Fun with Acronyms

aka: Backronym

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Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Maria Hill: And what does that mean to you?
Grant Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield".

— Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot episode

D.E.S.C.R.I.B.E.: Descriptions are Every Sustainably Cool and Rad Trope that begin every said Trope even I've Been Everywhere to find it.

In fictional (and sometimes not so fictional) acronyms, priorities are reversed. It's not so important that the full name be clear, memorable and to the point; it matters much more that the actual acronym spell out a word or phrase, preferably a meaningful, impressive (or just plain funny) one. This results in "backronyms", acronyms created before the names they allegedly stand for — if the acronym even stands for anything at all. In other words, fiction tends to go for Appellations Creatively Relevant, Occasionally Nonsensical, Yet Meaningful. Shit.

For instance, no writer would have allowed New York's police force to come up with the abbreviation "NYPD". That can't even be properly pronounced. No, they'd have named it, ehm... something like the Central Organization of Police Specialists. It doesn't matter so much that the full title is essentially meaningless — we got it to spell out COPS!^note COPS actually stands for Community Oriented Policing Services in the U.S. Justice Department. Heck, we can even sell some toys now! Or, you know what would be better than COPS, would be JUSTICE! So what does JUSTICE stand for? Nothing. That's right, we don't even need it to stand for anything if we don't want it to!

This isn't just for names that are cool, of course. It's also for names which accidentally hint at the true nature of an organization (e.g., a pro-tobacco council with the name CHOKE), or just as "accidentally" spell out something naughty or undignified.

Of course, sometimes a neat acronym can be derived from a sensible name. This is what we call the best of both worlds. (Or should that be the best of both words?) For even more fun, make it a Recursive Acronym, or add Acronym Confusion.

In government, military, and engineering contexts, this is absolutely Truth in Television, probably because there are so many acronyms in those fields that nobody can remember them if they don't have a nice mnemonic. That Other Wiki calls it a backronym.

Technically it's only an acronym if you pronounce it as one word (like "laser" or "scuba"), and if you spell out the letters, it's an initialism. In practice, most people just use "acronym" for them all, so feel free to add them as examples.

In case it's still unclear, an ACRONYM is A Concise Representation Of Nomenclature Yielding Meaning.

See also Initialism Title, Acronym and Abbreviation Overload, and Acronyms Are Easy as Aybeecee. Many examples involve a Shoehorned First Letter.

Super-Trope of A.I.-cronym and Shoehorned Acronym and sister trope to Embarrassing Initials.

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Example subpages:

• Annoying Directed Sales or Advertisement
• Just Another Perfectly Artistic Novelty or Anime & Manga
• Maybe Another Game Is Common or Card Games
• Chronicles Overusing Many Illustrations Creatively, or Comic Books
• Short Terrific Radical Images in Proceeding Order, or Comic Strips
• Fanatics And Novices' Fiction-Inspired Creations, or Fan Works
• Figures In Lifelike Motion, or Film
• Big Ocean Of Knowledge, or Literature
• Timely Exhibitions Likely Entertainment Virtually Inside Sets Interconnected Over Networks, or Live-Action TV
• Melodies Utilizing Singing, Instruments, and Chords, or Music
• People Read Interesting News Today, or Print Media
• Roughhousing In No-nonsense Gear, or Professional Wrestling
• Cracking On Mindless Epitomes of Deliverable Yahoos, or Stand-Up Comedy
• Dudes In Calculated Enthusiasm, or Tabletop Games
• Grappling Against Multiple Enemies, or Video Games
• Frames Layering Artistic Super Highway, or Web Animation
• Drawn In Graphical Interfaces To Astound Lurkers, or Webcomics
• Sublime Unlimited Readable Fun, or Web Original
• Creative Animated Reels from the Transcontinental Organisations for Occidental Neologism, or Western Animation
• Relative Epitome of All Life, or Real Life
• Mismatching In Specific Categories or Other

Other examples:

