Follow TV Tropes

Following

Intentionally Awkward Title

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/big-mutha-truckers-2-truck-me-harder-6-1_1040.jpg
It's truckin' awesome.

"Originally, I had a much more respectable title. But I’ve done respectable ‘artsy’ titles and those books didn’t sell, some of them not at all. So this experience has lead me to conclude that perhaps a title should be a blunt instrument to club the reader with and grab their attention.
That’s my best advice. Forget nuance, cleverness, subtlety and wit. Make your title blunt. Make it a big, crude, obvious hammer."

Some things are just hard to talk about in casual conversation. It may be because they contain an obscenity, a sexual reference, one of the Inherently Funny Words, or a Who's on First? situation (e.g., a name like That Movie or Something). Maybe they're just really, really long. Whatever the case is, saying the title usually results in an awkward pause and clearing of the throat after saying it.

These days, more and more things are doing this entirely on purpose, often to draw attention to a controversial subject and push people's comfort boundaries. It's also done frequently enough just to try and be funny, especially if it's of the Black Comedy variety. Often leads to variable Politeness Judo when talked about publicly.

Note that this is for titles that would be awkward to mention in polite company. For titles that are actually awkward to say, see Word Salad Title, Word Purée Title, and Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Differs from Have a Gay Old Time in that this is when the awkwardness is entirely intentional. Compare Double Entendre, except this trope is not at all subtle. Usually used as part of filth, with or without Parallel Porn Titles. When Executive Meddling prevents the awkward title from being used, it becomes a Censored Title. The horror equivalent is Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death.

Page contains expletives, so therefore definitely isn't work-safe. Don't say we didn't warn you.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • 7UP ran a brief campaign featuring Orlando Jones. The tagline? "Make 7 UP Yours". He wore a t-shirt in the first commercial (which you could buy) with "Make 7" written on the front and the rest on the back.
  • The Swedish vacuum cleaner company Electrolux once sold its products in the UK with the slogan "Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux." This was completely intentional, and succeeded in getting the attention it was intended to, for years.
  • In 1978, Loriot, a German comedian whose sketch show rivals Monty Python's Flying Circus in popularity in Germany, had a sketch in which a salesman visits a housewife to sell her a new "Heinzelmann" vacuum cleaner. Several times he quotes the product's slogan, "The Heinzelmann sucks and blows while Mom can only suck." Since Loriot's entire work was based on awkwardness, the innuendo was surely intentional.
  • Another Swedish example: An ad which was supposed to feature a new brand of cookies and a couple of older ladies, turned into this when one of the ladies said "we like all six" (referring to the six different tastes). The Swedish translation for "we like all six" can also mean "we all like sex." That line became the slogan.
  • A certain infomercial went viral for a product designed to debone fish efficiently. The product's name? The Wunder Boner. Yes, really. And the commercial is definitely self aware about it, too.
    Fisherman #1: The Wunder Boner!
    Fisherman #2: My wife would like that...

    Anime & Manga 

In General:

  • A good number of hentai fall under this. A certain amount of this is probably the distributors trying to make sure that kids don't pick it up accidentally.
    • Bondage Queen Kate
    • Boobalicious. Note that this is its title in the English market—its original name was (in Gratuitous English) Milk Junkies. Not that much better, really.
    • Virgin Auction
    • Sex Warrior Pudding.
    • Nipple Magician. Because the writer thought it sounded cool and the American guys who publish it in their comics anthologies like to laugh their asses off while simultaneously getting off at the mere thought.
    • The Hills Have Size
    • Foxy Nudes
    • The Rapeman
    • Rape! Rape! Rape!
    • Tits! Tits! Tits!
    • My Nipples are Dicks
    • The Maiden R*pe Assault: Violent Semen Inferno (yes, they actually censored its title)

By Work:

    Audio Plays 

    Comic Books 
  • Bitch Planet. It's actually a feminist critique of exploitation films.
  • The Goon parodied this with an imaginary Missing Episode called Satan's Sodomy Baby, which they weren't able to publish because of the Moral Guardians. The author said that the only way the publishers would relent would be a demonstration of reader interest, and he encouraged fans to go into their local comic book stores and demand Satan's Sodomy Baby.
  • Kick-Ass, also the name of the main character's hero identity.
  • The Preacher sidestory focusing on the backstory of The Grotesque, Arseface, is named The Story Of You-Know-Who to avoid this. Which just seems odd in light of how the cover is a close-up of his face.
  • Sex Criminals has nothing to do with rapists. It's about a couple who can stop time when they have sex, and use that power to rob a bank.
  • Stan Lee once had an argument with his publisher about why his comics were doing well. Martin Goodman, the publisher in question, argued that it was all due to the strength and simplicity of the titles. So Stan challenged him by saying he would make a comic with the worst title he could imagine. The result was Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.
  • The Sin City story "That Yellow Bastard" has been covered up by comic vendors in some parts for this reason, though by today's standards "bastard" actually isn't that bad.

    Fanfiction 

    Film — Animated 
  • The 2022 short film My Year of Dicks, about a teenage girl's various attempts to lose her virginity. The short went on to receive an Academy Award nomination, and when Riz Ahmed announced the nominees, there was a pause as everyone in the room took a moment to giggle at the tile.
  • South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut had the working title "South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose", but the title was rejected by the MPAA for containing the word "Hell". When Trey Parker heard this, in exasperation he sarcastically suggested "Bigger, Longer and Uncut", and to his surprise, the MPAA missed the obvious innuendo entirely and the name was accepted. The soundtrack also has the songs "Uncle Fucka" and "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch".

