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  • The American Heroes Channel, a Discovery Channel affiliate, has gone through several renames to keep its name relevant to its actual programming. Originally the Discovery Wings Channel, it started airing largely military-themed shows, so it was renamed the Military Channel. Later, it started airing programs about firefighters and such, so it was renamed the American Heroes Channel. However, it shows heroes who aren't American, i.e. British Commandos in World War II.
  • Brazilian TV channel Globo broadcasts three soap operas every day except Sunday: 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, and 8 o'clock. The last one, however, rarely begins at a time starting with 8 nowadays (due to the news program that precedes it — the delay gets even worse during election periods). A common joke is to describe it as "the 8 o'clock soap opera that starts at 9".
    • A teen soap (which has a different format from the rest, being closer to a TV series with multiple seasons), usually aired at 5 p.m., is titled "Malhação", which means "Workout" (usually at a gym). The name was accurate only for the initial seasons. Most of the subsequent seasons have nothing to do with gyms or physical exercise, being more centered on High School settings.


  • 3rd Rock from the Sun: Parodied in an early episode; during one of their rooftop chats, Harry muses "Why do they call it a fur coat? It's not really fur, and it's not really a coat". Tommy then explains to him that it actually is both those things.
  • Airplane Repo is, in fact, about repossessing airplanes. And boats. And an occasional helicopter. And other high-value assets. But mostly planes.
  • Alien Worlds (2020): The blob-like animals in "Atlas" are referred to as scavengers, but are never shown scavenging on anything — instead, their primary appearance shown them actively preying on living animals.
  • Angel: Gunn uses a gun maybe once in the entire run of the series (pistols were more Wesley's thing). It's lampshaded more than once. Several people, including Cordelia, assume that "Gun" is a street name, and Gunn has to explain that "Gunn. Two 'n's." is his actual surname, and that he prefers using it to his first name (Charles).
  • The Arrowverse's Crisis on Earth-X takes place mostly on Earth-1, and the crisis is happening is because the Nazis are leaving Earth-X to attack other Earths. However, there are a good number of scenes on Earth-X, so... half credit?
  • The trope comes up in Better Call Saul in a passing reference to Golden Delicious apples, which Chuck McGill describes as "usually pretty tasteless".
  • The Big Bad of the first season of The Blacklist is known as "Berlin". Except that he's actually Russian, not German, and was most recently in Siberia, not Berlin.
  • Blake's 7, for the last two of its four seasons, was noticeably missing Blake (with the exception of the last episode of each season, although the "Blake" who appeared at the end of the third season turned out to be a fake) and there usually weren't seven of them: the number was usually fudged to mean either six humans and a computer, or five humans and two computers. For part of the series, though, there were six humans and two computers, so... you figure it out.
  • The Boys (2019):
    • As Butcher points out to Translucent, if his powers really reflected his namesake, he would actually still be visible.
    • Vought's current superhero team is known as the Seven. But for most of the show, the team doesn't have seven members on it. At the start of season 1, Starlight joins to replace the retiring Lamplighter. Over the course of the season, Translucent is killed and the Deep is sent to Sandusky, Ohio after he's exposed as a sexual predator. They regain a member when Stormfront is appointed at the start of season 2, but she's gone at the end of the season after her Nazi ties are exposed. At the start of season 3, Vought decides to put on a reality show called American Hero to audition two new members to fill the vacant spots on the Seven, with these spots going to Supersonic and the Deep. This brief period of the Seven once again actually having seven members is very short lived, and they lose four of their members by the end of the season, as Starlight grows disillusioned enough with Vought to quit the Seven and become a full-time member of the Boys, Queen Maeve fakes her own death after being de-powered by Soldier Boy and retires, and Supersonic and Black Noir are murdered by Homelander on separate occasions.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The "scythe" Buffy finds in the last episodes is actually an axe, specifically a bardiche.
  • Community: Greendale Community College has the North Cafeteria, which is in the western portion of East Hall, which is northwest of North Hall, which is near the center of campus. Also, the English Memorial Spanish Center, named after Portuguese explorer English Memorial.
  • Similarly, Cougar Town stopped being about middle-aged women chasing younger men (with the exception of one minor recurring character) after the first few episodes. The makers seriously considered retitling it, but in the end stayed with the Artifact Title. They do, however, mock the title in the title card every week.