Japes Of Keenly Excruciating Silliness, or Jokes

• In the US military's Interservice Rivalry, one of the common jokes told about the U.S. Marine Corps is that "Marine" is short for "Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential."
• Mechanics and auto enthusiasts commonly tell jokes about car brands they don't like being derived from unflattering acronyms:
  • "BMW" is short for "Big Money Waste" or "Break My Wallet."
  • "Fiat" is short for "Failed Italian Automotive Technology" or "Fix It Again, Tony."
  • "Ford" is short for "Found On Road Dead, " "Fixed Or Repaired Daily," "Fucked-Over Rebuilt Dodge," or "Fast Only Rolling Downhill."
  • "GM" is short for "Garbage Motors" or "General Mismanagement."
  • "GMC" is short for "God's Mechanical Curse," "GM's Crap," or "Got a Mechanic Coming?"
  • "Hyundai" is short for "Here's Y U Never Drive An Import."
  • "Kia" is short for "Keep Inside Asia" or "Korean Imitation Accord."
  • "Porsche" is short for "Proof Of Rich Spoiled Children Having Everything."
  • "Saab" is short for "Send Another Automobile Back."
  • "Subaru" is short for "Stupid Urbanites Bumbling Around Rural Areas."
  • "Toyota" is short for "The One You Ought To Avoid" or "Too Often Yankees Overprice This Auto."
  • "VW" is short for "Virtually Worthless."
  • "Honda" is short for "Had One Never Did Again."

Playing In Nostalgic Balls Alongside Leisurely Lounges, or Pinball

• In Zen Studios' Spider-Man pinball, the SPIDEY Spelling Bonus stands for "Spectacular Score", "Perfect Ball Saver", "Incredible Jumps", "Deluxe Web Shooters", "Enhanced Strength", and "Yeah! Extra Ball!"
• The tube transport system in Xenon is the Kinetic Molecular Integrated Evolution Cylinder, a tribute to designer Greg Kmiec.
• The Big Bad of Dialed In! is Dialed In Electronics.

People On Digital Communications Adamantly Sharing Too-Good-To-Be-True Stories, or Podcasts

• The crew of Mission to Zyxx is coordinated by a Missions Operations Manager, Nermut Bundaloy. He takes a lot of flack when he is promoted to Temporary Emergency Emissarial Negotiations Missions Operations Manager.
• The Player Characters in Trials & Trebuchets are named Serinepth, Winsler, Integrity, and Mira, giving their team the nickname "SWIM". Later, SWIM learn that their mentor Artis's team when he was a student was Dain, Artis, Fidan, and Teb, or "DAFT".

Shows Of by Characters in Knitcraft, or Puppet Shows

• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: the security & intelligence agency of the World Government is called SPECTRUM: it is never explained what this is an acronym of, or even if it is one, at all.
• In the Dinosaurs two parter, "Nuts to War", when the four legged dinosaurs have disagreements to trade pistachios to two legged dinosaurs, The Council of Elders starts a campaign they call, We Are Right, which of course means starting a war. Much later when Earl finally disagrees with the war, he protests with a picket sign that reads on one side We Are Rong and on the other, Pistachio Eaters Against Chief Elders.
• In The Muppet Show, Dudley Moore brings in the M.A.M.M.A., the Music And Mood Management Apparatus, a machine that plays any kind of music the scene requires. It isquickly resented by the Electric Mayhem for being a Job-Stealing Robot, and spends the episode annoying everyone until it is destroyed by Gonzo's bomb-defusing act.
• S.A.M. from Sesame Street, which stands for Super Automatic Machine. Those who were severely freaked out by him as children would argue Satan's Automaton of Malice would be more accurate.

Remote Audio Distribution In Operation, or Radio

• Nebulous features both the Key Environmental Non-Judgemental Taskforce, and the Legitimate Organisation Undertaking General Humanitarian Business Operations Requiring Optimum Unconditional Global Harmony. But then, people from K.E.N.T. have always hated people from L.O.U.G.H.B.O.R.O.U.G.H..
• In an episode of The Goon Show, Neddy Seagoon was appointed to be Britain's Fog And Thick Smoke Officer.
  • In another episode, Major Bloodnok has a washcloth stuffed into his mouth by thieves who stole 10 Downing Street. Ned says, "These initials must mean Winston Churchill!" Bloodnok answers, "I hope so!"
• One episode of Adventures in Odyssey features the Society for Mental Improvement and Living Enthusiastically, a nationwide organization bursting with Stepford SMILErs.
• In one episode of Absolute Power (BBC), Charles is tasked with creating a name for a male pressure group. His efforts include British Association of Lovable LadS and GeneraL AsssociatioN for the Support of the Priapically ENdowed In Society.

