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"It's strange, for a game called 'House of the Dead', you'd assume it would be set in a house full of dead people... Truthfully, they should have called this game 'Road Trip of the Dead'..."

A series title that may have been an accurate description when it began, but after a number of changes to the premise, no longer makes sense to people who don't go back to the beginning. Sometimes a new element is put in to justify the title.

This usually happens when a movie named after a specific MacGuffin suddenly gets a sequel and changing the title to something else might throw people off that this is a sequel. One of the ways to avert this is through a Franchise-Driven Retitling, downgrading the original to a subtitle with the main title being something more consistent. They couldn't very well have called the Indiana Jones sequel Raiders of the Lost Ark 2, could they?

Sometimes, the creator may try to defy this by keeping around the characters or MacGuffin the work is titled after, but chances are this will simply pass the irrelevance from the title to another story element making said element The Artifact.

See also The Artifact. Artifact Name is this, but for names of things other than works. Often a direct result of Nothing Is the Same Anymore and Early-Installment Weirdness. Sometimes results in New Season, New Name. Happens often in poorly devised Alternate Universe Fan Fiction. Eventually this could result in Never Trust a Title. This can also happen on a larger scale with Network Decay. Compare Trivial Title.

Not to be confused with MacGuffin Title.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • By chapter 146 of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, Rentarou has married the first 25 girls, meaning they are no longer girlfriends but fiances.
  • Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says: The only time Toda talks only in "Ah"s and "Mm"s is the phone call between her and Tanaka in the first chapter. Once Tanaka knows of the nature of her Speech Impediment, the cast is willing to give her extra time to get her thoughts in order, which means Toda doesn't speak as the title describes since the second chapter. "Ah" and "Mm" are just her go-to responses, especially when she's thinking.
  • There tends to be a pattern among Fujio Akatsuka's most famous works:
    • Tensai Bakabon is initially about a comically stupid little boy named Bakabon and his adventures with his pals, focusing so strongly on his point of view that his parents don't even get names, referred to only as "Papa" and "Mama." Over time, however, Bakabon's troublemaking father proves to be a much more popular character, to the point that the series soon revolves around him and his various schemes. Bakabon himself is demoted to his occasional sidekick. Despite this, the dad is still never given a name, and is called "Bakabon's Father" on merchandise. Bakabon himself wouldn't get his title back until Shounen Bakabon several decades later.
    • Osomatsu-kun focuses on the antics of a family of sextuplets, with the titular character being the oldest of them. While he and his brothers did get their fair share of adventures together, their costar Iyami really brought in the viewers with his smarmy tactics and popular "SHEEEH!" pose. As a result, later installments put the spotlight on him more than the Matsuno family, and the 1988 anime had him and Chibita as the main focus. This discrepancy in title wouldn't be resolved until Osomatsu-san, which put much more focus on him and his brothers.
  • Attack on Titan: This is the case in the English title "Attack on Titan", indicating that humanity attempts to strike back at the titans. The revelation at the end of the first part of the manga, however, gives us the true name of Rogue Titan, which is "Attack Titan", making it an Antagonist Title.
  • The anime adaptation's title of Azumanga Daioh is victim to this. "Azumanga Daioh" is a compacted version of "Azuma's manga for Daioh magazine." The anime, being an anime, is of course not a manga. Of course, "Azuanime Daioh" (or for that matter "Azuanime TVTokyo") just doesn't sound as good. Thus, its full title is Azumanga Daioh: The Animation. (This is even lampshaded in one of the episode previews.)
  • Beastars — Early on, it seems like the series is going to be about different main characters competing for the title of Beastar. However, Juno and Louis don't take very long to lose all interest in becoming a Beastar, and while Legosi was technically in the running due to the decision to make whoever catches Tem's killer a Beastar, he never shows any interest in it either for most of the series, and is never told he was in the run. This is briefly brought up again in the final arc, where Legosi suggests he and Louis could become Beastars together and names their team "Beastars", but this plot is not followed up on. By the end of the series, absolutely nobody has become a new Beastar, and the entire concept remains fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of the story, with Yafya even retiring from his role as Sublime Beastar, making the spot vacant, or occupied by an unknown character.
  • The anime Candy☆Boy was originally released as an extra for a single of the same name. This is rather confusing to new viewers, as all of the characters are female.
  • Index, the title character of A Certain Magical Index, gets Demoted to Extra within the first ten episodes. Although the occasional arc gives her more focus, she never regains the importance she had in the first arc, making her little more than another Girl of the Week in that respect. However, given that she lives with Touma and played a rather important role in the WWIII arc, she has fared better than the likes of the true C list fodder of the cast.
  • Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning retains the 02 from Digimon Adventure 02. However, in the series, the number referred to it taking place in 2002 (which was Next Sunday A.D. at the time of release). The film on the other hand takes place ten years later in 2012.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • While the title Plot Coupons are the driving force of the first third or so, once the story is done with Namek in Dragon Ball Z it becomes centered entirely around Villain Arcs, featuring long-winded bouts against said villains. The aforementioned Dragon Balls are relegated to little more than a plot device the protagonists customarily fall back on when too many of their own die, and the obstacle of gathering them up is either done off-screen or made trivial with Goku's Instant Transmission. This comes full circle in Dragon Ball GT, where the Dragon Balls are the central focus again (at least until the producers realized that they couldn't make the new story work and fell back on Villain Arcs again).
    • Lampshaded in the first arc after all the Dragon Balls have been gathered: after Shenron appears, a wish is made and the Dragon Balls are lost again...
      Oolong: What's going to happen to the title of this manga...?
    • Toriyama claimed in an interview that the title of Dragon Ball Z was because at the time, he was considering ending the series, and after all, Z is the last letter. He changed his mind, and so this "final" portion of the series ended up being more or less its final two-thirds.
  • Elfen Lied is named after a German song of the same name, which was featured throughout the manga. The anime, however, dropped the song and left the name.
  • A version appears in Fist of the North Star, although it's not the title of the series. Kenshiro's signature attack is the "Hundred Crack Fist of the North Star". But why "Hundred Crack?" Because in its first published appearance in a non-canonical prequel pilot, the move's entire purpose was to crack an enemy's hardened armor in a hundred places. Thus, it is the "hundred crack" fist. However, it was never used for this purpose in the main series, instead just making enemies explode like everybody else.
  • Guru Guru Pon-chan. The "Guru Guru" in the title refers to spinning, and only in volume 1 did Ponta spin to transform.
  • The anime adaption of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels gets its title from the first novel, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya; however, the show adapts from five different books, each one with a different title. Currently it has adapted the first three books plus some short stories of the fifth and sixth novels.
    • Averted by The Movie based on the fourth novel, since it's named after the book.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers is beginning to lean this way, with very little of the new material focusing on WWII or even on Italy. This may be part of the reason the anime was renamed to Hetalia: World Series, with the next two seasons being named Hetalia: The Beautiful World, and Hetalia: The World Twinkle, although the "World 8" are still used as "main characters" in anime marketing.
  • Only the first few chapters of High School Of The Dead are set in a High School. This is, however, mostly the result of a translation issue. A more accurate translation of the title is "Academy Apocalypse", which makes slightly more sense.
  • The title of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure actually made sense when the main characters were still called JoJo. While Phantom Blood, Battle Tendency, and Stardust Crusaders have their titular JoJos be referred to by the nickname, starting from Diamond is Unbreakable onwards, while the characters occasionally get called JoJonote , they're usually just referred to by their actual name. It's briefly restored in Steel Ball Run as Johnny was given the nickname by his fans when he was a successful rider before his fall from grace, only to go right back into being an Artifact since JoJolion had Josuke (usually called "Gappy" to differentiate from Part 4's Josuke) go the entire Part without being called that.
  • After a certain point in Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To ~ The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains, Shirogane and Kaguya kind of gave up on that "War of Love and Brains" in favor of dealing with their own feelings, with only chapter 54 being their last major throwback to their early series behavior. Even the "Real War of Love and Brains" as mentioned in the School Festival Arc is just the two becoming more honest with themselves and finally throwing away their pride, which was the exact opposite of why the "War" even started. Lampshaded in the extras, where Aka muses that the subtitle should probably be done away with at that point. And then the whole "Wants to be Confessed to" part ends when the two of them officially start dating in chapter 151.
    • The series itself put a humorous lampshade on the concept, with a between-chapter gag image showing the Anthropomorphic Personification of the subtitle in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, calling "Wants to Be Confessed to-chan" on the phone and telling her "Yeah, I died." After Chapter 151, there's another image where "Confessed-chan" is in Heaven as well, remarking that she really should have seen it coming. The second anime season likewise turns into a Questioning Title? as the subtitle gets crossed out, and the first episode opens with the anthropomorphic "War-chan" complaining that she feels like The Unfavorite of the family.
    • Chapter 249 however brings the "war" aspect of the series back in full force, only this time it's about Shirogane fighting to save Kaguya from a loveless Arranged Marriage and win her back.
      Shirogane: Now then, how should we go about waging war?
    • For something unrelated to the title of the series as a whole, chapters 112-114 were a 3 part story and numbered as such in their titles. The anime skipped over 112, but still referred to the adaptations of 113 and 114 as part 2 and part 3.
  • Love Live! was originally the name of the group. Their first single "Bokura no LIVE kimi to no life" was even published under this group name. But then they got renamed to µ's at a poll from the Dengeki's magazine. But Love Live still remained as the name for the whole franchise and got later the name of an in-world contest when the anime came out.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
    • The "Lyrical" part was part of an incantation Nanoha used to activate her spells. By around the third episode of the first season, only one of her spells requires the incantation at all. It sticks around a little longer as "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase, though even then it wasn't applied to the darker episodes. She then drops the practice altogether around the start of the second season.
    • About the time of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the series dropped any pretense of being a Magical Girl show, but that part of the title wasn't replaced until Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force.
    • And Nanoha is only a secondary character in both Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid and the above-mentioned Force, but her name is still on the title. In ViVid Strike!, a series set in the Nanoha universe in which Nanoha is only mentioned once, and even Vivio is a secondary character, Nanoha's name doesn't appear at all.
    • Since Magic itself became useless in Force, the only appropriate words left in the title of that series is "Force" and "Record".
  • Marmalade Boy: Depending on the language.
    • Japanese: The original title was a Protagonist Title as that would be a guy before the author decided to do a Gender Flip and got a female protagonist instead, though the manga subverts this by having said protagonist nickname her Love Interest after marmalade in a Title Drop.
    • In Spain the anime was renamed "La Familia Crece", which means "The Family Grows" and refers to the first episode setting up the two families living together, though this isn't given a lot of attention during most of the show. There's even barely any Flirty Stepsiblings angst or the like.
  • Medaka Box: The title refers to a suggestion box instituted by Student Council President Medaka Kurokaminote , and it played a big role in the first few chapters, which were about Medaka trying to solve her fellow students' problems. But this concept vanished as the series progressed through its myriad Genre Shifts (to straight Shonen Jump fighting manga, to Deconstruction, to Reconstruction, and beyond), though it does occasionally come up in later story arcs.
  • With Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt, the "Thunderbolt" was in reference to the Thunderbolt Sector of Side 4, named for the strange electrical storms that happened there. However, the manga only stays there for 3 volumes (or the first six episodes/December Sky for the anime) and becomes this trope afterwards.
  • The title Monster Rancher originally referred to raising monsters on a ranch in the games. The anime is nothing like that, being an adventure series resembling Digimon instead.
  • The Mysterious Cities of Gold ceased to be accurate as a title when it was revealed, early in the second season, that the titular Cities and the artifacts associated with them are not made from gold but from Orichalcum. However, the term "Cities of Gold" is still used in-universe.
  • When Meine Liebe (German for "My love") went from Dating Sim to anime they removed the female lead which leads to people mistaking it for a Boys' Love series.
  • No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! has this happen from a few different angles. The original premise was simply that the main character, Tomoko, was desperately trying to be popular but constantly proved her own worst enemy in accomplishing this. The chapter titles generally went by some variant of "Since I'm Not Popular, I'll [insert reference to the week's Zany Scheme]." But as the manga ran on and she went through Character Development, Tomoko's schemes for popularity tapered off, her motivation to become popular shifted towards just living a good life, and her social standing gradually climbed out of the depths it started at, to the point of building a good-sized circle of friends and even a few admirers. Naturally, though, the title, as well as the chapters, maintain their name.
  • One-Punch Man: Starting with Boros, there have been a few opponents that have required more than one punch from Saitama to defeat. Even before that, he's also used multiple punches, and moves other than punches, in order to defeat his opponents. Still, he defeats most of the enemies he faces in one punch, and there hasn't yet been an opponent who could pose a real challenge to him.
  • PandoraHearts takes its title from author Mochizuki Jun's debut oneshot, where a "Pandora" is a box that resides in the chest of anyone who contracts with an "abyss." In the series proper, the box is replaced with the incuse that appears on the chests of illegal contractors, "abysses" are now known as "chains," the Abyss is the name of the Eldritch Location where chains are born, and Pandora is the name of the organization that researches the Abyss.
  • The anime adaptation of PaRappa the Rapper very rarely features the titular character actually rapping.
  • "The Movie" renders Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion this for the manga adaptation of what was the franchise's third film and first film-original installment.
  • Reborn! (2004) was originally a comedy manga wherein the title character, a diminutive home tutor who also happened to be a mafia hitman, would tutor hapless teenager Tsuna in hopes of making him tougher and more confident. Most chapters revolved around Reborn's unorthodox and comically violent teaching methods. Over time, the story became more serious and eventually transitioned into an action series about warring crime families, with a newly powerful Tsuna completely taking over as lead character. Before long, Reborn was barely a factor in the series, hardly ever contributing to storylines and barely doing any tutoring. At most, he might provide some exposition before stepping aside to let Tsuna do all the fighting.
    • At the start of one arc, Reborn is even explicitly forbidden from participating in any conflicts. He spends the next 30 or so chapters just standing in the background.
  • Saint Seiya: Depending on your language... It was previously a Protagonist Title, but new sagas don't even have Seiya as a character, as they revolve around different Athena's saints, sometimes a century apart. But, it's averted with the name given in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, "Knights of The Zodiac".
  • Only the first fourteen episodes of Sword Art Online are actually set in the eponymous video game, after which it's destroyed. Experiences and technologies from SAO do serve as plot points from time to time, though, and on a more basic level swords, skill with swords, and online games are important through the whole thing. Subsequent arcs also touch upon the legacy of the game of death, as well as the impact it has had on the lives of those who survived it.
  • Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou translates to "Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip". The first chapter is about just that — a shopping trip to Yokohama — but the place is only visited occasionally through the rest of the series. Like as not, the "first chapter" was actually produced as a one-shot stand-alone which was then optioned into a series, carrying along its now mostly vestigial title.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! means King of Games, and refers to its main character (or rather, the main character's alter-ego) who is invincible in any game. Since the anime adaptation only focuses on the card game, the title makes less sense. The English dub tried to alleviate the issue via a few title drops in the first season, but since the phrase was never translated and later stopped appearing altogether it just ended up as another example. The person titled "King of Games" isn't even present in the various spinoffs, having moved on to the afterlife at the end of the original series. You could be lenient and count the title of Duel King that sometimes appears as the King of Games, but only two of the spinoff main characters even make becoming the Duel King an actual goal. The others don't want the title and never get it, keeping it an Artifact.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds was about five Signer Dragons... until Leo’s Life Stream Dragon came along. Furthermore, 5D's later becomes the name of The Team, but it has seven members.
  • YuYu Hakusho translates as "Ghost Files," and this reflects the actual stories at first; Yusuke, as a ghost, helps other ghosts. Fairly early in the story though, Yusuke is returned to life and the series shifts to a supernatural battle manga a la Dragon Ball Z, where he primarily fights demons.