    • Neither is it about a town populated by the large, North American feline.
      • Lampshaded in an episode where the characters steal a sculpture of a cougar from the college one of them attends: "Why does this school even have a cougar? Nothing here has anything to do with cougars." The title card joke that week also says, "Pay attention. The title: Cougar Town almost makes sense this week!"
    • One advertisement had a woman next to the feline with both thinking the show was about them.
  • The title characters in Crash & Bernstein are a puppet named Crash and Wyatt Bernstein, who is almost never referred by his last name.
  • In the CSI: NY episode "Indelible", two suspects are a pair of men named Mike Black and Mike White. Except Mike Black is a white man and Mike White is a black man. Two characters, when getting ready to interrogate them, agree "I'll take White Mike." and "I'll take Mike White."
  • In-Universe in Daisy Jones & The Six: In the book, the Six are actually comprised of six people: Billy, Graham, Eddie, Warren, Karen, and Pete. The show excises Pete and makes it a Running Gag that there are less than six people in the band. It is explained in the show that the sixth spot is filled by Billy's wife Camila.
  • In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency we are introduced to four violent hoodlums (really psychic vampires who feed on the panic of those who witness their delinquency) who break into Todd's house and destroy everything in sight...named the Rowdy Three.
    Todd: What's going on?
    Dirk: The Rowdy Three!
    Todd: There are four of them.
    Dirk: I'm wildly aware!
    • Later, Amanda Brotzman joins the Rowdy Three, bringing their number to five. And in the second season, three of them have been captured by the government, leaving Amanda and Vogel to operate as the Rowdy Three with a membership of two.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "Terror of the Zygons" is about the Zygons invading Earth, while "The Zygon Invasion" is about Zygon terrorists (who are legal Earth citizens).
    • In "Planet of Evil", the alien from the eponymous planet is defending itself, and the characters who come closest to being "evil" are among the visitors to it.
    • "Vengeance on Varos" is a story which features practically every negative human motivation except for vengefulness.
    • "Remembrance of the Daleks" has a futuristic-tech-looking device called the Hand of Omega, which doesn't look anything like a hand. As the Doctor says: "Time Lords are capable of infinite pretension."
    • "The Girl in the Fireplace": The eponymous "girl" never actually appears inside a fireplace. It's the Doctor who appears in her fireplace.
    • "The Doctor's Daughter" and "The Next Doctor". Most of these have some sort of justification in-story, but the last is pure Trolling Creator. note 
    • "The Doctor's Wife". The Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS is merely Like an Old Married Couple.
    • "Let's Kill Hitler": He just gets stuffed in a cupboard to make way for the actual plot. It does get a Title Drop, though.
    • "The Name of the Doctor" does not reveal the Doctor's name.
    • It's difficult to say what "The Witch's Familiar" has to do with the story, or even exactly which character this refers to. Even if it's taken to refer to Clara's alliance with Missy (which would make sense), "The Witch's Familiar" is mostly about the Doctor visiting Davros, and consigns Clara's role in the story to being tortured by Missy irrelevantly in the background.
  • Dragons, Wagons & Wax only has dragons, wagons and a wax candle in the Action-Hogging Opening. The rest of the show is a low-key live-action children's program.
  • Dr. K's Exotic Animal ER often features animals that aren't exotic pets, like rabbits and ferrets (both of which are domesticated animals).
  • The Eurovision Song Contest has regular entries from Australia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Israel, used to have entries from Turkey, and once had an entry from Morocco. There have also been aborted attempts from Lebanon and Tunisia. This is because - Australia aside - entry is open to any member of the European Broadcasting Union, which extends into both Asia and Africa.
  • The eponymous hotel in Fawlty Towers was not in any way even a single tower.
    • The towers were, one might say... Faulty?
