Bird Gets Porky".
  • "Jungle Jitters" was originally titled "The Fulla Bluff Salesman".
  • "Falling Hare" was originally titled "Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin".
    • The reason for the above change was that Walt Disney was planning a movie about gremlins and asked other studios to hold off any gremlin related projects. Warner Bros. already had two gremlin cartoons well into production, so they simply changed the titles. The second short, "Russian Rhapsody", was originally "Gremlins from the Kremlin".
  • "Scent-imental Over You" was originally titled "Forever Ambushed".
  • "Daffy Duck Slept Here" was originally titled "Room and Bored".
  • "Homeless Hare" was originally titled "Blueprint Bunny".
  • "What's Up, Doc?" was originally titled "Hare's My Story".
  • "Rabbit Fire" was originally titled "What's Up, Duck?".
  • "Punch Trunk" was originally titled "Little Doubt".
  • "Design For Leaving" was originally titled "Future Antics".
  • "Gone Batty" was originally titled "Trunkful of Curves".
  • "Goo Goo Goliath" was originally titled "Stork Clubbed".
  • "Lighthouse Mouse" was originally titled "Light Mouse Keeping".
  • "One Froggy Evening" was originally titled "It Hopped One Night".
  • "The Slap-Hoppy Mouse" was originally titled "Of Mice and Menace".
  • "Wideo Wabbit" was originally titled "Omni-Bunny".
  • "Hare-Way to the Stars" was originally titled "Up in the Hare".
  • "Mice Follies" was originally titled "Mouse-Trapped".
  • "The Dixie Fryer" was originally tiled "Southern Flied Chicken".
  • "Dog Gone People" was originally titled "Canine Mutiny".
  • "Road to Andalay" was originally titled "Tequila Mockingbird".
  • "Well Worn Daffy" was originally titled "Gunga Daffy".
  • "Quacker Tracker" was originally titled "A Hunting We Will Go-Go".
• The Loud House:
  • "White Hare" was originally titled "Hide Nor Hare".
  • "Insta-Gran" was originally titled "Geri-Antics", this title would later be used for a season four episode.
  • "Middle Men" was originally titled "Lesson Plan".
• Magic Adventures of Mumfie was originally called "Here Comes Mumfie", which was changed because there was already a puppet show with the same name.
• Mixels was originally called "Monsters" before Cartoon Network came into the deal.
• My Adventures with Superman was called Superman: Up and Away during production.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot:
  • "Gridiron Glory" was originally titled "Teen Spirit".
  • "I Was a Preschool Dropout" was originally titled "Back to Preschool".
  • "Hostile Makeover" was originally titled "When It's Time to Change".
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • "Suited for Success" was originally "Dressed for Failure". (Changed for sounding too negative)
  • "Stare Master" was originally titled "Fluster-shy".
  • "Owls Well that Ends Well" was originally "Hoo Goes There".
  • "Sisterhooves Social" was originally titled "Sissy Fit".
  • "May the Best Pet Win!" was originally titled "The Tortoise and the Mare".
  • "Read It and Weep" was originally titled "Reading Rainbow".
  • "Secret of My Excess" was originally "Giving Dangerously" and then "Attack of the 50 Foot Dragon".
  • "One Bad Apple" was originally titled "Bully for You".
  • "Keep Calm and Flutter On" was originally titled "Fluttershy's Home for Reformed Draconequii".
  • "The Cutie Map" was originally titled "Cutie Markless".
  • In universe example: Trixie's magic show in "No Second Prances" goes through several different titles. Each title receives a lukewarm response from whoever she's talking to, after which she backpedals with "It's a working title!"
• Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Special originally went by the title Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Underground Rock Experience prior to the special's release.
• Ōban Star-Racers originally had the title of Molly: Star Racer. Production fluxed back and forth between the two titles.
• The original pitch of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes was titled "Super Lakewood Plaza Turbo" before being shortened to "Lakewood Plaza Turbo" for the pilot.