    Arts 
  • Modernism isn't very modern anymore. Postmodernism is also pretty old. The "Modern Breakthrough" is even older.
  • Also Art Nouveau, which hasn't been new since the 1890s.
  • The Birth of Venus (Botticelli): As it turns out, Botticelli never named his painting — it was art historians from the XIXth century who did that. And they, well, screwed up. The painting's subject is not Venus' birth per se but the newborn Venus about to step onto the island of Cythera (which was considered the place where she was born). A more fitting title would be Venus Arriving from her Birthplace.

    Audio Plays 
  • The characters of Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk leave the eponymous dungeon after the first season and never return to it ever again (though we still see a bit of it after that when the story focuses on Zangdar and Reivax, but they also leave it during season 2). Some of the characters even lampshade the fact that they did not even visit a single dungeon during some seasons.

    Comedy 
  • Daniel Whitney created the Larry the Cable Guy persona for a radio show. Early on, he actually was pretending to be a cable guy, but that part of the character was phased out in favor of the Southern-flavored comedic character he is now. This was made plain when Whitney and his character starred in the movie Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.
  • "Alternative comedy" was a phrase coined in the '80s to describe the acts at London's Comedy Store. What people actually meant by it varied from "avant garde; thinks actual punchlines are trad" to "probably swears a lot" to "not a racist/sexist '70s club comic" (or any combination of the above). These days, most "mainstream" UK comedy is descended directly from the "alternative" scene (and the surviving racist/sexist club comics swear much more than them).
  • Hannah Gadsby's standup comedy act "Nanette": She initially intended to get an hour's worth of material from her brief encounter with a woman who was named Nanette, but found it couldn't be done, and the final product never mentioned Nanette at all. She first performed it for an event where your act had to have a title, and she'd already put "Nanette" on the form, so it had to stay.
  • Conversational Troping in the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle: Mitch says the above situation happens a lot at the Fringe, which is why he always tries to come up with a theme for his show before he has to fill in the form, about six months in advance. Which, in this case, was around the same time Tony Sheridan died, inspiring Mitch to wonder how so many people could all be the "fifth Beatle".

    Comic Strips 
  • Judge Parker fell under this trope during the 1960s when the strip shifted focus to attorney Sam Driver and now still does as most of the plots revolve around the exploits of Sam or his rich wife, Abbey, and her adopted daughters Neddy and Sophie. Circa 2008, the original Judge Parker started appearing more often, and became part of a few big plotlines, though largely as a supporting character. His son Randy Parker is a supporting character and, as of 2009, also a Judge now, thus making another Judge Parker part of the cast.
  • Funky Winkerbean: Funky isn't even seen that often; the strip now focuses much more on Les. This has apparently been true for decades, even back when it was a Lighter and Softer strip, if the stage musical Funky Winkerbean's Homecoming (where Les is the main character and Funky only has two scenes) is anything to go by. These days, it's debatable which is the bigger artifact, the fact that the title character doesn't show up that often or that the title "Funky Winkerbean" suggests the Lighter and Softer strip it was at the start and not the Darker and Edgier Deus Angst Machina Diabolus ex Machina Crapsack World for which it's become infamous.
  • Robotman avoided this, changing the name to Monty after the title character left.
  • Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has been all-Snuffy, no-Barney for decades. Barney Google didn't appear in the strip between January 1997 and February 2012. Since then current writer/artist has allowed him to cameo for roughly a week per year.
  • The comic strip Luann for a while seemed to focus almost exclusively on Luann's brother, Brad, and specifically his pursuit of fellow firefighter Toni. Lately it alternates mainly between Luann's friends Bernice and Tiffany, with Luann herself playing a supporting role on weekdays while serving as the butt of the joke for Sunday Strip one-off gags.
  • Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip. In its earliest incarnation, she labeled a drawing "Marianne, dissatisfied with her morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27", "as if it were just one in a series of illustrations of mildly demonic lesbians". She drew more and more "plates", and kept the title when it shifted to a strip format about various aspects of lesbian culture, and also when it shifted to the serialized format with recurring characters. As the cast grew to include men and people of other sexual identities, Bechdel lampshaded the title by titling a recent collection of her strips "Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-based Life-forms to Watch Out For".
    • She saw this coming a long time ago, way back in 1992, in fact (The Plot Thickens, #145...one of those "noncanon" ones). Jezanna mentioned the prospect of a transgender character joining the strip, to which Toni replied, "Would we have to change the name of the strip? You know, to 'Dykes and Transgender Persons to Watch Out For?'"
  • The comic strip Fritzi Ritz became so dominated by Fritzi's niece that it was eventually renamed as Nancy.
  • Blondie (1930): Although still present, Blondie hasn't been the central or the funniest character in her own strip since the 1930s, when the strip got a revamp from being a silly strip about a flapper to a domestic comedy about Dagwood. Film versions, and the public at large, refer to the comic as "Blondie and Dagwood", for obvious reasons.
  • Kudzu came to spend far more time on Rev. Will B. Dunn than on the young man named Kudzu.
  • Steve Bell's If... has been published every weekday since 1982. The first two strips were titled If Dinosaurs Walked on Fleet Street..., the next two were titled If Turkeys Could Vote... and that was the last time he played with the title, which swiftly rendered it meaningless.
  • Terry and the Pirates had an opening storyline at its outset which involved pirates, but Terry soon escaped from them, and the pirate reference in the title was meaningless for the succeeding decades of the strip's run.
  • Baby Blues still has a baby, but she doesn't get the spotlight half as often as her first- and third-grade siblings.
    • "Baby" referred to Zoe. That she wouldn't stay that way forever was something the creators readily acknowledged (and in fact made the subject of numerous strips).
    • According the creators' website FAQ: "The way we see it is that your children are always your babies, no matter how big or old they get. Once a parent, always a parent. And right now we have no plans for having the MacPherson clan expand. Besides, with the amount of room given comic strips these days, we couldn't fit any more characters in the panels."
  • To accomodate the three-panel strip in a more legible fashion, Garfield cartoonist Jim Davis developed a short, wide book format that came to be known as the "Garfield format". While many other strips began publishing in this format, Garfield itself switched to a more conventional square book starting in 2001, and the original "Garfield format" compilations have been republished in the square format.
  • The title daycare center of Safe Havens hasn't been a part of the strip since the mid-1990s, once the kids started aging in real time. The occasional references to it and the name "Havens" are sprinkled throughout the comic, but Safe Havens remained gone, until a few years ago, after the main cast started having children of their own, all of whom enrolled in the daycare. (And a 5-year-old Leonardo da Vinci. Don't ask.)
  • In the early days (1919) of Thimble Theater (the strip that introduced Popeye), each strip was a parody of stage melodramas and silent movies where Olive Oyl and her boyfriend, Harold Hamgravy, played different characters each strip. Every strip would start with a short Cast of Characters list that told you which characters Olive and Harold would be playing. After just a few months of this, the format was dropped entirely, Olive's brother Castor Oyl was introduced, and Thimble Theater became more of a humorous adventure strip. So even when Popeye was introduced in 1929 and became a one-man Spotlight-Stealing Squad, the strip had already had an Artifact Title for nearly a decade, even shortly after it debuted!
  • Like its namesake at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Gasoline Alley is an artifact title. It began as a panel of "The Rectangle", where each of the Chicago Tribune's four staff artists drew one. In Frank King's panel, four guys (Walt Wallet, still part of the strip although he's a supercentenarian; and Doc, Avery and Bill, long dead by now) talked about cars, hence the name. It became popular enough to be spun off as a strip in 1918, with more characters who talk about a lot of other things besides cars (and who became the first to age together at a normal pace). Even by the 1950s, Mad was doing parodies noting that the strip seemed to have nothing to do with gasoline.
  • The eponymous Little Orphan Annie was an orphan at first, but she met her good old "Daddy" Warbucks after less than two months. Time spent as an orphan: Less than sixty strips. Time spent not being an orphan: Thousands of strips.
  • Bound and Gagged was originally all pantomime gags, making the title a play on words. It has been lost in recent years as creator Dana Summers has had characters actually speak.
  • Bloom County was so named because its central characters were Milo Bloom and several other characters who lived in the Bloom Boarding House. Over time, the strip's focus shifted away from the original boarding house concept and nearly all of its inhabitants were ousted save for Milo.
  • The immediate follow-up to Bloom County, Outland, initially took place in an alternate universe accessed through a back alley in Bloom County note , populated by new characters save for Bloom County holdover Ronald-Ann. Two weeks later, Opus was very literally dropped in, characters like Bill the Cat and Steve Dallas were gradually re-introduced, and by strip's end, Opus's letters were sent to a Bloom County address.
  • The Bash Street Kids in The Beano are a weird example. In 2013 Bash Street School was destroyed and, rather than the usual Snap Back, the kids were sent to Beanotown School, where several other strips were set. They continued to be the Bash Street Kids. Eventually, the school started being referred to as Bash Street School again, but it continued to be the same school that Dennis the Menace (UK), Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger etc. attended. So the title makes sense again, but doesn't meaningfully distinguish them from half the other characters!