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The original title for 50 First Dates was going to be Who the Hell are You?.
  • The French movie Baise Moi. "Baise" started off meaning "kiss" in french, but it has changed over time, and now... well, Fuck Me is the closest English title. Some localizations translated it as Rape Me.
  • Big Tits Zombie
  • The Birth of a Nation, a 2016 movie about Nat Turner's slave rebellion. It was most certainly named to invoke the ground-breaking but infamously racist film of the same name, and may have been named as such to reclaim the title a la N-Word Privileges.
  • Clerks has Randal ordering porn for his video store over the phone. They start off innocuous-sounding, then get explicit, then kinky, then disgusting. And this is while a mother is there with her child.note 
  • Colonel Kill Motherfuckers, a low-end horror comedy.. Amazingly enough, that's the nickname of the villain In-Universe.
  • Dame tu cuerpo, (or in English, "Give Me Your Body"), a Spanish-language body swapping film.
  • Dick - a film from 1999 starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, about two teen girls help bring down President Richard Nixon and get the nickname Deep Throat.
  • Fuck, a documentary about the word. The marketing campaign called it "The film that dares not speak its name."
  • The Swedish film Fucking Ã…mÃ¥l (pronounced more or less O-moal), retitled Show Me Love in the English version. Then again, Ã…mÃ¥l is the small, dull town in which the characters live, and the original title is what one of them usually calls the place. Also, since from a Swede's perspective "fuck" is a Foreign Cuss Word, the word is a bit tamer (though profanity as a whole is also not as big an issue in Sweden).
  • Gayniggers From Outer Space, a Danish Blaxploitation Parody Short Film. Just the title Crosses the Line Twice.
  • The indie film Good Dick. Though some of the film focuses around porn and sex, it is really a romantic drama about a video store employee and a reclusive girl who rents porn from him.
  • Hands on a Hard Body. It's a documentary about a contest of endurance and the hard body of the title is a truck (the hands being which contestant can keep their hands on the truck the longest with the winner getting the truck).
  • The Monkees' movie Head was titled as such to signify it was a true "mind trip", even though the Monkees' young fans very likely hadn't yet tried drugs (one common reason as to why the film flopped). It was also so that when Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson produced their next film, Easy Rider, it could be promoted as being "from the guys who gave you Head".
  • In & Out refers to a closeted gay man being in and out of the closet, but it has additional sexual connotations as well.
  • Inglourious Basterds. As noted above, "bastard" is not quite as horrible a word in US culture anymore (to the point TV commercials were allowed to say the word uncensored), but is still considered "bad". It's also worth noting that both words are misspelled.
  • The James Bond film Octopussy, and the documentary about it called Inside Octopussy. Notable for being one of the few Bond films where the title theme doesn't share the movie's title, for obvious reasons.
  • Jaws 2 worked to avoid this, in France; the original film was titled Les Dents De La Mernote  . Adding Deux to Mer leaves you with something that sounds offensive in Frenchnote  - so a new title was sought. The director of Jaws 2, who is French, points this out in a special feature on the DVD release.
  • Jennifer's Body. "I want to see Jennifer's Body", "Did you see Jennifer's Body?", etc.
  • Kick-Ass is a double example of this trope: it has the word "ass" in it, thus causing marketing and open discussion problems.
  • The Legend of Nigger Charley is a 1972 Blaxploitation Western starring NFL-linebacker-turned-actor Fred Williamson. Notably, the film had a sequel in The Soul of Nigger Charley made the following year, and a Spiritual Sequel in 1974's Boss Nigger. Seanbaby once described Williamson as "a big-enough badass to star in three films with the N-word in the title".
  • There are actually two movies with the title Live Nude Girls. The first, in 1995, was a comedy about four female friends who'd drifted apart reuniting for a bachelorette sleepover, and is only rated R because much of their dialogue consists of frank conversations about their sex lives. The second, from 2014, is about a man inheriting a run-down strip club, and is much closer to the sort of film you're thinking of when you read that title.
  • Used in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, where Tom suggests opening a company named "Arse Tickler's Faggot Fan Club", and returning people's cheques - a lot of people would be too embarrassed to cash them. This might actually be a real scam.
  • Loro ("Them") is an Italian film about Silvio Berlusconi that was divided in two parts, "Loro 1" and "Loro 2". However, in Italian "Loro 2" sounds like "These two (guys/people)", so for a while critics and journalists were divided on what the title could refer to: Berlusconi and his wife? Berlusconi and his right-hand man? Berlusconi and the guy who is desperately trying to meet him in the first part? All answers could be valid and there was no real reason as to why the film was divided in two parts, as if the choice was made just for the sake of the pun.
  • The sequel to Meet the Parents was entitled Meet the Fockers. This nearly got nixed by the MPAA, but the producers defended it by offering letters of support from several people actually named Focker stating that it was an entirely legitimate surname, of course. Then there was the next sequel, Little Fockers...
  • One-Eyed Monster, a movie about an alien possessing Ron Jeremy's penis and using it to kill people. It was supposed to be given the even more awkward title Ron Jeremy's Dick, but the director decided that if Zack and Miri Make a Porno couldn't get the full name on the marquee, there was no way he could get that one through.
  • John Waters' Pecker.
    "I'm not that innocent not to know there's a double entendre, but it's a joke: The boy's nickname, because he picked at his food as a child. Originally, the MPAA turned down the title, and we went to court about it. My lawyers had a list of titles to show them like Shaft, Free Willy, In & Out, and I gave a little speech saying, 'It might be vulgar, but it's not an obscene word' and 'This is a movie about someone who wants his good name back. And in this case the good name is Pecker!'"
  • Pure Shit, an Australian film directed by Bert Deling. When it premiered at Melbourne’s Playbox in May 1976, the Vice Squad raided the theatre. It was initially banned, then given an R certificate (over 18 only), and the title was changed from Pure Shit to Pure S.
  • Towelhead is a movie about a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl in the early '90s. Its title is an ethnic slur against Arabs.
  • Violent Shit and its sequels.
  • Weiner, a documentary about politician Anthony Weiner's 2013 campaign for Mayor of New York City and how it was complicated by his sexting scandals. Considering the New York Post published suggestive puns on the subject's name for headlines every chance it got (e.g., "Weiner Exposed," "Weiner's Long, Hard Road Back"), and said headlines were featured in the film, the directors had to have known they picked a potentially awkward title.
  • What the #$*! Do We Know!?. This is the actual uncensored title. Generally said as "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"
  • The documentary Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? uses symbols as its title on the case and even in the opening title. However, truck driver Teri Horton says the uncensored title as she relays the story of how she bought what some believe is an authentic Pollock painting at a thrift store in regard to her theretofore lack of familiarity with the famous painter.
  • The German movie Der Wixxer. The word is usually spelled Wichser, and means "wanker."
  • The Vin Diesel action film xXx, or Triple X. Rumor has it, part of the reason for the title was to try and prevent Internet filesharing for the movie — after all, if you do a search for "xXx movie", you're going to get a lot of results that don't have anything to do with Vin Diesel.
  • Young People Fucking. This actually was the subject of some political drama in Canada, when it was held up as an example of the sort of film that the Conservative government would be able to censor under new legislation allowing film productions to be denied their usual tax credits if they violated "public policy". It transpired that nobody who was advocating this had actually seen the film, which is somewhat tamer than the name suggests. A screening of the film was organized in Ottawa for MPs.
  • Y tu mamá también, a Mexican film whose title translates to And Your Mom Too. It was released in the U.S. under the Spanish title.
  • Zack and Miri Make a Porno was rumored to have been greenlit just for its audacious title. Unsurprisingly, it was impossible to market as a result.