  • Forever: An antiques dealer in "The Frustrating Thing About Psychopaths" who is known as "The Frenchman" is actually a Japanese woman.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The Artifact Title "Seven Kingdoms" originally referred to the seven independent nations of Westeros that existed south of the Wall before Aegon's Conquest: The North, the Vale of Arryn, the Iron Islands, the Westerlands, the Reach, the Stormlands, and Dorne. Following the Conquest, the Riverlands and Crownlands were separated from the Iron Islands and Stormlands respectively, and Dorne was only added to the realm two centuries later when Daeron II married the Prince of Dorne's sister and vice versa. The Targaryens claimed authority over Dorne long before it became a reality, and even then made many concessions to the Dornish. This eventually created one kingdom with nine provinces. By the end of Season 6, the Seven Kingdoms is mostly an entity on paper. House Lannister controls the Iron Throne but the North has returned to the control of their hated enemies House Stark, who still claim their independence. The Iron Islands have remained defiant and set to launch a fresh campaign, the Vale has declared for the North. The Tyrell-Lannister alliance has disintegrated after Cersei had their heirs assassinated and the remaining Tyrells are now working with renegade Ironborn and the Martells to restore the throne to Targaryens back to power.
    • The Dothraki Sea in the middle of Essos is not even remotely a large body of salt water. Rather, it is an area of rolling grassy plains, also termed the Great Grass Sea, so named for its immense size and how easy it is to get lost in there. As a matter of fact, the Dothraki fear the actual sea, which they call "the poison water". The fact that they're willing to cross the sea to Westeros to fight for Queen Daenerys Targaryen shows their unprecedented level of devotion to her.
    • Rhaegar Targaryen's Red Baron nickname is "The Last Dragon" despite the fact that his two youngest siblings and his own youngest son all outlived him. However, he is called as such since he was the last known Targaryen to possess the positive aspects of his family, at least until his sister and youngest son Took a Level in Badass in the present day.
    • All of the nine "Free Cities" in Essos practice slavery, except Braavos. The term refers to their having had the right to self-governance during the era their mother state, the Valyrian Freehold, was in power. The Freehold also being an example, because it, too, practiced slavery.
    • Inverted slightly with the series name itself, which is actually only the title of the first book, but has more relevance to the television series. Although the books still have heavy amount of politics and the show had a decent amount of magical/supernatural elements, fans have quipped since the series ended that there's a reason why the show was called "A Game of Thrones" whereas the book series was called A Song of Ice and Fire. Many advertisements around the end of the run would still ask "Who will end up sitting on the Iron Throne?", a topic slightly less popular than the book series which has questions more in the vein of "Who will still be alive after the apocalypse hits Westeros?".
  • Get Smart — the Cone of Silence is not a cone but a set of 2 spheres. However, subverted as it turns out it was invented by a man named Cone.
  • Girls 5 Eva is a comedy series about a reunited 90s Girl Group of the same name, which only has four members. As it turns out it's an Artifact Title in-universe, as there were originally five of them.
  • In Season 4, Glee did air an episode on Thanksgiving, but it was not the episode "Thanksgiving" which didn't air until the week after.
  • The Golden Girls has an In-Universe example. The panel of three men visiting the girls for the purpose of verifying Rose's accomplishments for the St. Olaf's "Woman of the Year" award call themselves "the Topplecopper triplets" despite not looking identical to one another. Then again, they ARE from St. Olaf...
    Dorothy: How odd. You don't look anything alike.
    One of the "triplets": Oh, really? Well, back in St. Olaf, nobody could tell us apart.
    Another one of the "triplets": You can imagine all the fun we had playing tricks on our teachers in school.
  • The Batman-themed TV series Gotham has a gangster character named Fish Mooney. You hear the name and you assume "Fish Mooney" is some scuzzy Irish guy. But the character is not scuzzy (on the outside, anyway), not Irish, and not a guy.
  • Everybody does not die in the House series finale "Everybody Dies". note 
  • The Indian Detective: At the start, as he notes, Doug is ethnically Indian, though not really Indian to people from India. He's also not a detective, but only a constable. By the end he has become one in fact, even if unofficially, and embraced his roots more deeply by being in India.
  • Many of the scenes in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia take place at night.
  • Kamen Rider has this going on in a Meta sense. Like many Toku properties, the franchise is separated into distinct eras based off of the Japanese calendar system. However, while the calendar changed from Showa to Heisei in 1989, a trilogy of stand-alone movies made in the 1990s are officially part of the Showa era; 2000's Kamen Rider Kuuga is the first Heisei-era series. In practice "Showa Rider" really means the works produced during creator Shotaro Ishinomori's lifetime, while "Heisei Rider" means the works made after his death in 1998. The only era that means what is says so far is "Reiwa Rider", which started at the very beginning of the Reiwa era.