• The Patrick Star Show:
  • An earlier idea for the show was for it to stick with one-word titles. In this case, "Late for Breakfast" would have been called "HUNGRY!". It wasn't, and the outline changed it to "Patrick's Late for Dinner" before it was later finalized.
  • "Backpay Payback" was originally titled "Payback's a Squid", likely changed due to being a pun on the phrase "payback's a bitch".
  • "Patrick's Got a Zoo Loose" was originally "Patrick's Got an Alien Zoo Loose", likely shortened to make it less of a Word Salad Title.
• Phantom Investigators was originally called Daemona Prune. The executives at Kids' WB! suggested the change early in production.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) was originally proposed as Whoopass Stew featuring the Whoopass Girls. And instead of the Professor accidentally spilling "Chemical X" into the formula, he accidentally opens "a can of whoopass".
• Rosie's Rules: The pitch pilot was called Alexa Land.
• Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (1969) originally had the working titles Who's Scared? and Mysteries Five. After CBS rejected the original presentation art as too scary, the network's head of daytime and children's programming, Fred Silverman, heard Frank Sinatra's "Strangers In The Night" while flying back to New York and the "scooby dooby doo" tag at the end of the song caught his attention. He called Joe Barbera and told him to give the show a comedy slant, make the dog the star and call him Scooby-Doo. He was originally a sheepdog called Too Much, but was changed to a Great Dane as one of the artists at Hanna-Barbera raised Great Danes as a hobby and the Archie show (which followed Scooby on CBS) already had a sheepdog, Jughead's pet Hot Dog.
  • In that same season, Hanna-Barbera was developing a show with the title "Stop That Pigeon," which featured a jelly-bellied Red Baronesque figure and a dachshund with pilot's goggles. It evolved into Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, recruiting the villains from Wacky Races.
• The Simpsons:
  • "You Kent Always Say What You Want" was originally titled "The Kent State Massacre", but was changed after the Virginia Tech shootings.
  • "Homer's Phobia" was originally titled "Lisa Goes to Camp", but was changed because the pun was thought to be too oblique and the story (which would have been about Lisa getting into collecting kitsch items and Bart doing the same, only for Homer to worry about Bart's sexuality) was rewritten to include the kitschy antique store owner played by John Waters and having him be the one who allegedly influences Bart.
  • "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" was originally titled "Fat Man and Little Boy", which was later used for an unrelated episode in Season 16.
  • "Much Apu About Nothing" was originally titled "Anti-Immigration Song".
  • "Specs in the City" was originally titled "I Only Have My Eyes for You".^note This is due to the product featured in the episode, the Oogle Goggles, originally being called MyEyes.
  • "Daddicus Finch" was originally titled "Lisa Has a Crush on Homer".
  • "Lisa the Boy Scout" was originally titled "Love Hacktually".
• SpongeBob SquarePants was originally known as SpongeBoy Ahoy!, with the initial storyboards for the pilot carrying this title. For years it has been accepted as fact that the reason the title was changed because SpongeBoy was already being used as a mop brand, however the SpongeBoy mop doesn't exist (it's actually a pencil).
  • "F.U.N." was originally titled "My Fair Plankton".
  • "Can You Spare a Dime?" was originally titled "Down and Out in Bikini Bottom".
  • "The Camping Episode" was originally titled "Squid Gets Mauled".
  • "Shell of a Man" was originally titled "Molting" and "Shell Game".
  • "The Clash of Triton" was originally titled "Neptune's Party".
  • "One Coarse Meal" was originally titled "Plankton Got Served".
  • "Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle" was originally titled "Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle".
  • "Sanctuary!" was originally titled "One Snail Sponge".
  • "Mermaid Pants" was originally titled "Mermaid Pants and Barnacle Star".
  • "Moving Bubble Bass" was originally titled "Move Your Bubble Bass", which was changed for obvious reasons.
  • "Krusty Kleaners" was originally titled "Clean Livin'".
• Sofia the First: The crossover special with Elena of Avalor was originally titled, "Sofia the First: Journey to Avalor". When the spinoff ended up airing early, it was retitled "Elena and the Secret of Avalor" and added in a Framing Device where Elena recounts the events to Naomi as a flashback.