    Literature 

In General:

By Author:

  • Stephen Colbert's books I Am America (And So Can You!) and America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't abuse bad grammar for laughs.
  • First Nations author Tomson Highway's novel Kiss of the Fur Queen, which has a multi-layered title (albeit one that only makes sense in context) — it's a book with Flamboyant Gays, Tricksters, and sinister Gallows Humour. Highway's plays are similar, with titles like Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing.
  • Stirling Johnson has written books entitled English as a Second Fucking Language and Watch Your Fucking Language. They are, appropriately, about the use of profanity.
  • Cartlon Mellick III, prolific author of Bizarro Fiction, whose works include Ape Shit, The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, The Menstruating Mall, Razor Wire Pubic Hair, and The Faggiest Vampire. That's not even half of them.
  • Several novels written by Irvine Welsh, including The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, The Acid House, Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, and of course, Porno.

By Work:

  • An Affair With My Mother, a memoir by Caitriona Palmer. The "affair" part of the title is metaphorical; she was raised by adoptive parents and located her birth mother in her twenties — they became close, but for reasons detailed over the course of the book, her mother wanted to keep their relationship secret.
  • Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, actually featured in the San Francisco Chronicle's book review — the paper censored "bullshit" in its listing, but not in its picture of the cover, making the endeavor somewhat pointless. The book itself is more artsy than the name would suggest.
  • The Artificial Nigger, a short story collection by Flannery O’Connor.
  • The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories.
  • The Big Penis Book, a follow up to the The Big Book of Breasts. Both feature partially transparent dust jackets that when removed reveal the principal subject matter. They are also coffee table sized and rather artsy, with lots of interviews and naked pictures.
  • "The Big Space Fuck", a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. It's featured in Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions and Vonnegut's autobiographical hodgepodge Palm Sunday. It reads much like a Kilgore Trout story.
  • Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb, a novel set in the science fiction fandom. The trope applies both in and out of universe; the book's protagonist is a sci-fi author who wrote a novel that's actually quite good and not disrespectful to women at all, but which got saddled with that title (and a matching cover) by a third-rate publisher, forcing the author to disown his work and live in fear of the feminists on campus.
  • Blowing My Way to the Top by Jen Atkin. The innuendo is intentional, but it's an autobiographical self-help book by a hair stylist. The cover at least makes the pun clear by depicting the author blow-drying her hair.
  • The Book of Feckin' Irish Slang That's Great Craic for Cute Hoors and Boosers and others in the same series.
  • Used In-Universe in Boring Girls, in which the narrator names her metal band "Colostomy Hag".
  • Charlie and Lola books have grammatically awkward titles such as I Will Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato, Snow Is My Favourite and My Best, and The Most Wonderfullest Picnic in the Whole Wide World. They're meant to sound like they're being said out loud by Lola, a 5-year-old child.
  • Como se Dar Bem na Vida, Mesmo Sendo um Bosta, translatable as "How to Succeed in Life Even If You're a Complete Turd", a parody self-help book by Brazilian comedy group Casseta e Planeta.
  • Common in the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, with titles like Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas, Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants, and And Then It Came Off in My Hand. The more squeamish American publishers re-titled that last one Away Laughing on a Fast Camel, and the film adaptation of Angus is titled Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging.
  • Cunt, Inga Muscio's well-known feminist book about Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The Cunt Coloring Book, whose cover page is no better even though it's not immediately obvious what you're looking at.
  • Die Nigger Die!, the 1969 autobiography of black radical activist H. Rap Brown.
  • Eeeee, eee, eeee, Tao Lin's first novel.
  • The Ethical Slut, Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy's classic guide to polyamorous relationships — so seminal it even named a trope.
  • Everyone Poops, a children's book about Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Also in the series are the only marginally less awkward The Gas We Pass and The Holes in Your Nose.
  • Faggots, Larry Kramer's 1978 novel criticizing the contemporary gay culture.
  • Feuchtgebiete by Charlotte Roche. The title roughly translates to "wetlands" but can also be parsed as "regions", which lends itself well to the dirty mind. The book's pervasive PR in Germany also led everyone to know it as "that sex book", making the euphemism that much more obvious.
  • Gluten is My Bitch by April Peveteux.
  • Go the Fuck to Sleep, a nice bedtime story not intended for young children, but for their frustrated parents. The title is technically censored on the cover by centering the white "uc" letters over an equally-white moon. The kid-safe version is titled Seriously, Just Go to Sleep. It did well enough to get sequels, You Have To Fucking Eat; Fuck, Now There Are Two of You; Stay the Fuck Home, a self-parody released during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, Jenna Jameson's rather lengthy autobiography.
  • How to Shit in the Woods, an otherwise quite serious book about proper sanitation while camping or hiking.
  • I Am Not a Serial Killer. Quite awkward if you missed the "not", only slightly less awkward if you did catch it because it looks like a Suspiciously Specific Denial.
  • I Heart My Little A-HolesSubtitle is a parenting book that caused a minor controversy over its title. The author responded that any parents who hadn't had that thought at least once were kidding themselves.
  • I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, an awkward yet apt title for a memoir about her experiences as a child actor with an abusive mother.
  • Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? by Alan McArthur and Steve Lowe, a modern social commentary story.
  • It is very hard to talk about without running into a Who's on First? situation: "Have you read It yet?" "Have I read what yet?"
  • The Mammoth Book of... series collects short stories, and each is a big honkin' paperback with the title in huge font. It's not unreasonable to assume this trope was intended for the ones of "Gay Erotica" and "Lesbian Erotica".
  • A Man's Horn. Yes, the Double Entendre is intentional.
  • The Muller-Fokker Effect by John Sladek. It's technically clean, but you have to be very careful how you pronounce it. Probably intentional; according to Sladek, "Young persons have no business reading such a book, which contains sex, violence and anagrams. I think I can speak for the moral majority here when I assure you that we are doing our best to prevent such problems by closing all libraries."
  • Murderess, which owes its title to something not quite as violent as one might think; its protagonist simply wonders if she inherited her clan's notorious murderous inclinations, and the book delves into themes of Nature Versus Nurture and In the Blood.
  • My French Whore, the first novel by Gene Wilder.
  • My Shit Life So Far, the autobiography of Frankie Boyle. Many stores displayed it with a "Censored" sticker covering the offending word, but it's surprising just how many didn't. This should be expected from a comedian who almost named one of his tours "Deal with This, Retards".
  • Naked Pictures of Famous People, a tie-in book to The Daily Show. Particularly awkward if it's displayed prominently on your shelf.
  • A Natural History of Rape, a book about the possible evolutionary origins of non-consensual sex.
  • Negri, froci, giudei & Co., translatable as "Niggers, Faggots, Kikes, and Co.", by Italian journalist Gian Antonio Stella. It's about racism and intolerance in every country and historical age.