    • Kamen Rider Drive: Drive is the first hero in the franchise who uses a car instead of a motorcycle[[note]]Kamen Rider BLACK RX and Kamen Rider Hibiki both used cars in the past, but they also had motorcycles, and therefore isn't a "Rider" at all. This was actually a point in the show's marketing, with the tagline "This Rider is a Driver!"
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a subspecies of entelodont-like wargs, is referred by the Harfoots as wolves.
  • Love and Destiny: Five Bowls isn't a bowl and there aren't five of it. Its name actually refers to how much it eats.
  • Sad Man of Maths Mansion is not actually sad. Rather, he's pretty happy and joyful.
  • Every episode of Dave Gorman's Modern Life Is Goodish has a non-indicative title. Once an Episode he reads a "Found Poem" (a collection of internet comments from people getting worked up about minor issues) and the title is a line from it: "Winston Churchill's Pants", "Dat Is Data, Dat Is", "I Like Eggs", etc. It's usually impossible to work out the subject of the poem from the title, and that in turn is usually only tangentially related to what the show is about.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus itself, but that's really more of a Word Salad Title. They did, however, do a serious investigative news show called Ethel the Frog in one sketch, perhaps as a nod to The BBC's habit of using nonindicative titles.
    • 'The Flying Circus' is a nickname of the Red Baron's squadron from WWI and their colorful planes. Still non-indicative.
    • Another sketch has Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror, a completely tame chat show.
    • Six human, ground-bound men (no pythons, or even snakes of any sort), none of whom are named "Monty," and they perform a sketch comedy show without trapezes, lion tamers, a ringleader, or any references at all to the greatest show on earth. That's pretty non-indicative for four words.
  • Kevin from Mr. Belvedere once joined a band called The Young Savages. With a name like that, you'd probably expect a metal or punk band. Instead, they dress conservatively and play oldies. They're called The Young Savages because the other four members are a guy whose last name is Young and three brothers whose last name is Savage.
  • Many of the artists who appeared on MTV Unplugged played electric instruments that were, indeed, plugged in, although the musical arrangements were usually softer and more laid-back than expected from the artists. MTV Turned Down would have been a more accurate name.
    • Although this is the result of some drift. It started out with all the artists playing acoustic.
  • The Musketeers once had a Villain of the Week called Baron Renard. Despite the name, which is French for "fox" and alludes to the ruthlessly cunning folklore character Reynard the Fox, he is a Stupid Evil brute who one of the heroes suggests is the result of generations of rural inbreeding.
  • A number of movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 fit this trope.
    • The B-movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die. A more fitting title would be The Brain That Couldn't Die, But Desperately Wanted To.
      • Furthermore, the eponymous character is technically an entire head, not just a brain.
      • The ending credits list the title as The Head that Wouldn't Die, contradicting the opening credits.
    • The Undead did not feature any ghosts, mummies, zombies, vampires, or undead creatures of any sort.
    • There was nothing Satanic about Devil Doll.
    • None of the children in The Space Children were from space, or ever went into space, for that matter.
    • Boggy Creek 2 was actually the third Boggy Creek movie. Of course, the second film was made by different people, so this could be Canon Discontinuity on the part of the crew who made the third movie.
    • Future War: as Crow puts it, "It's not the future, and there isn't a war, but you know me; I don't like to complain."
    • For a superhero called The Pumaman, the guy seemed to have a large number of powers that didn't seem all that relevant to pumas.
      Mike: I hate to be picky, but I don't think pumas are really known for flying...
    • The Thing That Couldn't Die, a movie about a thing that... well... dies...
    • The eponymous aliens of Pod People don't look like people and don't spend any time in pods. To quote Dr. Forrester:
      It has nothing to do with pods. It has nothing to do with people. It has everything to do with hurting.
    • The Dead Talk Back, about a murder victim whose spirit calls from the afterlife to finger her killer... except it all turns out to be a hoax on the part of the investigating scientist. She never really talks back.
    • Teenage Crime Wave: For starters, the people in the movie are clearly not teenagers. Even if we assume an extreme case of Dawson Casting, there isn't really a crime wave either; just a mugging followed by the crooks busting out of prison.
    • Teenagers from Outer Space: See Teenage Crimewave above. The title only fits if one assumes an extreme case of Dawson Casting.