Tools Of Young Satisfaction, or Toys

• The Cyber Forest [Fantasy Girls] series of mecha musume kits by Nuke Matrix make use of this trope for their naming conventions, being highly mechanical in design and following an animal theme. Of those released as of this writing there are:
  • F.O.X. Long Range Striker Unit, the first and the only one not to play by the trope.
  • Remote Attack Battle Base Info Tactician Lirly Bell.
  • Hurricane Assault Revenger: Prototype Yaeger Amelia Hartmann.
  • Storm Interceptor: Royal ENforcer Tanya Charybdis.
• G.I. Joe:
  • There's M.A.R.S. (Military Armaments Research Syndicate), Destro's weapons dealing organization.
  • The short-lived spinoff Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles has the I.R.O.N. (Invasion Reconnaisance Occupation and Neutralization) Army. The following spinoff, G.I. Joe Extreme had S.K.A.R., Soldiers for Khaos, Anarchy and Ruin.
• In Pinkie Cooper and the Jet Set Pets, Pinkie attends the World of Original Fashion academy—or W.O.O.F.
• In the Transformers audio story "Espionage!!!!!", Starscream pretends to defect to the Autobots. Not trusting him, the Autobots decide to Feed the Mole and claim to have developed a new Decepticon tracking weapon called the Deuterium Orbital Laser Tracing System. The Decipticons take the bait and Optimus Prime can't help but mock them for not noticing the acronym sooner.

Wide Entertainment By Very Interesting Digital Embedded Online Steams, or Web Videos

• Act Promptly: The Ache-ronyms miniact revolves around the contestants having to make up meanings for acronyms and use them in a sentence.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • Krillin says Frieza looks like a total "F.A.G.", and when Gohan is shocked, he clarifies that he meant "Freaky Alien Genotype".
  • In the second Bardock special, the prehistoric Saiyans heal Bardock with their Super Polymorphic Unleashing Gel, the acronym for which is pronounced "spooge".
• Dream SMP:
  • WAP stands for "Worship And Prayer" by the founders of Church Prime, most commonly Tommy. This has led to a conversation involving Acronym Confusion over said acronym's more infamous meaning, Jschlatt (before his Presidential run), and a very disturbed TommyInnit.
  • The L'Manberg Flight and Aeronautical Organization building should tell you exactly what kind of attitude L'Manberg, or at least its members, had.
• French Baguette Intelligence abbreviates to 'FBI', which is a reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's founder Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoléon Bonaparte.
• Subverted with TCNick3 of the Party Crashers, as he has admitted that the "T" and "C" in his username don't actually stand for anything, he just thought that those two letters sounded cool together. That doesn't stop the others from poking fun at what the letters could mean though, such as T being "The" or "Toxic" and C being "Carried" or "Cringe".
• The old YouTube comedy sketch channel POYKPAC stood for "Pictures Of Your Kids Pooping And Crying"
• RadicalSoda during his Pokemon Sword and Shield review decides to add a new segment. It doesn't go well.
  Radical Soda: It's Radicalsoda's Awesome Pokemon Evaluation! Or if we shorten that to an acronym- OH NO!!!
• Schaffrillas Productions: In "Why Tamatoa is My Favorite Character Ever", the group protecting the pieces of Te Fiti's heart is called "The Guardians Of The Heart Pieces And Top Tier Youtubers". Pappy G quicky puts together that it spells "Gothpatty".
• Smosh has done this more than once. Three examples:
  • From "How To Survive a Burglary", there's Always Silently Shut Doors In Case of Kleptomaniacs, or ASSDICK for short.
  • In "Stop Miley", there's Stopping Miley From Twerking And Acting Like An All Around Tool Bag, or SMFTAALAAATB for short.
  • From "F**k Spoilers!" (later retitled "No Spoilers!"), there's Douches In-Capable of Keeping Secrets, or DICKS for short. ("Don't talk to DICKS. Don't listen to DICKS. Don't touch DICKS. And whatever you do, don't let DICKS get near your mouth.")
• Stampy's Lovely World: In Episode 748, "Splendid Shipyard", Stampy names the yacht he spent the two previous episodes constructing the 'Yacht of Amazing Courage and Historic Triumphs', officially shortened as "Y.A.C.H.T".
  Stampy: So there we go, my yacht is called... "YACHT". (laughs)
• Zero Punctuation has a semi-running gag in the early seasons that takes a paragraph-long concept and turns it into an initialism that is still a Wall of Text, only now it's an impossible to remember, contextless screed of letters and periods.

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