    Fan Works 
  • Advice and Trust: The title references Misato advicing Shinji to trust his feelings and ask Asuka out. That happened in the first chapter, which was supposed to be a one-shot. It has been a bunch of chapters since and Shinji and Asuka got together long ago, so the title does not describe the fic anymore.
  • Evangelion 303: This Evangelion fic has NO Evangelions anywhere.note 
  • Heroes of the Desk relates the exploits of 3D-printed Heroes of the Storm characters who are brought to life in miniature (14" tall). At a certain point during the story they are made to be their normal heights, sort of making "of the desk" into a Nonindicative Name.
  • Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time: Part 1 and part 2 of this LDD-fanfic both uses the same title, however part 2 hardly features any scenes in Terabithia, save for a few featuring Maybelle and Dylan who were visiting there due to the absence of Jess and Leslie.
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has "The Transmitter Conspiracy", which reveals the so-called "conspiracy" behind the transmitter, then proceeds to go into a plot that, while still based around the transmitter, doesn't really have to do with the conspiracy.
  • Homestuck high bears very little resemblance to Homestuck and only the first chapter takes place in a High School AU.
  • Meg's Boyfriend: While the titular Zack does become Meg's boyfriend, they actually get married early on right before their the birth of their daughter. Averted with the two sequels, Meg's Family and Meg's Family Returns.
  • The Elemental Chess Trilogy is still known by that title, even though it's now a Fan Verse spreading across the original trilogy, a prequel, a distant sequel about the Spinoff Babies, and a collection of side stories that didn't really fit anywhere else.
  • The first story of the Gensokyo 20XX series took place or, rather, it started in Gensokyo. The rest of the series, save sidestories, do not.
  • Intercom is this according to Word of God. The plot is started by an intercom system being accidentally damaged, but it isn't really central enough to justify naming the story after it.
  • Ruby and Nora plays this straight then averts it. The series began following two Decoy Protagonists before shifting the focus to the characters in the title.
  • The full title of Earth's Alien History includes the subtitle "or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Mistrust the Xeno". And while the start of the timeline has humanity near constantly at war with the various races that invade Earth, later on they come to have a more nuanced view on alien life, becoming allies with a great many of them.
    • An argument could be made for the first part of the title being an artifact too, once the story becomes a Space Opera with lots of events happening off Earth.
  • At no time does the eponymous yearbook ever actually appear in Skyhold Academy Yearbook. It gets mentioned a couple of times, but it's never any sort of focus in the stories.
  • Twisted Princess was originally supposed to be of the Disney Princess characters, but it was expanded to be about female Disney characters in general.
  • The Empress Returns (sequel to The God Empress of Ponykind) started off with Celestia and Twilight Sparkle travelling to the Imperium, where the former would work to unite Mankind against its enemies on that Galaxy. By the end of the first arc, focus had started to shift from Celestia to Twilight and her entourage, showing her efforts to find the Imperium's Elements of Harmony while Celestia stepped back onto the Mentor role she held in canon.
  • Discussed in this The Powerpuff Girls fanart, where Buttercup comes out as a transgender boy and his sisters realize their old name no longer applies.
    Blossom: How about...the Powerpuff Gang?
    Bubbles: Maybe..What about the Powerpuff Siblings?
    Blossom: The Powerpuff...Squad?
    Bubbles: The Powerpuff—
    Buttercup: OH MY GOD IT'S 3 A.M.! You can call us "The Powerpuff Girls (ft. Buttercup) for all I care! JUST GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!!!!!
  • Averted in The Stalking Zuko Series. The first installment, Stalking Zuko takes place between when Zuko joins the group and the end of "The Southern Raiders," in which Katara "stalks" Zuko due to not trusting him and wanting to prepare for any possible betrayal, recording her observations in a diary. By the end of this installment, the shortest in the trilogy, he earns her trust, so Katara decides not to "stalk" him any longer. The second and longest installment is thus called "Not Stalking Zuko," and ends around the time Zuko becomes Fire Lord, so the third becomes "Not Stalking Firelord Zuko."
  • Hellsister Trilogy: The eponymous Hellsister, who the trilogy is named after, dies at the end of the first story arc.
  • Sonic.exe: The original creepypasta was about a game on a cursed CD. The real-life fangame turns the events the original protagonist saw in the game into their own story set within the Sonicverse itself.
  • The Loud House: Revamped: The "Volcanic Trip" arc features the protagonists visiting a lot of countries that don't have volcanoes, such as the United Kingdom.
  • The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H.: The Simpson family barely shows up in this fic. Maggie is a recurring secondary character, and gets a spotlight episode in "The Rumble on the Jungle Gym", but the other Simpsons are relegated to only occasional appearances. So the use of "The Simpsons" in the title only serves to connect it back to the TV series.
  • Top of the Line (Editor-Bug): Only the original story in this Invader Zim Series Fic has anything to do with the unproduced canonical episode "Top of the Line" that it's an adaptation of, and past the second story the series stops being driven by competitions between SIR Units. Editor-Bug eventually acknowledged this, hence why for Trading Dismay the title drops "Top of the Line".

    Films — Animation 
  • The Disney Princess franchise is called that despite the fact that only half of the characters featured in that Franchise actually qualify as princesses. Brand new cast members at the Disney Parks are actually taught which ones are and which ones aren't princesses, as it's a popular piece of Disney trivia they get asked by guests often. For the record, only Snow White, Aurora, Ariel, Jasmine, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida and Anna are princesses. Elsa was one until her elevation to queen, while the rest of them don't qualify because the culture they come from doesn't have "princesses" (Pocahontas and Moana), come from cultures in which commoners marrying royals do not get promoted to royalty themselves (Cinderella and Belle), or never marry a prince in the first place (Mulan).
  • How to Train Your Dragon:
    • In the How to Train Your Dragon book series, capturing and training dragons is a rite of passage for the viking tribe to which protagonist Hiccup belongs, and How to Train Your Dragon is the name of an unhelpful Fictional Document written for this purpose (consisting solely of the words "Yell at it!"), which Hiccup then defies by using his own methods. In the film How to Train Your Dragon, vikings consider dragons their enemies until Hiccup secretly befriends, and trains, the dragon Toothless; there's no system in place until he founds it, and no book appears.
    • The way the title How to Train Your Dragon is written as if it were an instructional guide is because that's how the book series presented as in-universe ("How to Train Your Dragon by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, translated from the Old Norse by Cressida Cowell"). The films and many other spinoffs cannot replicate that, but the name of the series sticks.
  • The Disney film adaptation of The Jungle Book obviously isn't a book, although it does have a Storybook Opening.
  • In the Madagascar trilogy, the titular island is only a major part of the plot of the first movie. In the sequel, the island is featured at the start, but the animals leave it and wind up on mainland Africa. In the third film the protagonists go to Europe, and the island isn't featured at all (aside from a brief reference in which the villains are taken on a boat to the island).
  • Open Season's title referred to the upcoming hunting season, when hunters would be allowed to hunt animals, and the animals trying to avoid the hunters and fight back. The direct-to-video sequels largely throw this aside, with the second film focusing on domestic animals and the third film on a circus. The fourth film, a Halloween Episode, averts this by bringing back Shaw, the antagonistic hunter from the original film, and even has Open Season reopened.
  • Rio 2, unlike the first film, takes place in the Amazon.
  • For My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree (the fourth main installment of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Spin-Off franchise My Little Pony: Equestria Girls), the "My Little Pony" part of the title no longer has any justification. While the previous films (Equestria Girls, Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games) did feature Equestrian characters traveling to this world, as well as some glimpses of Equestria, this film has neither. The magic coming from Equestria still influences the plot, and of course Sunset Shimmer is Equestrian-born, but that's it.
  • When The Land Before Time reached Spain, it was under the title "En Busca del Valle Encantado/Em Busca do Vale Encantado" (In Search of the Enchanted Valley). As the characters were no longer looking for it in the sequels, that title no longer had any meaning.
  • Stitch! The Movie, as a result of production issues. The movie was originally going to be titled Lilo & Stitch: A New Ohana, but then the decision was made to only have Stitch's name in the title of this and the subsequent series, which was going to be called Stitch! The Series. It was then decided to rename the series back to Lilo & Stitch: The Series (or just "Lilo and Stitch"), but the memo wasn't given to the marketing team for The Movie in time for the name to be changed. Because of this, the name of the film makes no sense whatsoever; the film isn't specifically about Stitch, it isn't an adaptation of any TV series named "Stitch!" and it isn't more prominently Stitch-centric than the original 2002 film.
  • In-Universe in Turning Red. 4*Town was originally a four-man band before their fifth member joined, but they kept their original name.

    Literature 
  • Area 51: Though the first book does revolve heavily around the events at Area 51, subsequent books expand the scope to other areas, with the site being only mentioned or tangential.
  • In The Bible: There are two Books of Samuel. Samuel dies halfway through the first book; after that, we follow Saul, whom Samuel had anointed as king by God's command. After Saul falls from grace before God and becomes a villain, David is the protagonist. This is more due to the books being written by the scribes of David—who became king after a long conflict with Saul—so the naming of the second book is a slight to Saul.
  • After book one, The Boxcar Children spend more time solving mysteries than encountering boxcars. They got the name because they lived in a boxcar for a while, but it sticks after they no longer live there. They do keep the boxcar as their hangout spot on the property where they live, but it's still a stretch.
  • Similar to the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, Robert Rankin's Brentford Trilogy currently has nine books.
  • The Complete Robot: At the time of publication (1982), this book was a complete collection of the short fiction in Dr Asimov's Robot Series. However, he couldn't resist writing more, such as "Robot Dreams" in 1986.
  • In The Demon Headmaster novels, the titular Diabolical Mastermind is only a school headmaster in the first book, though he's referred to as the Headmaster throughout because that's the context the heroes first encountered him in.
  • Reversed in Dinoverse. Dinosaurs are involved from the start, but it's time travel, not The 'Verse-y at all. It's only in the last two books that an alternate universe called Dinoverse comes up.
  • In-Universe in A Dance with Dragons:
    The castle dominated the broad fertile valley that maps and men alike called Blackwood Vale. A vale it was, beyond a doubt, but no wood had grown here for several thousand years, be it black or brown or green. Once yes, but axes had long since cleared the trees away.
  • In-universe Discworld example: in Going Postal, the Tanty Bugle appears to be the Disc's counterpart of the Newgate Calendar, reporting on 'orrible murders and the execution of their perpetrators. By Raising Steam it's extended its interests to "the more salacious aspects of the human condition", and in Unseen Academicals this includes "pictures of girls without their vests on", but it's still named after Ankh-Morpork's prison.
  • Dragonlance: Done almost right out of the gate. The titular weapons were mostly just a MacGuffin even in the first trilogy of books that was secondary in importance to the character interactions of those novels, and completely irrelevant in the vast majority of the hundreds of novels that followed. To make things worse, the title wasn't just a name of the stories, but also the campaign setting for the tabletop game. In that campaign setting, the weapons are pretty much One-Hit Kill weapons for dragons and near useless for anything else, so they likely didn't have much relevance in most people's tabletop games as well.
  • Dragonvarld: The monastery once did house monks, but that was long ago. Now it has entirely women as residents, some priestesses though many of them laity. They still use this name for the site however.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy. Lampshaded with Mostly Harmless bearing the description, "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy." Some later editions of the other novels include similar blurbs, and And Another Thing... is simply subtitled "Book 6 of 3".
  • The Hunger Games: The use of the term "arena" to refer to the locations where the Hunger Games take place is an in-universe example. As seen in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the early Games took place in an otherwise disused sporting arena within the Capitol. However, the Capitol Arena ceased to be used for this purpose at some point after the Tenth Games and the Gamemakers began sending the tributes to simulated wildernesses, which continued to be called "arenas" despite not being arenas in the traditional sense of the term.
  • The Inheritance Trilogy, had to be renamed The Inheritance Cycle after it's Trilogy Creep added a fourth book. Making this more confusing is that there is another fantasy series with the name that was published around the same time, although it did manage to keep it to three books. To make it a bit more confusing, the final book in the Inheritance Cycle, which was titled Inheritance, was published just a few months after the final book in the Inheritance Trilogy.
  • John Dies at the End began as a web serial, and the title might have been true at some point, but in the completed novel John "dies" midway through the story, gets better, and is not even teased to die at the end.
  • Any adaptation of The Jungle Book that isn't, you know, a book.
  • In the The Lonely Doll series of children's books, the titular character's loneliness is resolved by the end of the first story, but the title carries on for nine more books.
  • Inverted with Francine Rivers’ The Mark of the Lion trilogy, in which actual marking by lions doesn't feature until the very end of the first book, and doesn't feature at all in the third. (Though it could easily be inferred to be an important metaphor, what with Jesus being referred to as the Lion of Judah.)
  • The fourteenth book of The Morganville Vampires spends only the first and last chapter in the city of Morganville, mostly spending its plot near MIT.
  • The Pinkalicious series (the basis for Pinkalicious & Peterrific) gets its title from the original children's book by Victoria Kann, which was about a little girl's love of pink-colored food. "Pinkalicious" remained the main character's nickname after that point, and she continued to love the color pink, but the title no longer had any relevance to the plot. Hence, people who've never read the first book might find themselves wondering why the main character is implied to be "delicious".
  • In the Rainbow Magic series, only the first seven books dealt with the rainbow.
  • The Ranger's Apprentice series, after Will graduates from being an apprentice to being a full ranger. It comes back around at the end of the series when Will gets an apprentice of his own though.
  • When the first book of the Rivers of London series was translated into French, the publishers wanted a less London-centric series title, and settled on Le Dernier Apprenti Sorcier, "The Last Sorcerer's Apprentice". A reasonable attempt, given they only had the contents of the first book to go on, but one that has become less accurate with every subsequent book. By now it is very clear that Thomas Nightingale is far from the last active sorcerer, and nor is Peter Grant the last apprentice he takes on in the course of the series.
  • In the Shannara series:
    • Half the titles forget that Shannara is not the world, but a historical figure. This reaches its nadir with The First King of Shannara, which is about that historical figure and might better be titled King Shannara. Since the books follow the exploits of the descendants of Jerle Shannara, it could be argued that he is the first king of the Shannara line. But all the titles except The Sword of Shannara (which refers to a sword that belonged to him, and is known by that name in-universe) would make more sense if "Shannara" were replaced by "the Shannara bloodline" or "the Shannaras" or even "the Ohmsfords" since Jerle's family spends most of history with a new surname.
    • Played straight in the most recent series, titled "Genesis of Shannara" and "Legends of Shannara". They take part long before the historical figure even existed and the only "genesis" in the first series is a new world.
  • Halfway through the Sister Fidelma series, Sister Fidelma renounces the religious life and starts referring to herself as just plain Fidelma.
  • A few novels into the Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch series, the titular starship is irreparably damaged. The series continues with Captain Archer promoted to admiral and the rest of the crew split up across two new ships captained by T'Pol and Reed.
  • The novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a book. (Star Trek: The Novelization? Star Trek: The Novelization of the Motion Picture?)
  • The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, making this trope Older Than Feudalism. The eponymous bamboo cutter only plays a major role at the beginning of the story and is soon shoved to the side in favor of the true focus of the tale, Princess Kaguya. Another name for this story, The Tale of Princess Kaguya averts this.
  • The Three Musketeers: Even though the book is called The Three Musketeers, there are actually four Musketeers by the end of the book. The titular Three Musketeers are Athlos, Aramos, and Porthos. However, the protagonist D'Artagnan becomes the Fourth Musketeer at the very end of the book.
    • Following this, the titular Man in the Iron Mask is much less relevant to the story apart from kicking it off than most people think. That's probably because most adaptations expand his role as well as remove the Shoot the Shaggy Dog nature of the original literature.
  • In Vampire Academy, the second, fourth, and sixth books take place primarily outside of the eponymous St. Vladimir's Academy.
  • Warhammer 40,000: In-universe in Fall of Damnos. Captain Falka's command is called the One Hundred, but it's unlikely there were ever one hundred of them, and there certainly aren't that many now. They keep the name, though, because it sounds nice.
  • Inverted in T. Kingfisher's World of the White Rat. The Temple of the White Rat plays an important part in both Swordheart and The Saint of Steel, but the very first works in the setting, the Clocktaur War duology, only mention the existence of the temple once in passing and it has no impact on the plot.

