Basic Trope: The title for a work makes the work seem a lot lighter than it really is.
- Straight: Rainbowman is a dark film about a gay man facing discrimination, but people assume based on the title it's something for little girls.
- Exaggerated: A Friendly Tea Party is a Downer Ending film about Atomic Hate full of Gorn. People take the title at face value.
- Downplayed: Rainbowman is about a weatherman who has some marital problems, it's not a kids movie but it's not necessarily something they wouldn't understand.
- Justified
- The Sword of Light, a Dark Fantasy novel where Characters Dropping Like Flies is in effect, is named for the sword the Big Bad carries, not the hero, because in its universe Light Is Not Good.
- Rain bowman comes from a (deliberate?) Blind Idiot reading of the original title's characters, when they actually should read "crying* archer"
- Inverted: Bloody Hellscape is about pink ponies having a tea party under a rainbow.
- Subverted: Rainbowman is initially about a gay man facing discrimination, but morphs into a story about the wacky adventures of a weatherman trying to predict a rainbow.
- Double Subverted: It morphs back to the gay man's story and a Downer Ending.
- Parodied: A Movie with Cute Kittens Who Play Hide and Seek; Or, Don't Take Your Kids to See This, It's Actually about Genocide gets complaints from Moral Guardians on a regular basis because they thought it would be a kids' movie.
- Zigzagged: Rainbowman constantly switches between a gay man suffering discrimination and the adventures of the weatherman.
- Averted: A Friendly Tea Party is about just that.
- Enforced: The execs are trying to appeal to a younger demographic.
- Lampshaded: "I thought we were gonna have a tea party, not Nuke 'em all!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: A character uses a Show Within a Show with a Deceptively Silly Title to traumatize another. "Hey Susie, wanna watch A Friendly Tea Party?" "Sure, why not?"
- Defied: The executives in charge of the In-Universe production of Friendly Tea Party take one look at the script, at the bloodbath in the final minutes, and the possibility of Frivolous Lawsuits from ticked-off parents (or losing money from it not being a good enough title for their target market) and order it to be changed.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The producers of A Friendly Tea Party get sued by parents who took their now traumatized children to a film they thought was about tea parties.
- Reconstructed: The film eventually finds its audience of adults despite the title.
Back to Deceptively Silly Title