  • Nigger, a book by black comedian Dick Gregory detailing his life in the Civil Rights Movement. In his dedication page, he explains, "Every time you hear the word 'nigger', remember that they are advertising my book."
  • Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, a more academic study by black author Randall Kennedy. TV commentators struggled to talk about it without actually saying the title.
  • Nude Men by Amanda Filipacci.
  • On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, which The Other Wiki describes as "a philosophical essay that presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyses the applications of bullshit in the contexts of communication."
  • The Poisoner's Handbook, an excellent look at the foundation of forensic science in New York City.
  • Popular Music From Vittula by Swedish author Mikael Niemi. "Vittula" is a Finnish word translatable as "Cuntville".
  • Used In-Universe in The Princess Diaries, where Mia's best friend Lilly starts a magazine for student literature called Fat Louie's Pink Butthole, after Mia's cat. And the first issue's cover featured Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Executive Meddling by the principal forces her to change the title to The 'Zine. This only happened in the book, not in the film adaptation.
  • Serious Survival: How to Poo in the Arctic and Other Essential Tips. True to its name, it does have a section on how to safely poo while exploring in the Arctic wilderness.
  • Sex God by Rob Bell, an excellent Christian perspective on love and sexuality. Extra awkwardness for stocking it or asking about it in a Christian bookstore.
  • Sheepshagger by Niall Griffiths.
  • Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition. It's only partly about sodomy. Apparently, Johnny Depp read it in preparation for his role as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl — and it shows.
  • Steal This Book by American counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman. Bookstores famously resisted stocking it; many were concerned that Hoffman's positive reputation among hippies would lead them to take the title seriously, but many others were worried about the content, which was essentially an instruction manual on civil disobedience — including sections on how to shoplift. True to its mission statement, the book is freely available online.
  • This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It, the sequel to John Dies at the End. It's not lewd, but no less awkward, especially given that it's pretty much impossible to read the title unless you're looking at the front cover — at which point you're likely already touching it.
  • The Vagina Ass of Lucifer Niggerbastard, the most famous of Shawn Wunjo's oeuvre of intentionally profane books.
  • Who Writes This Crap? by Luke Wright and Joe Stickley, a satirical look at the bad writing present in daily life. (Unrelated to our trope of the same name.)
  • A couple from the Xanth novels by Piers Anthony:
    • The Color of Her Panties. The context is that the panties don't actually exist — the "her" in this case is a mermaid; she doesn't wear clothes, nor does she have legs, so she couldn't wear them even if they did exist. The color of her panties is therefore presented to a Wizard who can supposedly answer anything. It's almost resolved when she does get a pair of panties, but they're magical (that's the only way she can wear them) and they change color.
    • Isle of View is not obscene, but it does sound a heck of a lot like "I love you". It was apparently designed to make teenage readers too embarrassed to say the title out loud.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Most of the episode titles of 3rd Rock from the Sun are puns involving the word "Dick" (the protagonist's name). The writers apparently thought they would never be seen, and some of the ones they got away with are frankly unbelievable.
  • The Rural Juror, a movie Jenna auditioned for a part in on 30 Rock, might possibly be a non-raunchy variant, as it's unlikely its in-universe producers missed how the title is physically difficult to say aloud.
  • Nadia G's cooking show Bitchin' Kitchen.
  • Childish example - the comedy Bottom was originally to be called Your Bottom, so that people would ask their friends things like "Did you see Your Bottom on telly last night?"
    • Even better, they were also hoping for things like "I saw Rik Mayall in Your Bottom last night."
  • The game show Don't! Some of the ads lampshade the issue with the title: "Don't! Watch it! Yeah, this is going to go great..."
  • Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. The ads pronounced the "B——" as just the letter and got a Sublime Rhyme out of it.
  • Hardcore Pawn is self-explanatory. When they had to plug it during the NCAA basketball tournament on truTV, things immediately got awkward when Charles Barkley declared his intent to watch it.
    Charles Barkley: I saw four letters and I got excited.
  • The Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer.
  • Jackass is slightly more tame by today's standards, but at the time it premiered resulted in some amusing Politeness Judo when referred to.
  • Kevin Can F**k Himself, a Sitcom Genre Deconstruction whose title is an obvious Shout-Out / Take That! to Kevin Can Wait.
  • Oh Sit, a Jamie Kennedy-hosted musical chairs game show for The CW that proceeded to use the pun as a running gag throughout.
  • In Parks and Recreation the library department gets revenge on people by sending them messages that they have late fines for nonexistent books with this sort of title.
  • Peep Show, which, despite being a stellar example of Cringe Comedy, isn't actually about peep shows.
  • The show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! is often abbreviated to P&T: BS! precisely for this reason.
    • When Penn refers to the show on the radio, he cuts it in the middle with a clap, "Bulls" "Hit", to avoid FCC fines. He's not normally one to mince words.
    • Two different covers are available for the complete season DVD collections. The ones you can order by mail are labelled "Bullshit!" The ones on store shelf displays are labelled "BS!"
  • Schitt's Creek. While the spelling lets the title pass on print, speaking the title makes promoting it problematic to say the least. Lampshaded during an appearance by its cast on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where Colbert informs them CBS would only let them say the title uncensored if a Commercial Pop-Up for the show came up each time. They proceeded to do so a lot.
  • The William Shatner show $#!+ My Dad Says. Ads encourage calling it "Bleep My Dad Says" to avoid well, you know. Shatner didn't understand the censorship and continued to call it by its original name though. It also proved awkward for a less raunchy reason: Many DVR users were unable to enter any of the non-alphabetic characters in the title, making the show impossible to find.
  • There is a Norwegian comedy-drama titled Sigurd fÃ¥kke pult, which translates into Sigurd Doesn't Get to Fuck. The trailer is also intentionally awkward — it opens with, "My name is Sigurd. I am 25 years old. And I don't get to fuck".
  • Skithouse was an Australian Sketch Comedy show whose title was play on the term "shithouse" (i.e. dreadful). The producers hoped it would sound edgy. Unfortunately, most critics opined that "Shithouse" would have been a more accurate title.
  • Dutch NPO broadcaster BNN has a programme called Spuiten en Slikken (Spit and Swallow). The series deals with sex and recreational drug use, both nationally and internationally.
  • Stacked: a show on Fox starring the silicone-filled Pamela Anderson who works in a bookshop.
  • A Pittsburgh-produced 1996 PBS special by "scrapbook documentary" producer Rick Sebak, about the city's Strip District region (a city warehouse district known for its multiculturism) was titled The Strip Show. The awkwardness is lampshaded by the Sexophone theme music in the opening credits.
  • Supernatural episodes "Criss Angel is a Douchebag", "Sex and Violence", and "Slash Fiction".
  • In a cross with Pun-Based Title, That's My Bush!, a parody of sitcoms and politics featuring George W. Bush as the main character. The Double Entendre was made clearer in the final episode focused on Dick Cheney, That's My Dick!.
  • Most reviews of The Wrong Mans start by commenting on how irritating the title is to say. One reviewer stated that it sounds like 'you've turned into a LOL-cat halfway through'.
  • You're Skitting Me is a Sketch Comedy show aimed at teenagers whose title is a play on the Australian expression "You're shitting me", i.e. "you're having me on".