    Pinballs 
  • Bally's Wizard!! was originally intended to be centered around a white-bearded medieval wizard who used magic. The game ended up being a tie-in to The Who's rock opera, with "Wizard" referring to the phrase "Pinball Wizard".
  • The very word "pinball" is an example. The "pin" in the word refers to a feature in the old "bagatelle" machines, which are the predecessors to the modern-day "pinball" machines.

    Podcasts 
  • The word "Podcast" in itself. Prior to the ubiquity of smartphones and widespread wifi on public transport, podcasts were designed as offline radio shows you could save to your mp3 Player, of which the Apple iPod was the most popular (hence the name). Nowadays, they're far more likely to be streamed on peoples' phones or laptops. As of 2022, Apple has discontinued the final actively-sold iPod (the iPod Touch), ensuring the name will continue to be archaic for the rest of the medium's existence. There is an entire generation of podcast listeners who have no idea why they're called that.
  • Used in-universe by LoadingReadyRun's Qwerpline: one of the town slogans (which change every episode) is "Nsburg: Home of The Tigers.'' "Tigers" doesn't refer to the local high school sports teams (Which are the "Literal Tigers"), but to the tigers at the Nsburg Zoo. Which they had in the 1960s.
  • 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back was named after the number of pages in the hosts' copy of Ready Player One, the first book they covered on the podcast. They've since gone on to cover other books that had more or fewer pages.
  • The Head Designer for Magic: The Gathering, Mark Rosewater, has a podcast called 'Drive to Work', which he records it on his daily commute. However, due to COVID-19, he is currently working from home, so the 'Drive to Work: Coronavirus Edition' isn't actually on his drive to work.

    Print Media 
  • Australian Women's Weekly began as a weekly magazine in 1933. In 1982, it converted to a monthly frequency. The title stayed the same, both for reasons of familiarity and because the title Women's Monthly was deemed 'unseemly'.
  • The Atlantic Monthly, an American magazine best known today for its political coverage, began in 1857 as a monthly magazine, but dropped to 11 annual issues in 2001, and has published 10 annual issues since 2003. The name didn't stay an artifact for much longer; since the first 2004 issue, the cover has simply read The Atlantic, which became the official name in 2007.
  • Auto Trader (the British magazine) has three examples of this: the editions Southern (which now includes Wales and South West England), Midland (now covering Anglia and the Home Counties, extending beyond the Midlands), and North London & East of England (which is really In Name Only now, as it's amalgamated its content with the Midland edition). Both editions only survive due to the Grandfather Clause. In any case, the magazine's Periphery Demographic didn't really care... it still remains popular.
  • The title to the Anthology Comic Bessatsu Friend is translated to Friend Annex, because it was originally the companion magazine for Shōjo Friend. The latter magazine ceased publication in 1996, with Dessert as its Spiritual Successor. This means Bessatsu Friend is the annex for a magazine that no longer exists.
  • Billboard - The major trade publication of the music industry started in 1894 as a trade paper for the billboard advertising industry. But the publication shifted its focus to the entertainment industry (which, at the time, was a major user of billboard advertising) before the 19th century even ended. Before becoming music-centered it dealt heavily with things like circuses and Vaudeville, but kept the original name all the while.
  • CD-Action was the first Polish video game magazine which came with a cover CD, and the title was chosen to emphasize that. As CDs went out of use in the video game industry, the magazine switched to DVDs, and in late 2018 scrapped cover discs entirely in favor of digital store keys, but the title remained unchanged throughout all this.
  • Country Weekly was this for most of its history. From its inception in 1994 until 1999, it was published weekly, but it switched to fortnightly (once every two weeks) from 1999-2009 until reverting.
  • Comic Cune - It started off as an additional magazine title for Monthly Comic Alive in October 2014 for Yonkoma mangas, until Media Factory, a publisher division of Kadokawa, made the magazine completely formal and independent to its parent title on 27 August 2015.
  • The Economist - The magazine frequently posts disclaimers in its ads that it is not solely about economics or the economy, but a general news magazine. When founded in 1843, the title made a fair amount of sense, as it was indeed largely devoted to economic matters, and particular advocacy for the repeal of Britain's Corn Laws. By 1845, it had already broadened its scope considerably, and gained this full title: The Economist, Weekly Commercial Times, Bankers' Gazette, and Railway Monitor. A Political, Literary and General Newspaper. That title was eventually reduced to its more sensible but misleading original version. In addition, the editors invariably refer to the magazine ''itself'' as a "newspaper", even though it hasn't been published in a broadsheet format since at least the early 20th century. That being said, the modern magazine does have a heavy focus on economic news, and its neoliberal perspective is essentially in line with the main stream of modern economics; if the editorial board of a general news magazine was composed entirely of orthodox academic economists, it would look a lot like The Economist.
  • Famitsu - A Japanese video game magazine which debuted under the name of Famicom Tsūshin (or the Famicom Journal in English) in 1986 — back when the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES) was the dominant game console in the market. While the magazine did start off as a Nintendo/Famicom-centric publication, it gradually covered other gaming platforms extensively such as the PC Engine and Mega Drive as they came along, eventually rebranding themselves under the current abbreviated name in 1995. This was shortly after launching their now-defunct sister publication PlayStation Tsūshin (which became Famitsu PS following the rebranding).
  • The Fortnightly Review, a magazine founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, was published fortnightly for just one year before switching to a monthly publication, which it maintained until it went out of print in 1954. In 2009, a "new series" of The Fortnightly Review began to be published online under the same name, but this online series is also published monthly.
  • GQ - Its name is short for "Gentleman's Quarterly". It's been issued monthly for quite some time.
  • Indie Game Magazine is, as of December 2015, no longer producing a monthly periodical. The website continues to offer regularly updated content pertaining to indie games, but it really isn't a magazine anymore. It still uses the name, however.
  • Manga Time Kirara - A Japanese manga anthology that was originally part of the Manga Time family of Gag Series yonkoma magazines, with a bit of moe concentration. However, as moe became the cash cow in the 2000s, Kirara obtained editorial independence from the rest of Manga Time family and became a family of five manga anthologies on its own, all of which bearing Manga Time as part of their titlesnote . What's more confusing is Manga Time is a family of six manga anthologies on its own, five of them having Manga Time as part of their titlesnote .
  • Marxism Today - A now-defunct British publication was originally the theoretical journal of the British Communist Party, and read the way you'd expect. During its last years when Martin Jacques was the editor, however, it devoted itself to a more generally leftist critique of Thatcherism and gained a wider audience. The joke from both sides of the political spectrum was that the only Marxism in it was the title.
  • Nintendo Power - Initially, the second half of the title referred to the "power" it gave to Nintendo game players to beat the games they were playing, through included tips, strategies, and walkthroughs. Eventually it began to give up including tips and focused more on interviews and news, as anyone could just as easily look up a solution on GameFAQs or watch video playthroughs on YouTube.
  • Opera Monthly - Thanks to financial problems, the New York magazine from the publishers of TheaterWeek, published every other month during the parent company's final year or so of operation.
  • Protoculture Addicts - An anime magazine published in the US, the name indicates its origins as a Robotech fanzine.
  • Radio Times - Although the magazine still offers comprehensive radio listings near the back of each issue, chances are that most readers are there for the TV listings, the interviews or the previews of coming shows. There may not be quite as many national radio stations as there are national TV stations, but there are now ten pages of TV listings for every two pages of radio listings.
  • The Saturday Evening Post - This magazine got its name from the fact that it was literally delivered to subscribers in "the Saturday evening post" in the days when the US Post Office made multiple deliveries each day, something which hasn't been the case since 1950. What's more, the magazine hasn't been published every Saturday for decades; it moved to biweekly in 1963, folded entirely in 1969 before being revived as a quarterly in 1971, and now publishes bimonthly.
  • TV Guide - In late 2009, the magazine made a series of changes in its format, drastically reducing the amount of space given to actual TV listings (cutting all but the grid-format listings first, then dropping several channels from the grids) and focusing more on celebrity-style reporting.