    • Teenage Caveman: Ditto.
    • Teenage Strangler does have a strangler, but neither he nor all of his victims are teenagers.
    • High School Big Shot: Far from being a big shot, the kid at the center of the story is a complete loser. However, in this case, the title was probably meant to be ironic.
    • Indestructible Man: Got destroyed.
    • Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: No he doesn't. He foils the evil plan of a few of them though.
    • It Conquered the World: It couldn't even conquer a small town.
    • Beginning of the End: The grasshoppers do not, in fact, bring about the apocalypse.
    • Village of the Giants: The giants are from out of town.
  • The Naked Brothers Band spends the entirety of every episode at least partially clothed.
  • NCIS: Delilah, Tim McGee's love interest in recent years, shares her name with the Biblical temptress who betrayed Sampson, but has proven to be faithful and steadfast toward Tim, and one of the sweetest women you could ever hope to meet.
  • Despite the title being "Painkiller" Jane, she feels pain from every wound, even after healing.
  • Parks and Recreation: Leslie Knope would be the perfect name for an Obstructive Bureaucrat. But Leslie is the most enthusiastic and helpful bureaucrat imaginable.
  • Subverted in Person of Interest, in which the Brotherhood has a member named Mini who tells strangers it's an ironic nickname that pokes fun at his heavy build, but his colleagues know it isn't the reason.
  • In 19 years, when have any of the Power Rangers actually performed the duties of a "ranger"? That is, when have any of them ever helped oversee a national park or conducted guerilla warfare in a forest environment? Then again, a show about park rangers in brightly-colored spandex probably wouldn't be very successful...
    • The term ranger comes from the Japanese series Super Sentai in which Power Rangers uses stock footage and costumes from. Many of these series have the word "Ranger" in the title or some combination of the word "Ranger".
      • Also, the term "ranger" is indicative as the term has been used for law enforcement and military like the Texas Rangers (not the baseball team) and Army Rangers. The Lord of the Rings' Aragorn was also referred to as a ranger, so the term could loosely mean warrior and not necessarily refers to a park or forest ranger.
    • Power Rangers Zeo's main villain was KING Mondo, ruler of the Machine EMPIRE.
      • The Sixth Ranger of the season goes by the title of "Gold Ranger", but his suit is clearly black. It does have some gold decorations like the ones on the other Zeo Rangers, but that's it. Both of the characters who wielded the powers even wore black in their civilian outfits. To make matters stranger, the Gold Ranger's Sentai counterpart is considered a black Ranger.
    • The grand prize goes to Treacheron from Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. He's one of the most loyal evil lieutenants in the franchise's history.
      • Though the name is probably meant to be ironic, like calling a really big guy Tiny.
      • Lost Galaxy itself has little to do with the Lost Galaxy as it's only brought up in a small arc.
    • Despite what the name implies, the eponymous organization in Power Rangers Time Force doesn't seem to be a Time Police organization and is simply a 30th-century police institution that just happens to have a time machine.
      • The Sixth Ranger of the season has the title of "Quantum Ranger". A quantum is a measured or allowed amount of something. In the context of physics, it is a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents. None of this relates to the Quantum Ranger in any way. The name is obviously derived from the pop scifi description of anything related to timey-wimeyness as "quantum".
    • Power Rangers Megaforce takes place in the city of Harwood County.
  • Psychoville is set all across England, and not in any specific town. The name is, in fact, derived from the title given to foreign releases of The League of Gentlemen, which is set in a specific town, and is not about a league, nor are many of the characters particularly gentlemanly. The title actually refers to the writers.
  • The Real Housewives series features several divorced people and one could argue that since the show is a source of revenue, they are no longer housewives.
  • Resident Alien: Harry gets confused after Max and Sahar tell him that the Men in Black don't necessarily dress in black, with some being women. This confuses him, naturally, so he asks why they're called that. Sahar retorts that it's cooler than saying "people in clothes".
  • Two-thirds of Saturday Night Live airs on Sunday morning in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones - in fact, in the Pacific, what's shown is a feed of the episode that finished filming 90 minutes before, making the entire title a misnomer (in the Mountain time zone, the program begins after the first hour has finished filming. Alaska and Hawaii get the episodes much later.). Also, NBC's Late Night airs completely during the early morning, except in the Central, Mountain, Alaska and Hawaii time zones where it begins at 11:30.