    Other 
  • The British and Japanese clothing line, 'Fcuk' (French Connection United Kingdom). In parody of this, a British company making cute wooden ornaments of wetland birds calls itself 'Dcuk'.
    • Derwent College at the University of York also sells 'DCUK' merchandise - the university's symbol is a mallard duck. As the campus is built around a large artificial lake, ducks and other waterfowl are a common sight and feature in any number of popular urban legends and memes.
    • When a French Connection UK store was opening, they put up large signs in the windows read "FCUK SOON" (leading to complaints). A pub around the corner called the Five & Lime put up their own signs reading "fluk now".
    • Someone's selling "CNUT" shirts celebrating the Danish king.
    • The Sedgwick Club, Cambridge University's geology student society, uses the abbreviation SCUK.
  • Mixed drinks. Someone decided you need to be either vaguely embarrassed or stupidly impressed with your own wit when you ask the bartender to give you Sex on the Beach, a Screaming Orgasm, a Slow Comfortable Screwnote , Fuck Me Hard, etc.
    • Lampshaded in the Yahoo Serious movie Reckless Kelly when Kelly goes into a bar and asks for a Cocksucking Cowboy—and gets one. He opts for a glass of water instead.
  • There used to exist a minor league hockey team in Macon, Georgia. The name of the team? Why the Macon Whoopee of course!
  • Eighty percent of Americans are not allowed to repeat the titles of most Richard Pryor albums. These albums were up for Grammy awards most years, which must have made the ceremonies interesting.
  • Quite a few guitar effects pedal manufacturers do this, probably inspired by Electro-Harmonix—proud designers of the famous Big Muff, not to mention the Bass Balls, the Black Finger, and the Golden Throat Mouth Tube!
  • The Young Conservatives rebranded themselves as Conservative Future in 1997 after William Hague became party leader. Some bright spark decided to put out literature using a "CFUK" (Conservative Future UK) branding. Given how well the party was regarded at the time (not very highly, to say the least), it backfired. FCUK actually threatened to sue them over the similarity. The Liberal Democrats put out flyers saying "CFUK are a bunch of AWNKERS". Oh, the irony.
  • Starbucks recently began selling "petites", including one called the "Red Velvet Whoopie Pie". Baristas usually just call them "Red Velvets".
  • The drug flavoxate, a urinary antispasmodic, was marketed under the name "Urispas" (pronounced "you're a spaz"). Try telling this to someone who's already trying not to pee...
    • Similarly, there's a digestive-tract drug named AcipHex. The homophone ("Ass Effects") is way too blatant to be accidental.
  • The New Zealand pizza chain Hell. They specialise in spicy pizzas.
  • There's a town in Austria called Fucking. People keep stealing the town's name sign, too. Taking advantage to this, a beer brewer built a factory there to make pale lager, which in German is called Hell. So now you can buy your beer bottles of Fucking Hell.
  • Soap And Glory, a toiletries company, have a lip gloss called 'Sexy Mother Pucker' and a body wash called 'Orangeasm'.