    Pro-Wrestling 
  • "Professional Wrestling" itself is pretty much this since anything about it that resembled the traditional sport of wrestling all but died out by the mid 20th century. And not just in that the out-of-ring storylines became increasingly prominent in selling the matches, but also in that the staged combat in the matches have very little actual grappling in them, often featuring more acrobatic striking than anything. This is acknowledged in Mexico, where it has long been known as lucha libre, which translates as "free fight".
  • The "Martial-Arts" part in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling was based in Atsushi Onita's original idea of creating a shoot-style promotion like the Universal Wrestling Federation, in which he was barred from entering. This remained only as a name, as the company only went a couple shows with martial arts matches, which were more in the vein of Antonio Inoki's "mixed style fights" before moving onto the hardcore matches it would become best known for, and the martial artist they gave the most recognition to, Masashi Aoyagi, isn't even that well known among the fandom.
  • Advisory and Management Assistance. It was thought up during the conception stages of an umbrella company that would include several touring businesses. The lucha libre group was the only one to get off the ground but the name "AAA" stuck.
  • In 1995, Jonathan Rechner debuted an evil Santa Claus gimmick called "Xanta Claus." His finisher was a Michinoku Driver variation called the Nutcracker Suite, a name that would stick long after he became Balls Mahoney. Then again, "nutcracker" can also refer to, well...
  • After Shawn Michaels turned heel on Marty Jannetty on Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake's "The Barber Shop" on the January 12, 1992, WWF Wrestling Challenge (taped December 3, 1991), he started using "The Heartbreak Kid" as his Red Baron, and his theme song was titled "Sexy Boy." While Shawn remained good-looking, he moved past his old gimmick into that of the "Showstopper" during his World Title reigns four years later.
  • Triple H's full stage name Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Finishing Move the Pedigree are references to his long-forgotten Blueblood gimmick that he had when he debuted. He dropped the gimmick very early in his WWE career, but the names remain. Shortening his name to Triple H was an attempt to minimize this trope, though it is still occasionally referenced whenever someone calls him "Hunter" in the ring.
  • Faarooq and Bradshaw's tag team, the "Acolyte Protection Agency", takes the "Acolyte" part from when they were members of The Undertaker's "Ministry of Darkness" stable. However after the end of that storyline they changed their gimmick to beer-drinking guns-for-hire with an "office" that only consisted of a free-standing door back stage and a card table, keeping the "Acolyte" part from their days as minions of a demonic overlord (who subsequently became a biker... go figure).
    • In that regard The Undertaker himself stopped being an "undertaker" after the mid-90s. Particularly during his stint as the leader of the Ministry of Darkness, which cast him as a cult leader who was simply obsessed with death and evil forces. The biker thing is even further out than that but at least "The Undertaker" is a fairly intimidating nickname for a Badass Biker.
  • The "CM" part of CM Punk's name. It first stood for "Chick Magnet" (appropriately enough) from a Tag Team he was a part of, but has long since lost its original meaning. It now means whatever the hell Punk wants it to mean at the time.
  • Chris Jericho debuted in WWE saying that he was the "Y2J Problem", playing off of the very 1999-specific reference to the Y2K bug, yet more than a decade and a half later, with the technological relevance of the reference long, long since passed, the Y2J nickname has stuck all these years.
  • Arena Femenil was so named because it was the base of all women's fed LLF that was founded in 2000, but while that remained the case, many other feds have since run shows in the facility, Nueva Generación Xtrema doing an all male show as early as 2004.
  • The H in ROH became an artifact after the code for which it was named was suspended. Even when the Code of Honor was reinstated, it was done so as an optional guideline rather than the law of the promotion.
  • Total Nonstop Action was never intended to be such, rather what those initials more commonly stand for was much more important to TNA. It ran into this trope when it got it's first national television deal, the launching of Impact on Fox Sports Net, which saw the product become more family friendly. While Impact would regain some of the "edge" the company was originally known for with the move to Spike TV, female assets were never really used as a main selling point again. In fact, the promotion's "Knockouts" women's division was considered the best in-ring women's wrestling in the world for a while. Eventually, after the company was sold to Canadian-based media company Anthem, the TNA initials, already de-emphasized for some time, were at long last dropped.
  • John Cena's finisher was originally referred to as "The FU" in response to Brock Lesnar's F5 finisher. The name of The FU was changed to The Attitude Adjustment since the previous name no longer fit Cena's character, in addition to WWE shifting to PG. The name of Cena's trademark fist drop, the Five Knuckle Shuffle, still remains intact.
  • SAnitY: While the nit (Nikki Cross), A (Alexander Wolfe), and Y (Eric Young) still work, the S was for original member Sawyer Fulton.
  • Certain wrestlers in the WWE Hall of Fame never wrestled for WWE, such as Abdullah the Butcher. It also includes wrestlers whose time in WWE is more or less a footnote compared to their accomplishments elsewhere (such as Sting and Diamond Dallas Page) and personalities only tangentially related to the product through brief appearances (like Drew Carey, whose only noteworthy accomplishment in WWE was eliminating himself from the 2001 Royal Rumble). The Hall of Fame has grown to be more of a shrine to the industry's figureheads more than ones that specifically contributed to WWE.
    • It should be noted that WWE has bought up the video libraries and intellectual property of those other promotions, such as WCW, and they are all therefore under WWE's corporate umbrella, if not the wrestling promotion's.
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was best known as a loudmouthed hot-head, so "Stone Cold" probably sounds like an Ironic Nickname. But when he first started using the moniker, he was a cold-blooded ruthless individual (based on "The Iceman" Richard Kuklinski) who spoke in a Creepy Monotone.
  • Survivor Series has on four occasions dropped the namesake match (an elimination tag team match typically featuring four-vs.-four or five-vs.-five teams) from the card.
    • The 1998 installment involved a one-night tournament called the "Deadly Game" for the vacant WWF Championship in place of the titular match.
    • The 2002 installment played host to the first ever Elimination Chamber. There were other elimination-type matches as well (an elimination Tables match, a Triple Threat Elimination tag match) but otherwise it was lacking the eponymous match type.
    • The 2022 and 2023 installments instead featured two WarGames matches (one for men, one for women), which were reflected by the events being subtitled WarGames.
  • Late 80's tag team Rhythm and Blues—consisting of the Honky Tonk Man and Greg "The Hammer" Valentine—had a 50's rocker theme going on. But as stated on this trope's music page, the definition of R&B had long since shifted from blues-flavored rock to soul-flavored pop. Still, the group's old-timey gimmick meant few noticed.
  • Referring to pre-recorded wrestling shows as "pre-taped", as well as the recording of those shows as "tapings", is this now that no modern wrestling show is filmed on tape. Even shows that are filmed live are often referred to as "tapings" by many wrestlers and fans, you'll see "Raw taping" all the time on the internet even though Raw hasn't been taped (outside of shows in the U.K. and when Christmas Eve/Day falls on a Monday) since 1999.
  • 205 Live was introduced as a continuation of NXT's acclaimed Cruiserweight Classic tournament, and its name is a clear reference to the fact that it defined a cruiserweight as a wrestler weighing 205 pounds or less. As the show devolved into a more standard bit of WWE Network filler, the 'cruiserweight showcase' aspect of the show was downplayed more and more; the 13/08/2021 episode became somewhat infamous for featuring a match between Josh Briggs and Joe Gacy, both of whom weigh well above above 205 pounds note . Recognising this, the show was replaced with NXT LVL UP in 2022.
  • Kofi Kingston's name comes from his Fake Nationality indie and early WWE gimmick, where he was billed as coming from Kingston, Jamaica. He is now billed as coming from his real home country of Ghana, but the name sticks.
  • The Blackpool Combat Club originally got its name because it was founded and managed by William Regal, who hails from Blackpool, England. Regal stepped down as the group's manager (and subsequently departed All Elite Wrestling) in December 2022, but it's kept the name.
  • WWE NXT's TakeOver event held the weekend of WrestleMania 37 was titled Stand & Deliver as a nod to how the previous year's cancelled Tampa Bay one had a pirate theme to go along with that year's Mania's pirate theme. Subsequent events held around Mania weekend, despite not having any pirate theming, are still titled Stand & Deliver.

    Radio 
  • The BBC Radio 4 Extra sci-fi slot is called The Seventh Dimension, which was originally a play on the channel being BBC 7. The name of the channel was changed in 2011, but the name of the slot remains.
  • The Ricky Gervais Show: Ricky himself admits that the show evolved into "Karl says something MENTAL".
  • When KROQ dropped the idea of its yearly holiday music festivals being acoustic concerts, it changed the name from KROQ Acoustic Christmas to KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The shows are now no more acoustic than any other concert.
  • Dallas-area DJ Kidd Kraddick died in July 2013, but the supporting cast of Kidd Kraddick in the Morning continue to bear the title without the original star of the show.
  • The British radio station Hallam FM, which has expanded beyond the village of Hallam of Sheffield.
  • BBC Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy hour had a series in the run-up prior to the UK's 2010 General Election. The shows, presented on Mondays through Wednesdays, were still considered a part of the Friday Night Comedy hour. Lampshaded by the announcer saying that they were, confusingly, broadcast on Monday (or Tuesday or Wednesday) night.
  • Radio stations often change their call letters upon changing format and/or branding. Some radio stations have retained the call letters of a previous format, or in some cases owner. For example, WABC used to be owned by ABC but is currently owned by Citadel Broadcasting, and its Chicago sister WLS was founded by Sears, the World's Largest Store. But WGNA in Albany NY has them beat, as its call letters stand for a branding and format that has never been used on the station: Its original owner intended for it to be an FM sister to his religious station, with the call letters standing for Good News Albany. But it's been on air since day one as a country station, as the owner died and his family overturned his plans.
  • Online radios sometimes have FM or some frequency-like number (i.e. 106) appended to their names, even if they never had a non-online version. For that matter, the "radio" moniker itself, since they aren't directly broadcast via radio waves.

    Roleplay 
  • Back And Behind The Woods; The title was an in-joke on the part of the DM, being a more extreme form of the phrase "back woods". In context, it referred to the Hillbilly Horror ogres the party fought at the start of the RP. Eventually, the party is sent to a major cosmopolitan city, and their quest promises to lead them to another, even more densely crowded city, with no signs of there being any forests at all in between.
  • Despite rarely popping up every now and then, most of the plot in Campus Life takes place in space now.
  • Pokémon: Rise of the Rockets is named for the initial starting point of the story's main conflict—namely, Team Rocket's rise to power within the Kanto regions—but as the story continues to grow and the war with Team Rocket becomes less of a focus, the title grows further and further from relevance.
  • Airlocked stops executing culprits via airlock after round one. Round four brings the airlock back, but that's because it's a prequel.