    • Reruns and compilation specials aren't live either.
    • Also, the Brazilian version of SNL will air on Sundays.
    • Mike Myers' character Linda Richman would occasionally throw out one of these for audience discussion when she became verklempt. Examples include peanuts, Rhode Island, and the Holy Roman Empire.
      Linda: Ralph Fiennes is spelled neither rafe nor fines. Discuss.
    • Also Duran Duran, which is apparently neither a Duran nor a Duran.
    • This also slightly annoyed her in regards to actress Kristin Scott Thomas, since she was a female whose name was two-thirds male.
  • The game show Save to Win involved trivia, memory recall, and picking random numbers, but it never actually involved saving money.
  • Schitt's Creek: Neither the show or the titular town is at all as shitty as the name would imply. The show is a rather sophisticated Screwball Comedy with likable characters and heartwarming stories while the town itself, despite being rural and run down, is populated by decent, hardworking people who are tolerant and caring.
  • Smallville: The eleventh episode of Season 1 is titled "Hug". The villain in this episode is a man who can mind control people to do what he wants by initiating a handshake. He doesn't use hugs and at no point is a hug significant to the plot.
  • When Jamie Lynn Sigler (aka Meadow Soprano) was attempting to kick start a pop music career (no, seriously,) she said that one of the reasons she auditioned for the part of Meadow was because when she saw the title The Sopranos, she honestly thought it would involve music somehow.
  • The Spencer Sisters: Darby and Victoria are the titular duo. Victoria however is Darby's mother. They simply named themselves this as detective partners since they're often mistaken for really being sisters.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Data's pet cat Spot is not a spotted cat, despite her name. (She's a tabby with light orange fur; female orange tabbies are very uncommon in real life.)
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • The Orbs look like crystal hourglasses. Aren't orbs supposed to be spherical? They're also called the Tears of the Prophets, but don't look much like teardrops, either.
    • For that matter, Sisko is called Emissary, which isn't really accurate. An "emissary" is a person who is sent somewhere to represent the interests of someone else. Emissaries are trusted to use their own judgement to achieve said mission. Sisko is told several times that he has to do or say something specific; he's just an errand boy and mouthpiece, not an "emissary."
      • It gets weirder when you consider that K'Ehleyr of The Next Generation had the title Emissary as well, but there the title was used correctly. She was sent to do a specific mission and use her expertise and experience.
    • The station isn't in deep space at all; it's quite close to an inhabited planet. It's pointed out in one episode how "human-centric" the name is, as it refers to how far from Earth the station is.
  • Star Trek: Picard: Coupled with Bilingual Bonus; Raffi's surname "Musiker" is German for "musician," and there's no indication that she can play an instrument.
  • Strangers with Candy is not (typically) about strangers or candy. The show is meant to parody "After School Specials" that are known to drop Anvilicious Stock Aesops on school-age kids, one of the most obvious being "never accept candy from strangers." The title also may refer to the Comedic Sociopath leads; accepting candy from Jerri Blank is probably never a good idea.
  • Supernatural. Played for Laughs in "Free To Be You And Me" when Dean sets up Castiel with a prostitute called Chastity. The Celibate Hero's response to hearing this entirely inappropriate name is to down half a glass of beer.
  • Super Sentai have had a few.
    • Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: Ginga could be translated as Galaxy, but the show has nothing to do with galaxies and is just a meaningless proper name.
      • Averted somewhat with it's Power Rangers counterpart, Lost Galaxy it is set in space, though as stated above the show has very little to do with "The Lost Galaxy". That wasn't exactly the fault of the show as Lost Galaxy was notorious for its chaotic behind-the-scenes issues, such as script rewrites. The titular Lost Galaxy was meant be a much bigger presence in the show.
    • Tensou Sentai Goseiger. Gosei translates as "five star" as seen with Gosei Sentai Dairanger. Goseiger does have the usual five warriors but has nothing to do with stars or nature unless you count Gosei World as with Gingaman the term Gosei is just a Proper name.
    • Lucky of Uchu Sentai Kyuranger, contrary to his name, is Unluckily Lucky. He had a very unfortunate childhood, but by celebrating every last bit of good luck he experienced, he forced his luck to turn around.