    Software 
  • Programming geeks the world over have probably had trouble discussing a certain minimalist programming language.
  • There was a scheduler for Linux called the Brain Fuck Scheduler (no relation to the Brainfuck programming language) written by Con Kolivas. The name likely reflects frustration at kernel development politics that had put an end to an earlier scheduler by the same author called Completely Fair Scheduler.
  • The most likely explanation for the GNU Image Manipulation Program.
    • Ditto for File System Consistency Check, the common name for the program used to fix corrupted data on UNIX systems. Not only is the name unpronounceable, but it's only one letter off from a major swear word. And if it fails to save your data, then you're fsck'ed.
  • NESticle by Bloodlust Software. Playing Nintendo Entertainment System games, it was the first publicly available freeware video game emulator, hailed as a pioneer in the video game emulation scene, and has been cited as being instrumental in starting the video game music genre and console modding communities, as well as introducing a lot of newcomers to the emulation scene as it was easy to use and would run at very high speeds even on low-end machines with 486 and earlier processors running Windows 95 and DOS. All that, and it was called NESticle by The Fecal Lord. And just in case that was too subtle, the windows icon was a drawing of a ballsack.
  • "Lolicon" is the name of a useful homebrew application for overclocking the PlayStation Vita. Be real careful googling it. Then again, considering the kind of games the Vita got later in its run, the name isn't exactly ill-fitting.

    Podcasts 
  • WTF with Marc Maron doesn't even try to hide that the initialism in the name is the well-known abbreviation for "What The Fuck?" This fact is made even more amusing when you consider the number of very distinguished guests who have been interviewed on the show, even including a sitting President of the United States.
  • The improvisational comedy podcast Cum Town, which had a style of humor that was about what you'd expect.

    Stand-Up Comedy 
  • Cameron Esposito's stand up comedy special Rape Jokes. The title is accurate, albeit in a different way than one might anticipate - her official site bills it as "a standup special about sexual assault from a survivor’s perspective".
  • Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally's "Summer of 69: No Apostrophe" was about their sex life.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The roleplaying supplement for BESM titled "Cute And Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters". Even though the phrase refers to roosters and the book is about Mons, many bookstores refused to carry it because of the title. The authors ended up producing a different edition without the "Cockfighting", and selling the original version only to specialty stores.
  • Magic: The Gathering's joke set Unhinged has several, including Assquach, City of Ass, and Necro-Impotence.
  • The title of Panty Explosion is intended as a parody of the Word Salad Title school of anime naming, but ends up invoking this trope as well.
  • The game publisher Cheapass Games is named for its "cheapass" production values, using minimalist components and omitting tokens and dice on the theory that gamers generally already have plenty of those.

    Theatre 
  • The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas has occasionally run into advertising woes.
  • Foreskin's Lament. It's about a man nicknamed Foreskin because he's small, useless and nobody would miss him if we went away. It's actually quite a moving performance, but trying to advertise for it is damn near impossible.
  • A stage version by Douglas Rodger of the case against Evelyn Dick for the murder of her husband John, whose torso was found missing its arms, legs, and head, was titled How Could You Mrs. Dick? This title is alleged to have been taken from a schoolyard rhyme of the time, which naturally is rather less subtle about the anatomical parallel.
  • "People say it's quite unlikely the two of us should stick! But I just tell them, Hey! It's Me and My Dick!"
  • Stephen Adly Guirgis's 2011 play The Motherfucker with the Hat, which is often censored as The Motherf**ker with the Hat.
  • Once Upon a Mattress is a musical comedy retelling the tale of "The Princess and the Pea". It's less raunchy than the title suggests.
  • Ruddigore was meant as an example of this. Ruddigore was the Bowdlerized title; the original, scandalous title was (cover the kids' eyes!) Ruddygore—which, a combination of "ruddy" and "gore", is evocative of the rude word "bloody".
  • The 1990s British play Shopping and Fucking, by Mark Ravenhill, sometimes referred to in more sensitive publications with Symbol Swearing or simply as Shopping and...
  • "Totally Fucked" and "The Bitch of Living" from Spring Awakening.
  • John Ford, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, of which The Other Wiki says:
    The play's treatment of the subject of incest made it one of the most controversial works in English literature. The play was entirely omitted from an 1831 collected edition of Ford's plays; its title has often been changed to something euphemistic such as Giovanni and Annabella or 'Tis Pity or The Brother and Sister.
  • Urinetown is also an example. Lampshade Hung in the opening song: "How about a bad title? That could kill a show pretty good."
  • The Vagina Monologues is an entirely intentional example as a show highlighting the experiences of women in hard situations. (Including a very controversial one about a teenage girl who is fed alcohol and then raped by an adult woman, and closes the monologue with the line, "If it was rape, it was good rape.")
    • In an interview about this play on the Today show, Jane Fonda said, "I was asked to do a monologue called 'Cunt'." Yes, she said that on live television. And yes, there is a monologue that is nothing but Country Matters.
      • Miss Ensler herself then followed up with her story about "worrying about getting vagina out of [her] mouth". She meant that she was hesitant about saying the word at first... One imagines that somewhere, a stage manager was screaming for a commercial.
    • Some productions sell promotional buttons with "I Love Vagina" written on them.