    Software 
  • Winamp. Despite its name, it's no longer a Windows-exclusive media player as versions of the software have been released for Linux, Mac OS, and Android.
    • An inverted situation happened in the DAW software LMMS, whose title originally stands for Linux Multimedia Studio. Then later versions adapted the software to Windows and MacOS.
  • While MikuMikuDance was originally made with Vocaloid music videos of Hatsune Miku in mind, it has since been utilised for non-musical CGI productions which have little or even nothing to do with Hatsune Miku at all.
  • The DirectX Application Programming Interface was named because its components all had a "Direct" prefix, like DirectPlay, DirectDraw, and Direct3D. Many of these old components have been retired in favor of newer standards that don't use the prefix, or opt to use an "X" prefix instead like Xinput or XACT. The "Direct" prefix still occasionally gets used, but it no longer follows the nomenclature that strictly and as such the name DirectX isn't as meaningful as it once was.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech: In-Universe:
    • Hanse Davion is First Prince of the Federated Suns, which has no other Princes, because when the title was introduced the Federated Suns was divided between five princes and the Davions were simply first-among-equals. The other four principalities were abolished following a civil war.
    • It might seem strange that the ruler of the Draconis Combine is merely called the Coordinator, but the first leader of House Kurita used the apparently humble title to allay the suspicions of rivals within what was then the Alliance of Galedon until he could position himself to eliminate them.
  • In Chess, the rook's name refers back to the time when it was represented by a chariot (Persian rokh). It's been represented by a castle (or possibly a siege tower) for several centuries.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Some setting have a notable dearth of dungeons and/or dragons in them:
    • Spelljammer doesn't really have a whole lot of dungeons, being, y'know, a magical Age of Sail in SPACE. It did use the D&D core rules, just with added sailing ships.
    • The name Forgotten Realms came from the original concept for the setting: that our Earth and the world of Abeir-Toril were more closely connected, as time passed, the inhabitants of planet Earth have mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world – hence the name Forgotten Realms. However, this aspect has been de-emphasized as soon as it became a TSR property. According to Greenwood this was because TSR was afraid from possible lawsuits from kids getting hurt while trying to 'find a gate' (remember this was at the peak of D&D's Satanic Panic). Still, the original Forgotten Realms logo which was used until 2000, small runic letters read "Herein lie the lost lands", an allusion to the connection between the two worlds.
    • Likewise, as of 3E, the Ravenloft setting is officially home to just one dragon, making the plural inappropriate. Her mate is only a Dread Possibility.
    • Dark Sun could be more accurately described as Deserts and a Dragon (just the one).
    • In general, each edition of the game has decreased the emphasis on dungeon delving in favor of more plot-driven adventures. Exploring elaborate ruins just to kill monsters and loot treasure is no longer the point of the game.
  • Magic: The Gathering.
    • "The Gathering" was intended to be the name of the first game, and later expansions would add a corresponding subtitle, such as Magic: Ice Age. However, the creators eventually realized it would be bad for gameplay if cards from different sets had different logos on the backs, and they should have omitted the subtitle, but once they were stuck printing "the Gathering" on every card, putting too much effort into subtitles that people would rarely see seemed like a waste. That said, each expansion does have a particular title, and corresponding icon on the card face it's just not on the card backs.
    • The same thing happened with the Deckmaster logo still printed on the bottom part of every card's back. "Deckmaster" was supposed to be the name for the game mechanic system which would be used for other games with different, non-fantasy, themes. That idea was dropped early on, and the Deckmaster name has had zero relevance to the product in years.
    • The spin-off variant known as "Elder Dragon Highlander" required you to include one of the five legendary "Elder Dragon" cards in your deck. This requirement was eventually loosened to require any legendary creature and the name was shortened to "EDH," which made no sense whatsoever to people who were unfamiliar with the original. (Ultimately Wizards of the Coast officially renamed the format "Commander.")
    • The upkeep step was named that because many of the early cards had an upkeep cost that needed to be paid each turn. Nowadays, it's mostly used as a convenient time for abilities to trigger more-or-less at the start of the turn.
  • The title of Memoir '44 is a reference to the fact that the base game was released to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and as such the scenarios focused on the Invasion of Normandy and a few other periphery battles. Then the many expansions expand the scope of the game beyond Normandy to cover the entire Second World War, and so now the game's name makes less than it did before.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The game's title originally alluded to it being set in the far future of the Warhammer fantasy setting, though this bit of Early-Installment Weirdness got dropped fairly quickly and now the two franchises are very definitely in their own universes. Similarly, while Warhammer has a namesake in Ghal Maraz, the hammer wielded by Sigmar before his ascension to godhood, Warhammer 40k doesn't have an equivalent weapon, though they have at least put a futuristic warhammer on the fourth and fifth edition rulebook covers.
    • No matter what year a story takes place, such as the Horus Heresy novels set in the 31st millennium or The Beast Arises series set a thousand years later, the franchise logo is going to keep the "40,000."
    • Averting this trope actually caused no small amount of consternation among fans. Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade, launched at the end of year 40999, was the subject of a worldwide campaign event back in 2004, where players' battle results influenced the outcome of the story (Chaos won a narrow, nearly Pyrrhic Victory, Eldrad Ulthran was killed, and the Tau took advantage of the situation to expand their territory by 33%). But in works published after Codex: Eye of Terror, the 13th Black Crusade was only discussed as a looming threat, and Eldrad was still a usable special character, leading fans to complain that Games Workshop was rewinding the timeline instead of advancing the setting. Then in 2017 came the Gathering Storm campaign event, which revisited the 13th Black Crusade... and had Abaddon succeed in destroying the Imperial fortress-world of Cadia, the Imperium bisected by the resulting warp rifts, and the Ultramarines' primarch Roboute Guilliman come out of stasis. The aftermath established that not only was Games Workshop now willing to make drastic changes to the setting, but in-universe Guilliman has concluded that due to millennia of poor record-keeping and time distortions caused by those warp rifts, he has no idea what the year actually is. So even as the story progresses, the franchise is still Warhammer 40,000.
  • Wargamers refer to the area around Nottingham where Games Workshop and several other miniatures manufacturers are based as the "Lead Belt", despite the fact that metal miniatures stopped being made of lead in the 90s, and metal miniatures in general stopped being produced in 2011.

    Theatre 
  • Twelfth Night: This Shakespearean play has no real title. Its title comes from the fact that it was commissioned to be performed for Twelfth Night Celebration (the night before January 6th). The full title is Twelfth Night, or What You Will.

    Theme Parks 
  • The original Six Flags theme park was Six Flags Over Texas. The name referred to the six different countries that have governed Texas - Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and the Confederate States - and the park retains a theming based around the state's history. The Six Flags company has opened many more parks in other states throughout the United States, but needless to say, none of those states have ever had six flags over them- nor do the parks have any real theming.
    • They used to at least make an effort: The second and third parks in the chain were called Six Flags Over Georgia and Six Flags over Mid-America (now Six Flags St. Louis), and both made an effort to use a similar six-nation theming as Over Texas did, but they stretched it pretty far- St. Louis had as its "six flags" France and the United States (both of which are legit), but also Spain (which claimed the region but never actually had all that much influence there), England (ditto), Missouri (part of the US, so it's kind of cheating), and Illinois (not only cheating, but the land the park is on was never part of Illinois); and Over Georgia counted France (whose history in Georgia is negligible) and Georgia itself, which has never been a real sovereign state under its own power. The company stopped building parks after these first three in favor of buying up existing locations, and never bothered to keep up the theming convention afterward. Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Over Georgia, and Six Flags Fiesta Texas continued to fly the six historic flags at the entrance until 2017, when they were replaced by six American flags due to the public backlash against the display of Confederate flags.
  • Disney Theme Parks:
    • Epcot is an acronym for the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", and was so named in the mid-1960s due to Walt Disney's intent to build a working city of the future in central Florida. After his death the plans fell by the wayside, and the park that eventually opened as Epcot in the early 1980s was called EPCOT Center, with Disney claiming that the theme park was the center of EPCOT (aka the "official" name for their entire Disney World property) and that a city would come eventually. They dropped this approach in the mid-1980s when Disney's upper management changed, and renamed the park as simply Epcot in the mid-1990s as part of a re-branding effort to move the park away from its "edutainment" roots.
      • The main road surrounding Epcot's north and east sides is still referred to as Epcot Center Drive, despite the park having dropped the "Center" from its name in 1994.
      • Epcot's Journey into Imagination was originally Exactly What It Says on the Tin, being a journey with Dreamfinder and Figment into the various realms of imagination. However, the original incarnation of the ride was shut down in 1996 in favor of its second incarnation in 1999 and then its third and current incarnation in 2002, both of which change the ride's premise to being about a tour through the imagination institude and its facilities. Despite this, the Journey into Imagination name still remains in use to this day, even if it no longer fits with the ride's new premise.
    • Disney's Hollywood Studios has suffered this trope twice over. The park opened in the late 80's as "Disney/MGM Studios" and retained that name long after the Disney-MGM partnership ended (indeed, some fans had taken to referring to the park as simply "MGM"). In 2008, the park was renamed "Disney's Hollywood Studios". Nonetheless, this new name remains a victim of this trope, as the park's actual animation studio closed in 2004 and the last remnant of the “Studio” portion, the Studio Backlot Tour, closing in 2014. Of course, the park isn't in Hollywood either, so it can be assumed that the "Studios" part is now just supposed to be a fictional element of the park experience.
    • Tomorrowland is a weird example of this trope. The land was intended by Walt Disney to be well...the land of tomorrow, being a futuristic themed land meant to show off the possiblities of the future (essentially being an early version of Epcot). However, over time and as the land evolved and expanded, it gradually shifted away from this idea in favor of going for a more generic sci-fi theme instead, gaining more and more attractions that have next to nothing to do with the land's original purpose. Largely due to Disney not wanting to update the land every few years due to Science Marches On. Technically, the name is still somewhat fitting as the land is still themed around the future, making this a more downplayed trope, but given Tomorrowland no longer serves its original purpose of being a showcase of tomorrow, the name has become somewhat outdated. This is notably averted with Disneyland Paris, which made the wise move in calling their Tomorrowland equivalent the more timeless "Discoveryland" instead.
    • Disneyland’s second gate, Disney California Adventure, started out as, to quote Defunctland, a California-themed theme park in the already California-themed California, with many of the initial attractions themed around experiences found across the state; in fact, the initial thinking behind the park was that people would spend more time in the park than the rest of California by giving them equivalent experiences. However, the park was initially considered a massive disappointment with the public, with one major criticism being the lack of classic Disney experiences or theming that made Disneyland and Walt Disney World so memorable, not helped by some lackluster experiences like the infamous Superstar Limo. After its initial failure and some rushed additions to add more Disney theming, the California-themed elements were gradually phased out, especially once Bob Iger became CEO. Today, Grizzly River Run is the only major California-themed attraction still standing in its original incarnation, with many of the other opening day attractions closing and/or being given a Disney-themed coat of paint.
    • In the classic years, admission to rides was based on a ticket system. Tickets could be purchased individually or as a booklet, and five types of tickets were available lettered from A to E, with A tickets being for the cheapest rides and E tickets admitting you to the big showpieces. This ticketing system has long been succeeded, but the phrase 'E Ticket' to describe Disney's biggest and most desirable attractions has stuck.
    • The Oriental Land Company, the company that owns and operates Tokyo Disney Resort under licence, took its name from its founding mission of real estate development, most notably the construction of the Maihama district on reclaimed land, which would be the future home of their theme park. Nowadays the company's primary purpose is running Tokyo Disney Resort and its various periphery businesses and infrastructure, with it not doing much brand new 'land' management anymore.
  • Universal Parks and Resorts:
    • The idea that the Universal Studios parks are real functioning studios that can be used for TV and film production has wavered a bit over the years. Universal Studios Hollywood arguably became an Artifact Title in 1968 when the Screen Actors Guild announced that they would prohibit public access to soundstages, which heavily restricted how much film production could take place in the park. Almost all filming there now takes place in the adjacent Universal Studios Lot instead. Universal Studios Japan, Singapore and Beijing meanwhile have never been intended as production facilities from the start, while Universal Studios Port Aventura was a pre-existing theme park that Universal had briefly acquired. Only Universal Studios Florida actually still sees semi-regular use as a studio today.
    • The other part of the "Studios" name, that it refers to the park's heavy thematic emphasis on the art of filmmaking, has also been heavily downplayed over the years. Many now-closed classic attractions involved educating guests on the techniques behind making films, were designed around making use of real studio production techniques to enhance the rides, or had some meta angle in which guests were supposedly taking part in the production of a film. Today, it is rare for a ride to still be themed around filmmaking, particularly once Universal's 'screens and motion simulators' era kicked in, and Universal's specialty nowadays is instead deeply immersive lands, in the case of Super Nintendo World one not even themed after a film or television product.
  • The Busch Gardens parks in Williamsburg, VA and Tampa Bay, FL got their names after the Anheuser-Busch brewing company which also owned Sea World. In 2009 AB sold their entertainment corporation to the Blackstone group but the parks are still permitted to use the Busch name.
  • By the time it closed in 1965, at the end of its fifth season, almost none of the attractions at the Bronx's Freedomland U.S.A. had anything to do with American history, the park's original premise.
  • Knott's Berry Farm started off with the Knott family selling berries, pies, and berry preserves beside the farm. Eventually, a fried chicken restaurant was created, and grew so much in popularity that a ghost town and various other attractions were built to entertain guests as they waited for a table. Over time, the attractions grew so much that the Knotts began charging admission, and the attractions would eventually overtake the restaurant and farm itself. The name became fully artifactual in the 1990s when the Knott family sold it to Cedar Fair. Ironically, though the present day park still sells some of the berry recipes, they're not allowed to label them with the Knott's brand, as that was sold to Smucker's around the same time.
  • Kids in the Scotch Plains, New Jersey area often went to the small Bowcraft Amusement Park on Route 22 for birthday parties and general weekend fun before it closed in 2018. How did the park get that name? It was opened right after World War II as an archery supply store with a practice range. Later the owner added a ski store and small ski slope. More and more attractions followed, and like Knotts Berry Farm on the other coast the name was the only link to the property's original use.