  • Many fans of Terriers attributed its low ratings and cancellation to the title, which gave the (incorrect) impression that it involved dogs, while failing to convey that it was a noir-ish detective series. Had it been renewed, it might have been re-titled Beach Dicks.
  • Several real-life examples are parodied in That Mitchell and Webb Look's "Discoverer" sketches. Mitchell plays whatever famous explorer discovered and named the area, and Webb plays his second-in-command who points out the obvious disconnect between the name and the place, but ends up having to give in because he's not "the captain."
    Webb: Captain, the Lord has delivered us to a truly wondrous land! Lush subtropical plains stretch out as far as the eye can see. It's ninety degrees in the shade even though it's November, there are herds of seven-foot-tall two-legged creatures bouncing across the landscape at tremendous speeds.
    Mitchell: Yes. Do you know where it reminds me of? Wales.
    • They also have a sketch involving a "giant death ray", which turns out to be harmless. They explain the name as follows:
      Bachman: One question that does spring to mind, Professor, er…
      Webb: Professor Death.
      Bachman: ...Professor Death, is why on Earth you elected to name this contraption the "giant death..." oh I see.
  • History Channel's Truck Night in America takes place during the daytime.
  • From the Ultra Series:
    • Ultraman:
      • The iconic kaiju Red King is not red, but a yellow-blue mix. The real reason for his name was that he was originally intended to be the Big Bad in a prototype of the series called Redman, and the name ended up sticking when he was recycled as a recurring Monster of the Week. The franchise has since attempted to explain his name as a reference to his brutish, violent personality, and variants that are red in colour have appeared in Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero and Ultraman Decker.
      • Zetton, the Final Boss of the series, has "Space Dinosaur" as its Boss Subtitles, but looks nothing like one, resembling a humanoid beetle with glowing organs on its face and chest. This was a result of behind-the-scenes decisions, as Zetton's role would originally have gone to the more dinosaur-like Saigo.
    • Ultraseven: First off, it is actually the third in the Ultra series, after UltraQ and Ultraman. The name is an allusion to the fact that Seven, the main character, is the seventh member of the Ultra Garrison, a team tasked with protecting the Earth from various threats, except that Seven is actually the true identity of Dan Moroboshi, the team's sixth member.
      • One of Seven's signature moves, the Eye Slugger, does not involve his eyes, it's actually his detachable head crest that he can use as a hand weapon or a projectile.
    • Return of Ultraman: Does not actually feature Ultraman returning to Earth. Originally, it was supposed to feature the original Ultraman but he was replaced with a mostly-identical Ultra who went nameless and was simply referred to as "Ultraman" for a long time until he was given the name Jack.
    • Ultraman R/B:
      • Ultraman Rosso and Ultraman Blu aren't always coloured red and blue as their names would imply, as those colours are completely absent on their bodies when they're using the Wind or Ground Crystals.
      • The movie has Snake Darkness, whose dinosaur-like body plan has little resemblance to a snake. It isn't really dark either, with its White and Red and Eerie All Over colour scheme and lack of Casting a Shadow powers. The name is justified in-universe as its creator, Yukio, is a Chuunibyou who just thinks the name sounds cool.
  • The Victorious episode "Stuck in an RV" doesn't actually take place in a RV, but instead a trailer attached to Beck's truck. An RV drives itself.
  • The series Virtual Memory is named for a computer term, and the set has a heavy PC theme, with a giant desktop tower and a printer. So naturally, Virtual Memory is...a Bible trivia Game Show that has absolutely nothing to do with computers, nor does it award computers as prizes. (Unless you count Mega Bite Mike skits, and even then those use technology as a backdrop for fantastically silly skits instead of any serious PC knowledge.)
  • Played for laughs during a performance of Scenes From a Hat on Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
    Suggestion: What's really going through president Bush's mind during Cabinet meetings.
    Colin Mochrie: There isn't even a cabinet in here...
  • The Wire: The Greek turns out to not even be Greek.
  • The television film The Year of the Sex Olympics is set in a future where the majority of TV programming is low-brow game shows and reality TV. Including, yes, the Sex Olympics, but they are in no way the focus of the story, which is actually a serious drama about a reality show that starts out striving for authenticity but is transformed into an Immoral Reality Show by a producer who thinks unscripted reality isn't dramatic enough.

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