    Video Games 
  • AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. The developers could have named it something more sensible like "Xtreme Base Jumping", but then they wouldn't have been able to say "This is my game, it's called AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!" This continues with two other games of theirs, titled "1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)" and the less awkward but still hard to talk about in public Drunken Robot Pornography (which isn't a pornographic game in the slightest).
  • The title of the games in the Akiba's Trip series is written as AKIBA'STRIP on the box art, with no space between the words. And, yes, it is a game about taking people's clothes off. (Because they're vampires that are destroyed by sunlight, you see...)
  • Big Mutha Truckers, anyone?
  • What about Clustertruck?
  • Dwarf Fortress, full name: Slaves to Armok: God of Blood - Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress: Histories of X and Y.
  • Gay Sex!, an iPhone card game. Which rather notoriously rose to the top spot of GameFAQs' most-visited games list, meaning it was on the front page for all to see, and didn't show any sign of dropping, because curiosity brought new people to the page all the time. It was eventually removed from the site's otherwise comprehensive games list for...fairly self-evident reasons. Although this is often considered a blow for both free speech and gay rights on the site.
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed: Upon Clothing Damage, IF can mention a game called "Call of Boobie: Nude Raider"
  • Mewgenics: This isn't the first time Edmund McMillen has created a game with an eyebrow-raising title based on Nazi ideals, but it's by far the largest. (The other game, if it can even be called that, amounts to a random generator of faces made as you type into a box. It's called Facist!)
  • Oh Shit!, a clone of Pac-Man. Having a swear in a commercially released game's title is rare. This is why some versions are censored to be called Oh No! instead.
  • The Ratchet & Clank games are well-known for their innuendo-loving subtitles, which are often changed for the European release. What makes them especially clever is that they all tie into a major story or gameplay element.
    • The second game started the trend with Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, referencing Ratchet's status as a Commando for Megacorp. It got changed to Locked and Loaded for some European regions, but sometimes that wasn't enough and the subtitle would be dropped entirely.
    • Lest audiences thought that was an accident, the third game was subtitled Up Your Arsenal as a reference to the weapons ability to upgrade to V5 (it also has one of the largest arsenals of any Ratchet title: 20 weapons). This one was so bad that there was never a replacement subtitle for it, the other option simply being Ratchet & Clank 3 (it was originally named Rear Assault. You decide which is more suggestive).
    • Deadlocked has connotations of bondage, the European subtitle being Gladiator. One refers to the gladiator show the heroes are forced into, and the other refers to the collars that keeps them in line.
    • This was followed up with Size Matters (a PSP title that amusingly got ported to the PS2), which prominently features shrink rays.
    • Tools of Destruction likely refers to, ahem, a certain body part, as well as the Dimensionator.
    • Quest for Booty had pirates as a major story theme, in addition to Ratchet's search for Clank. This was one of the pitched names for Tools of Destruction.
    • A Crack In Time, with a story based around time travel, had the Working Title of Clock Blockers. It's not surprising to see why Sony gave the Executive Veto for that one.
    • Sony stepped in again for the game after that which focused around four player co-op: All 4 One had multiple working subtitles including Ratchet & Clank: 4-Play, Ratchet & Clank: Bros B4 Foes, and Ratchet & Clank: Multiple Organisms until it was presented to Sony.
    • The eleventh title, Full Frontal Assault, refers to the tower-defence gameplay focus and possibly refers to Up Your Arsenal's working title. There's no Full-Frontal Assault to be found in the game. In Europe it got changed to Q-Force.
    • Into the Nexus isn't really that bad, but that wasn't the original title; they wanted Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nether Regions. The antagonists of the game are from a species called Nethers, which come from a place called the Netherverse, which Clank can go into. The rejected subtitle at least made it into the game as a trophy, and the aforementioned "Clock Blockers" is used for some Skill Points in the game.
    • Rift Apart, centered around space-time rifts, can be read as a pun on either "ripped apart" (as Ratchet and Clank are separated from each other for a good chunk of the early game, the latter losing an arm in the process) or... "ripped a fart".
  • The SNES homebrew game Shoot Your Load, which is an otherwise unremarkable Asteroids clone.
  • South Park: The Fractured but Whole looks innocent when written down but, when spoken, is quickly revealed to be this trope. This becomes clearer in the actual game where the New Kid having a "fractured butthole" is a plot point discussed out loud.
  • Speed Freaks was a Mario Kart clone released for PlayStation in 1999. While the term was meant in the literal sense (it is a racing game, after all), the pun wasn't exactly subtle, which is probably why it was renamed Speed Punks in the US.
  • An action/puzzle game for the Gizmondo and later iOS is called Sticky Balls. Another Gizmondo game, never officially released, was a 3D Pong game titled Ball Busters.
  • The rape-themed pornographic game Suck My Dick or Die!
  • Time Fcuk (also known as "Time Fkcu" or "Time Fkuc").
  • The RTS Wargasm, also the title of the first track in L7's Bricks Are Heavy.
  • WTF: Work Time Fun. The abbreviation is almost always printed on the box in huge letters, while the full title is printed in smaller letters and is less noticeable.
  • The X-universe series of games features enemy aliens named Kha'ak. Go ahead, explain that they suck to your mother. The in-game computer doesn't even try to avoid the problem. You will be attacked by Kha'ak. X-Play had a lot of fun with the word in their review of X3: Reunion. However, X3: Terran Conflict changed Betty's pronunciation of the word to "Khark" and "Khaah", likely as a result of the X-Play review.
  • PeroPeroGames, the development team behind Muse Dash. "Pero pero" is a Japanese onomatopoeia for licking, often as an expression of shameless lust. It would explain why Muse Dash is filled with Fanservice.
  • There’s a Doom mod pack titled Doom Clusterfuck. As anyone who has played it will tell you, it’s a pretty apt title.
  • BLUE REVOLVER's boss theme is called "Mothertrucker". You know, as in motherfucker.
  • Interactive Fiction game DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS.
  • The short-lived 2005-2006 Interactive Fiction duo The Hentai Adventures of Captain Cumshot and Captain Cumshot's Second Adventure: The Rim Job. The games don't contain any sexual content aside from the title.
  • The Incredible Erotic Adventures of Stiffy Makane, an infamous 1997 Interactive Fiction porn game. Members of the community ran with it, making deconstructive parodies placing Stiffy through all different times, settings, and places to explore how his behavior would be received.