• South Park:
  • "Raising the Bar" was titled "Rascal Tipping" during production.
  • "Oh, Jeez" was originally titled "The Very First Gentlemen". This was changed to coincide with a last minute change in content since the episode dealt with the 2016 US election and they hadn't expected Trump to win ("Oh Jeez" being the catchphrase of Mr. Garrison, the Trump stand-in on the show).
  • "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy" was going to be called "Nice" after a recurring expression in the episode.
• Tex Avery MGM Cartoons:
  • One Ham's Family was originally titled The Smart Little Pig.
  • What's Buzzin' Buzzard? was originally titled Vulture a la King.
  • Henpecked Hoboes was originally titled Bums Away.
  • Little 'Tinker was originally titled Smellbound.
• Total Drama:
  • World Tour was originally announced as Total Drama: The Musical.
  • Revenge of the Island started out as Total Drama Comedy, then Total Drama - Return to Wawanakwa and lastly Total Drama Reloaded.
  • Total DramaRama was announced as Total Drama Daycare.
• Tom and Jerry:
  • Switchin' Kitten, the first of Gene Deitch's shorts, was originally titled Dog My Cats. The suits at MGM came up with the final title, which Deitch detested because he felt it wasn't relevant to the "Freaky Friday" Flip plot.
  • Tall in the Trap was originally titled Top Trap.
  • Puss 'n' Boats had several working titles, including Down to the Cheese in Ships, Blow the Cat Down, Salt Water Tabby and Bell Bottom Mouser.
• Work It Out Wombats! was originally titled just Wombats!

Other

• Microsoft Windows code names and working titles (full list here on The Other Wiki):
  • Chicago, Windows 4.0 (Windows 95)
  • Memphis, Windows 97, Windows 4.1 (Windows 98)
  • Millennium, Windows 4.9 (Windows ME)^note The working title was (kinda) kept in the final product because, despite what people may tell you, the M in ME stands for Millennium.
  • Daytona (Windows NT 3.5)
  • Cairo (Windows NT 4.0)
  • Janus (Windows 2000 x64)^note Windows 2000 itself did not have a code name because, according to Dave Thompson of Windows NT team, "Jim Allchin didn't like code names".
  • Whistler (Windows XP)
    • Mantis (Windows XP Embedded)
    • Freestyle (Windows XP Media Center Edition)
    • Lonestar (Windows XP Tablet PC Edition)
  • Diamond (Windows Media Center)^note the one in Vista
  • Longhorn (Windows Vista)
  • Blackcomb, Vienna (Windows 7)
  • Blue (Windows 8.1)
  • Threshold (Windows 10)^note Named after a location seen in Halo: Combat Evolved, which Installation O4 orbits near.
    • Project Spartan (Microsoft Edge)^note also named after Halo
  • Sun Valley (Windows 11)
• Many companies have gone through this in a way, changing their original name to a more memorable brand after a few years of existence, usually after learning that another company had the same name:
  • The original Atari began doing business as Syzygy Co. in 1971. A year and a half later, it incorporated as Atari, Inc.
  • Raytheon was founded in 1922 as the American Appliance Company. It became the Raytheon Manufacturing Company in 1925, adopting the name of its first commercially successful product (a rectifier tube) because there was already a company in Indiana using the original name.
• During company acquisitions, the "reverse triangular merger" method involves the parent company creating a shell company that takes on the legal responsibilities that the subsumed company would usually have during a merger. Once complete, the subsumed company is merged with the shell to continue on as a technically new entity. It is very common during this process for the shell company to possess a temporary name while things are moved over. This has two main benefits: It allows the subsumed company to continue working as normal during the merger and ensures that the final transition is as smooth as possible, and it also helps to keep the identity of the subsumed company a secret before the public announcement.
  • When Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media, the shell was given the name "Vault", a nod to the Fallout series. When they did the same to Activision Blizzard, "Anchorage" was the name they went with, likely for the alliteration.
• Brightline, the American private passenger railroad company, was known as "All-Aboard Florida" during its startup phase.