    Toys 
  • Polly Pocket dolls were originally called that because the doll was less than an inch high and the whole play-set closed in on itself and fit easily into your pocket. 1998 saw Polly redesigned so that she was now bigger, and the playsets could no longer be easily transported. (The doll itself could fit in your pocket, though, so the title wasn't a complete artifact.) However, the 2018 reboot reversed this, once again making the dolls and playsets small enough to be easily portable.
  • Hot Wheels introduced a car called "Purple Passion" in the early '90s. It was a 40s style hot rod painted purple. The car has been reissued several times since then, but not always in purple.
  • BIONICLE was originally a biological chronicle, as it centered around the story of those living in or on a giant robot and every character served a role analogous to biological functions. Later, dozens of new characters and locations were introduced that had no such metaphorical meaning, and the franchise's last couple years even took place outside the robot. In fact, it took so long for the story to explore the title's meaning and by that point it was so thinly stretched that even fans commonly misinterpreted it as "bionic chronicle", thinking it referred to the part-robotic, part-organic buildup of the main characters. The reboot seemed to have ran with this latter idea, as it featured no biological allusions at all.
    • The 2010 toy named "Piraka" did not actually belong to the Piraka group from 2006, LEGO just called him that because the figure was a nod to the 2006 set-line and the character was the same species. His actual name (Nektann) and species name (Skakdi) would have meant nothing to casual buyers. To justify the naming, they explained that since "Piraka" is a slur for "thief and murderer", Nektann simply took up the title independently from the original Piraka thugs.
  • Have you ever wondered why Mr. Potato Head is called Potato Head if the potato is his whole body? That's because when the toy was originally designed as a set of plastic pieces that you insert in a real potato (or any other vegetable), the body was an individual piece. In 1975, the body "piece" was officially retired, turning the potato into the body, and the arms and shoes became individual pieces in later years.
  • Transformers once introduced the Action Masters - toys that were highly poseable action figures (compared to the average Transformer of the era) but did not transform. They were naturally fodder for mocking as "Transformers that don't transform".
    • They were justified as still being "transformers" because they came with small animal partners or vehicles that could transform. In the fiction, Action Masters were regular transformers who used a dangerous new fuel that robbed them of their transformation ability, but granted them enhanced physical abilities.
    • Adding to the confusion, some Action Masters, named Action Master Elites, could transform on their own (albeit rarely in any kind of complex fashion). They were Transformers who don't transform who do transform.
    • Since the original Action Masters, many forms of non-transforming Transformers have shown up, most notably for the live action movie series. There are even completely non-articulated statues of Transformers made.
    • A few character names become this, given time. Astrotrain, for instance had a name that referred to him being a Triple Changer who switched between a train and a space shuttle. However, that's tricky to engineer, so since then, there have been Astrotrain toys that only turned into a space shuttle.
    • And of course Hasbro would like to remind you that none of these are examples, since the toys belonging to the Transformers franchise have never "transformed" - they convert.
    • The "Deluxe" size class/pricepoint is one of the smallest regular sizes. The name comes from the Beast Wars toyline, which had a smaller "Basic" size, but Deluxes stuck around long after Basics faded away.
  • G.I. Joe originally referred to the generic American soldier who served as the basis for the line. It came from the fact that the line was supposed to represent the average soldier. As early as the 70s, this started to get abandoned, with a shift away from soldier figures after The Vietnam War, and Joe becoming more of an adventure hero. When the franchise was rebooted in the 80s, it restored the "American soldier" angle, but focused on a large cast that comprised easily the least average American soldiers in history, none of whom were named "Joe" (until Joe Colton came along). In plenty of later series, there have been operatives who were neither soldiers nor Americans, and "GI Joe" refers to some kind of international special ops organization that's inexplicably named after slang for American grunts.
  • Zig-zagged with the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Their original gimmick was that the cards depicted grotesque, humorous, gross, and/or creepy characters that just happened to resemble the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, hence the Garbage Pail parody name. Around the time the 9th series was being published, a lawsuit from Xavier Roberts forced Topps to redesign the characters so that they no longer resembled Cabbage Patch Kids, and the change stuck for when the trading cards were revived for the All-New Series run of the mid-2000's. However, as of the rebooted Brand New Series run that began in 2012, the Garbage Pail Kids are back to resembling Cabbage Patch Kids.
  • The S.H.Figuarts line originally started as an "evolution" to the Sochaku Henshin ("Equip Transform") line of Kamen Rider action figures. However, the Figuarts line did away with the Sochaku Henshin line's primary gimmick (a core figure that could be changed by equipping it with armor) in favor of focusing on high detail and posability. Reflecting this, the Figuarts packaging says "Simple style and Heroic action", suggesting that that's what the "SH" stands for. The Sochaku Henshin line got a different successor of sorts, with each year's Rider show getting a simple action figure line designed to mimic its unique transformation (such as the Level Up Rider series for Kamen Rider Ex-Aid).
  • Zig-zagged with American Girl. The doll lineup still largely comprises of girls, hence the name, but by the time Logan was released in 2018, there have been at least a few boys, albeit generic dolls instead of character ones like with the Historical and modern lines, in the collection. Not to mention that the Bitty Twins consist of a boy and a girl doll sold as a pair.
  • Jigsaw puzzles were originally cut out from wood using a jigsaw. Nowadays most are printed on paperboard and cut on a press, and even the few that are still made from wood are more likely to be laser cut.

    Web Animation 
  • Animator vs. Animation: The premise originally started off with the animator, Alan, drawing up a stick figure (that would come to life) in each video in order to fight for fun with a different stick figure having their own skills. That all changed with the fourth installment, Animator vs. Animation IV, where it would introduce mainstay characters as well as the two sides of both Alan and his stick figure named The Second Coming stop fighting with a truce becoming True Companions. Since then, the spotlight is now given to The Second Coming and his friends The Fighting Stick Figures exploring many different websites and video games.
  • Barney Bunch was originally made when Barney hate was still at large, but soon coming to an end. Today, most Barney Bunch videos feature Drew Pickles as the main character instead.
  • Master Chief Sucks at Ordering stops being about Master Chief sucking at ordering things after the third episode. However, the series (and its episode titles) continue to reference the fact that Master Chief sucks at doing things. The reason the show wasn't simply called "Master Chief Sucks" to avoid this problem was presumably because another series already used that name; said series would then be permanently renamed to Arby 'n' the Chief.
  • Red vs. Blue:
    • It started off the first 5 seasons as a comedy with the two title teams fighting over a boxed canyon in the middle of nowhere, while still visiting various places now and then. Starting with the 6th season, while the show is still for all purposes a comedy, it begins incorporating more action scenes and the two teams are now working together on an almost permanent basis. The only times the Reds and Blues are actually really fighting each other from season 6 onwards is in season 9 (which took place in the Epsilon Memory Unit) and season 11 (which took place after both teams survived a crash-landing at Crash Site Bravo).
    • The original subtitle for Seasons 1-5, Blood Gulch Chronicles, was inappropriate for Season 4 due to the large amount of time the show took place outside of Blood Gulch canyon. Averted from Season 6 onward, which use different subtitles that fit the story.
  • RWBY: The original show was originally marketed as being about a team of four with both names and signature colour schemes that could form the title "RWBY". Each girl received a prequel trailer that was named after her colour: The Red Trailer (about Ruby Rose), the White Trailer (about Weiss Schnee), the Black Trailer (about Blake Belladonna) and the Yellow Trailer (about Yang Xiao Long). However, the show itself featured a Cast Herd for Volumes 1-3 before using Volume 4 to transition into an Ensemble Cast from Volume 5. The show has also spawned a franchise named after it; every franchise work will have "RWBY" in the title, regardless of whether it features Team RWBY or not. The reason is that the show was originally going to be called Remnant because it's the world that's most important; but RWBY was seen as a much more attention-grabbing and marketable name.
  • Strong Bad Email now has Strong Bad answering tweets instead of emails.
  • Fallout Lore: The Storyteller was originally just a documentary series about events in the Fallout franchise backstory. Now it's about the guy who's telling the stories almost, if not more so, than the stories themselves.
  • How It Should Have Ended started off showing parody alternate endings of movies. The focus has since expanded to more general movie parodies, featuring scenes from much earlier in the movie and sometimes not even touching the ending at all. Although, a lot of the scenes the change from earlier in the movie would resolve the plot right there.
  • hololive GAMERS was intended to be a subgroup of Gamer Chicks within a group of otherwise "idol girls", with only Fubuki considered as both an idol and a gamer. As time went on, the line between a gamer and idol vanished as all of them streamed both activities and many members revealed themselves to be gamers of one stripe or another. As well, though it's mainly Sora, Suisei and AZKi who put the heaviest focus into being idol singers, the rest of the girls show themselves to be formidable on the singing stage. GAMERS now simply stands for an unnumbered generation that came between second and third generations.
  • The term Virtual YouTuber was coined by the Trope Maker Kizuna Ai, and it referred to how (as far as Kayfabe was concerned) she was a Virtual Celebrity — a sapient A.I. who used YouTube as a platform to connect with our world. Most of the later VTubers would ditch this A.I. persona in favour of simply playing an animated character through Motion Capture, but the name stuck. In addition, many primarily operate on sites other than YouTube, with Twitch proving popular after the success of groups like hololive spearheaded a shift towards livestreaming.

    Web Comics 
  • 8-Bit Theater was originally going to feature several video game parodies, an idea abandoned by Clevinger when the Final Fantasy comic became popular; hence the title, which seems to suggest more 8-bit stories that were never made (and never will be). The trope was, however, slightly averted by the brief side comic “Field of Battle” (included in the 8-Bit archives here), which features the sprite comic style but is otherwise unconnected to 8-Bit Theater.
  • What exactly is all over the house in All Over The House?
  • American Gothic Daily. It was, initially, but Schedule Slip set in. Sometimes it isn't even quarterly.
  • Basic Instructions: A near miss. The comic's typical setup is a four-panel grid, where the "instructions" provide advice that is usually good, or at least defensible, while the rest of the panel uses those steps as prompts to show the cast of characters doing things that usually reflect ironically on the instructions, such as by doing the opposite or carrying out the steps badly. In 2023, Scott Meyer tried removing the "instructions" part of the comic and started running comics with just dialogue after some reader feedback, lampshading this by replacing the individual comic titles with "Basic Instructions" with the second word crossed out. This lasted three weeks before more reader feedback led him to bring the instructions back, albeit with a note that he might run some comics without them depending on the needs of the individual strip.
  • Bob and George averted the trope when the originally planned comic failed and the Mega Man sprite comic, originally used simply for filler, proved more popular by merging portions of the Bob and George plot, including characters, with the Mega Man sprite comic. Bob and George were even given Plot Armor as long as they were in the title, which lead to a joke of a character "dying" thus leading to his name being removed from the title.

    In fact, Bob and George is a very interesting example. The Mega Man sprite comic originally had no mention of the title characters at all; according to the author's notes for the first few hundred comics, he hadn't planned on making Bob and George characters at all once the strips became 100% Mega Man sprite comics. But he realized that he already had a developing fan base and it was too late to change the comic title, and he didn't want to keep a title that was irrelevant to the story, so he added Bob and George, completely changing the story. So he tried so hard to avert this trope that he ended up drastically changing his comic and adding in two characters that ended up being way more important than Mega Man.
  • Bricktown: Somewhat of a stealth example. While in this fictionalized version of Rochester, the entire city is nicknamed "Bricktown," the title originally came from "Brick City," a real-life nickname for the Rochester Institute of Technology where the author had written the first modern iterations of the story. Once he graduated, and decided to have the characters be out of school as well, the name "Bricktown" was assigned to Rochester as a whole. All this happened well before the comic was first published, however.
  • Chainmail Bikini — Sapphire was the only character in the entire comic to ever wear a Chainmail Bikini, and she got killed off halfway through.
  • Inverted in Coach Random. The character in the title shows up in the penultimate official strip. This was lampshaded.
  • Deathbulge used to be about the misadventures of the eponymous metal band, before eventually drifting into a more surreal, disconnected joke of the week format.
  • Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire ...until the end of the first year. And then again. And then stopped again.
  • Played with in El Goonish Shive: Outside of being written by Dan Shive, the title is meaningless. However, long after it started, there was a gag strip with a single panel featuring a goon — and this was said to completely justify the title, even though he has never appeared again and most probably never will.
  • Girls with Slingshots: The two main characters are still female, but the Slingshots in question are drinks. The Slingshot is the specialty beverage of a drag bar where Jamie and Hazel went once, and had one Slingshot each. Neither the bar nor the beverage has been mentioned since. Actually, the title was originally conceived when the comic was going to be a comedic "superheroes" story, with Jamie and Hazel wielding slingshots as their heroic weapons.
  • Thoroughly zig-zagged by Homestuck, that being both a title reflecting the state of the protagonists at the beginning and a reference to EarthBound (1994), as the protagonists are very often stuck in places which could be considered home, but not always.
  • Housepets! began with only two characters, the titular pets in a house and their shenanigans. As it expanded in scope it generally continued to involve domesticated animals, but has gone for entire arcs on end focusing on gods, demons, or wild animals.
  • Inverloch. Inverloch is the name of an important location in the setting, but the author's retrospective introduction to the comic states that she doesn't remember why she picked it—she only kept it because it was too late to change to something more obviously relevant.
  • Irregular Webcomic! was originally intended to be a fun side project for the creator that he would update simply whenever he got the time. It went on to become one of the most consistently regular webcomics of all time, until its end in 2011... upon which it was still regularly updated every day with longer scientific/mathematic posts on Sundays and reruns with new commentary of old strips other days. And then regular, though less frequent, comic updates returned in 2015. It's only "irregular" in the sense that it has numerous mostly-separate storylines with no concrete swapping schedule.
  • Jix is named for a character, but several story arcs have nothing to do with her. Often times, her human friend Lauren takes over the story. This trope is sometimes lampshaded by the characters knowing Jix's change to her any of her other personalities isn't permanent because of the name of the comic, thus breaking the fourth wall.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons was originally supposed to be about Allison becoming a Demon Slayer. As it didn't turn out that way, the title phrase was worked in as being the title of The Chosen One without an explanation, at least for a long time, for how it was supposed to make sense as such.
    "His name shall be Kill Six Billion Demons."
  • Zigzagged in Learning with Manga! FGO. While you are still learning something about Fate/Grand Order by reading the webcomic in strips past Season 1, it's more about learning whatever Gudako and friends are up to every week, with the occasional "lesson" about unintentional mechanics the game provides for mobile veterans.
  • Hey guys, remember when Lilformers was actually about Transformers?
  • Looking for Group was originally conceived as a World of Warcraft parody, and the name was fitting. But over time, the series began moving away from Warcraft by parodying other fantasy franchises and developing its own universe. Nowadays, the strip is more of a Dramedy, and parody gags of any kind are few and far between.
  • MS Paint Adventures: Only the first panel of the first adventure is done in MS Paint. The rest are done in Photoshop and Flash.
    Andrew Hussie: I am so good, I can emulate pressure sensitivity with MS Paint.
  • Oglaf appeared in exactly two early comics of the strip that bears his name. A couple more later, but still just throwaway gags.
  • Polk Out, where polking out (Named after James K. Polk) is a phrase the Polkster coined to refer to pulling out when the job is done. This was to refer to the rotating comics, which have long since stopped doing any rotating. It just might apply again in the near future.
  • Christine Weston Chandler's Sonichu comic is named for a Sonic/Pikachu hybrid that the creator made. Said character was Demoted to Extra in the third issue with Chris largely taking centre stage instead, thus making the supposed main protagonist of the series an artifact in his own comic!
  • Suicide Boy:
    • Thanks to Character Development, Hooni is no longer as suicidal as he was at the beginning of the story by the time Volume 2 kicks in and he rarely (if ever) tries to kill himself. Even when he's still shown to be depressed and having hard periods of his life he never seems to consider suicide anymore.
    • Volume 2.5 suffers of this in a different way, not only is Hooni not suicidal but he's not even the focus character anymore. As the first half focus on Sana and the second half on Harim.
  • When it first started in 2007, This Is Not Fiction was titled after the main character's favourite novel. But in the 2010 rewrite, the book makes but one brief appearance and is never named, making the title rather mysterious to new readers.
  • The Whiteboard. Although the comic started as doodles on a whiteboard, it stopped after only five "strips", there was one later on to celebrate a holiday, and lastly 5 more celebrating the comic's 15th anniversary, for a grand total of eleven — less than .5 percent of the now 2500+ strip archive.

    Western Animation 
  • The later Van Beuren Studios Aesop's Fables sound cartoons, which abandoned the format of the silent shorts (which were somewhat based on the actual fables and had "Aesops" at the end of each one) in favor of the musical gag cartoon format.
  • The title of the ALF animated series is technically a sort of reverse-artifact; since the show is a prequel that takes place before Alf comes to Earth, Alf is only ever called by his actual name, Gordon, and not an acronym for "Alien Life Form."
  • In a sense this has happened twice with Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode they originated in, they were a team of mascots for a corporate food chain that Space Ghost sold out to so he could buy a boat. When the spin-off series was made, the characters were heavily changed, the corporate mascot part was dropped, and they were made a detective agency just to have a premise to give to executives rather than calling it a show about food people just... doing stuff. That at least made them a force, but when the detective work was inevitably dropped from the plot, they weren't even that.
  • Ben 10 somewhat qualifies for this. The "10" part of the title was originally derived from how protagonist Ben could turn into 10 different aliens using the Omnitrix and - to a much lesser extent - his age. Naturally, more alien forms were eventually discovered, the three Sequel Series prior to the 2016 reboot (Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Ben 10: Omniverse) aged him up to a teenager. However, Ben's last name happens to be Tennyson, allowing the name to still make some sense. The reboot avoided this by rotating his alien roster, removing older aliens in favor of new ones as the show progressed.
  • Big City Greens became this during the second half of its third season, as the Greens moved away from Big City.
  • Netflix's Castlevania sort of fits this trope as, unlike most games in the franchise, not much of the action takes place in Dracula's castle until the second to last episode of season 2. It can be argued, however, that the title remains relevant because we see the villains plotting and scheming on the castle and its surroundings throughout the show.
  • The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs series takes place between the first movie's prologue and Flint actually inventing the FLDSMDFR, the device that causes it to rain food.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: The titular laboratory is absent in many episodes in the final seasons. For example, the last episode is all about Dee Dee going nuts over an ostrich in a zoo.
  • One of the original concepts for the show Goof Troop was having Goofy be the leader of a Boy Scout-ish troop of children. The idea was dropped, and the final show is a Dom Com about Goofy as a single father, but the title of the show didn't change.
  • HiT Entertainment actually started out with an Artifact Title. The initials "H I T" originally stood for Henson International Television. During the first round of talks between Jim Henson and Disney in 1985, the management of the Henson international unit bought it out and made it into an independent production company. So by the time "HiT" started appearing on a Vanity Plate, it already had nothing to do with Henson.
  • A What Could Have Been example with The Legend of Korra, the Sequel Series to Avatar: The Last Airbender. When it was found that they couldn't call the show Avatar: The Legend of Korra due to a trademark dispute with James Cameron's burgeoning Avatar film series (which also prevented the live-action film adaptation from using the word years prior), a new title of The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra was briefly considered. This supertitle was deemed to have been clunky and inaccurate, as in-universe, Korra isn't "the last airbender"; the final title would simply be The Legend of Korra as a result.
  • Looney Tunes: When the series was first conceived in the early 1930s, it was meant as a showcase for songs in the Warner Bros. music library (and as a competitor with Disney's Silly Symphonies series). Within a few years, that concept was done away with and the "looney" part of the title began to take precedence.
    • Its sister series Merrie Melodies is doubly so, as for most of its run it was essentially the same as the Looney Tunes. At first, it separated itself by being one-off cartoons, whereas the Tunes used recurring characters (originally Bosko, then Buddy, later Porky Pig). Then the Merrie Melodies went color, shortly after which they phased out the song-based format (though one-off cartoons with musical themes continued to be produced sporadically, with The Three Little Bops being a late example). By the time Looney Tunes converted to color, the only difference between the two series was the opening theme music. This wiki doesn't even give them separate pages.
      • In the Tunes' case, it helps them the fact that "tunes" and "toons" are homophones in some dialects, leading some to believe the name is just an artistic misspelling.
    • To this end, there are some people who insist on referring to the series as a whole as "classic Warner Bros. shorts" or something similar.
    • To further confuse things, there has been merchandise where Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny and Taz are branded with "Merrie Melodies".
    • From 1961 to 1969, Looney Tunes cartoons were listed as Vitagraph releases despite not being made at Vitagraph Studios, while Merrie Melodies were issued under the Vitaphone label, despite not using the Vitaphone sound system; both had been long retired for decades beforehand.note 
  • My Little Pony:
    • In general, while the title always made sense for the toys, it makes less sense for the various animated series, as the ponies are neither little nor owned by anyone. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, at least, has tried to Title Drop the name by having the characters occasionally use the phrase among themselves when speaking to younger characters.
    • My Little Pony 'n Friends: The four-part episode "The Ghost of Paradise Estate" only involves the titular ghost in its first segment and a half or so — partway through the second segment, the ghost is revealed to be a shapeshifting bird who's been blackmailed into getting something from Paradise Estate, and afterwards the story shifts to stopping the sea monster Squirk and makes no further mention of ghosts or hauntings.
  • The third season of Moral Orel isn't really about Orel, given he's only a main character in 6 of the 13 episodes, becoming more of an Ensemble Cast focused on the citizens of Moralton. Likewise the formula of Orel trying to do the moral thing only to massively backfire because of Moralton's hypocritical advices is only present in one Breather Episode of the season so the "Moral" of the title doesn't mean anything anymore. Had the show not being Cut Short, this would have become subverted and the show would be re-named "Moralton" starting with Season 4.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar is, as its name suggests, centered around the minor penguin characters of the movie series Madagascar, but is primarily set in New York's Central Park Zoo. The lemurs native to the island in the first film are now depicted as zoo animals as well. Ironically All Hail King Julien, doesn't have Madagascar in its title despite being one of the few parts of the franchise to happened entirely on the island.
  • None of the aliens in Pet Alien are Tommy's pets. The title is a holdover from the original 1990s Pet Alien toyline, where the aliens were taken in by human children and adopted as pets.
  • By the second season of The Replacements, the show focused mainly on the wacky misadventures of the Daring family, with the main premise of Todd and Riley replacing people in their lives falling more and more to the wayside.
  • Zig-Zagged with Robot Chicken. The name comes from the Framing Device that the sketches are what the titular robot chicken is being forced to watch by a mad scientist. At the end of Season 5, the chicken breaks free, and the Season 6 and 7 intro is now the scientist being turned into a robot and being forced to watch the show as payback. Seasons 8 and 9, see the chicken is found frozen by a descendant of the mad scientist in the future and once again forced to watch the show like in the early seasons. Season 10 has the chicken and the mad scientist, now allies, turn the recurring Nerd character into a robot and force him to watch the show. Season 11 returns to the chicken being made to watch the show, having been betrayed by the mad scientist.
  • The Simpsons:
    • The show's yearly Halloween specials are called "Treehouse of Horror" because the first one had the Framing Device of Bart and Lisa telling each other scary stories in their treehouse. The following three installments would use different framing devices, before they were dropped all together. They'd also start drifting into non-horror parodies, like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Sherlock Holmes, and a spoof of A Clockwork Orange that degenerates into a general tribute to Stanley Kubrick. "Halloween of Horror", the series' first canon Halloween episode, states that spooky (and otherwise) stories still are told in the Simpson treehouse every Halloween season, retaining part of title in a meta sense. On a lesser note, scheduling conflicts have meant that they don't always air in time for Halloween, instead broadcasting in early November (something they'd lampshade from time to time). Additionally, the first 12 specials had featured the onscreen title "The Simpsons Halloween Special", e.g season 6's "Treehouse of Horror V" was titled "The Simpsons Halloween Special V" onscreen, before "Treehouse of Horror XIII" began giving the specials that official onscreen title. Though these specials were always titled "Treehouse Of Horror" in the official episode guide.
    • In-Universe, "Sideshow Bob" was only Krusty's sidekick in his first few appearances, but everyone still calls him that.
  • Star Trek: The Animated Series, following the release of Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy, is no longer the only animated Star Trek series. Granted, this is a Retronym used for marketing purposes; the original title (simply Star Trek) is not an artifact.
  • Star Wars Rebels: The late season 2 episode "The Mystery of Chopper Base" was originally conceived with a plot where the rebels leave their new base and return to find it missing, so they had to go looking for it and discovered they'd built it on the back of a giant creature. The finished episode wound up with a plot where the rebels have problems with the local wildlife while setting up their base, but the original title stuck.
  • Total Drama had a Season 1 episode originally called "Haute Camp-ture" note  that was to feature a fashion photo shoot challenge. This idea was scrapped in favor of a "look in on the losers" story called "After the Dock of Shame". Some networks aired the episode with the original title, which doesn't fit the replacement story, and the episode is still widely known by that now-misleading original title.
  • Total DramaRama is a Spin-Off Babies of Total Drama that features episodic toddler mischief and much less personal drama.
  • The Venture Bros.: Zig-zagged. The first season ends on cliffhanger of Hank and Dean Venture getting killed. In the second season premiere, the credits sequence is changed so that it features Rusty Venture and his newfound brother Jonas Jr., suggesting that that the show would shift focus to a new set of Venture Brothers. However, it's a Red Herring, and Hank and Dean get better. As the show continued, the focus of the show shifted to being more about Rusty and the Monarch than Hank and Dean. In season 7, it's revealed that the Monarch and Rusty are related and the Grand Finale movie clarifies Monarch is a slightly altered clone of Rusty, so the show is about Venture Brothers in more ways than one.
  • In many episodes of the 2017 Wacky Races series (more particularly in the second season), the racers do a lot of things... except racing. To the point where it's lampshaded in a show itself numerous times.
  • Young Justice: Thanks to multiple Time Skips, the teenage heroes who formed the Team are all adults by the third season. This is somewhat mitigated by the addition of younger recruits, but Season 4 shifts the focus back to the original members.

Alternative Title(s): Artefact Title

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