    Visual Novels 
  • In-universe in the Ace Attorney series, magician Trucy Wright's signature trick is "Magic Panties", where she pulls various items out of a large pair of prop underwear. This gets overused to the point of absurdity in "Turnabout Corner", Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, where her prop is stolen by one of the witnesses and Apollo, Trucy, the witness, and the Judge are discussing Trucy's panties without thinking anything of it.
    Trucy: I can still remember that moment... You brandished those bloomers on high, and shouted... "Objection!"
  • Katawa Shoujo is a VN in which most of the main characters have a physical handicap. While the word "katawa" can be used to describe a physically handicapped person, it is very much not a polite term to use (specifically, it means "cripple"). This is the Japanese equivalent of making a Dating Sim where all of the girls are on the autism spectrum and naming it "Retard Girls". Although based on a tongue-in-cheek doujin, it does handle the subject matter a lot more respectfully than one would expect from the title. The creators were initially unaware of the negative connotations of the title; partway through development, they were informed what the title actually meant, but opted to keep it as-is.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Bear Nuts. Got nothing to do with animal testicles, but comes awfully close in mature content anyways.
  • City of Reality. The name is eerily dissonant to both readers and outsider characters. (The residents of said city think it fits perfectly, though.) It's apparently based on a rather unconventional definition of the term.
  • Dog Nigga, a.k.a. Dog Ningen. The main character is indeed half dog and half African American.
  • The Devil's Panties: It's not satanic porn! Honest!
  • Fruit Incest. The name is meant to be nothing more than an eye catcher. Also ironic since the comic itself is usually squeaky clean.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court. That is an odd combination of syllables. Tom Siddell confirms that this was intentional: "I wanted a title that was intentionally awkward and easy to search for on Google."
  • The title Questionable Content sounds as if the page's content were questionable. Gives it an Forbidden Fruit appeal.
  • Sinfest. Despite the name, it's almost clean enough to pass as a newspaper comic (it actually started as a comic in a college newspaper).

    Web Original 
  • AlternateHistory.com has a timeline titled "The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies.
  • The Best Page in the Universe: It's difficult to take about the title of the work without sounding extremely subjective.
  • The comedy podcast hosted by Nick Mullen, Stavros Halkias and Adam Friedland is titled Cum Town.
  • The Daily WTF; a tech site with stories about horrible coding and business practices. An attempt to rename the site to the cleaner backronym "Worse Than Failure" was met with massive fan backlash.
  • DeviantArt, almost certainly. The official name for those registered there is Deviants, which can get a little, ah, interesting when trying to explain IRL that you already exhibit your art, and where.
  • Experts Exchange is a jobhunting site. Seen as a URL, it looks more like ExpertSexChange...
  • MaxterBexter: "Fish Tacos" would probably be a case of Have a Gay Old Time, were it not for this dialogue:
    Becki: I got fish tacos! Nothing bad implied there...
    Max: Your fish tacos?
    Becki: Shut up!
    Max: Very nice...
    Becki: Little children watch this! Be discreet, come on.
  • FuckedCompany.com
  • Reddit features a series of forums called the "SFW Porn network". This is simply meant in the sense of Scenery Porn or Food Porn, gorgeous pictures of the subject. (Popular entries include "Earth Porn", "Space Porn", and "History Porn".) It is often subject to complaints because, even though the pictures are innocuous, you'll still have something named "Porn" in your browser history, which can cause trouble at work or with your network firewall. For extra bonus awkwardness points, there are entries entitled "Animal Porn" and "Human Porn".
  • Just try pronouncing https://slashdot.org aloud.
  • Superdickery.com is occasionally subject to this in conversation.
    • Weirdly, moreso than the much less ambiguous original name of the site, Superman is a Dick.
  • Total Dick-Head: It's a blog about science fiction author Philip K. Dick.
  • It's popular on Tumblr for fansites to name themselves following the Snowclone, "Fuckyeah, [subject]!" Common alternatives are "hellyeah", "heckyeah", or "fyeah", if the person in charge doesn't want to swear in the blog title.
    • Individual Tumblr users also frequently choose profane names for their personal blogs. Lewd puns and fictional characters' naughty bits are popular.
  • The website Uke Hunt (say it out loud, and it's the instrument, not the other kind of uke). The site owner has acknowledged this and seems amused by it.
  • You Can't Fuck Osmosis Jones is a blog dedicated to tongue-in-cheek rants about cartoon characters where having a Perverse Sexual Lust for them would be especially impractical or ridiculous.
  • There's a website whose function is to create Raster Graphic versions of images. The name of the site? Rasterbator.
  • Felicia Day has coined the term "Vaginal Fantasy" as a tongue-in-cheek description of urban or historical fantasy fiction that is aimed at women and prominently involves romance and/or sex. Once a month, she'll discuss such novels with her friends in a Google+ Hangout On Air, and also post the discussion to YouTube - naturally it can be awkward mentioning that you were just watching something called "Vaginal Fantasy Hangout #2".

    Web Videos 
  • There's a KateModern episode called "Pissed".
  • A number of lonelygirl15 episodes have titles which could be read more than one way, such as "Awkward Threesome", "Girl Tied Up" and "Jennie Bares All", which Amanda Goodfried has claimed responsibility for. There's also an episode called "Lying Bastards".
  • The Nostalgia Critic videos "Top 11 Fuck Ups" (three parts), "Top 11 Mindfucks", and "Holiday Clusterfuck" (although some of the titles are censored on the episode page).
  • The Socialist. Has absolutely nothing to do with the socioeconomic movement called Socialism. The main character works at a social media marketing company, despite having no experience in social media. She thinks that those who use social media are called "socialists".
  • Strip Search; a talent search for comic strip artists. The other meaning is never referred to, but considering the creators are known for enjoying crude humor...
  • The Super Best Friendcast names all its podcasts after a line contained therein. Friendcasts tend to go into extremely bizarre and profane tangents, and the titles follow suit. At one point, a fan and an editor from PC Magazine wrote in to the Friendcast, telling them that they probably would have made a list of podcast recommendations if not for so many NSFW episode titles.
    Liam: God, I forgot about "Underwater Racism".
  • What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?. Often referred in more polite environments with just the initials.
  • Try explaining to your significant other what Lonely and Horny (a web series by Jake and Amir of CollegeHumor fame) is doing in your search history.

    Western Animation 
  • The makers of Batman Beyond considered naming the show The Tomorrow Knight, which they recognized could prompt advertising like "Tomorrow night on Tomorrow Knight".
  • Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese. Not as bizarre as some of the other titles here, but its Word Salad nature (referring to the six eponymous siblings) has certainly baffled many.
  • While My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has had its share of episode titles that fit this, the one that really takes the cake is Grannies Gone Wild. Just try and tell a friend or family member that you watched "Grannies Gone Wild" last night and see how they react. Though, even more disturbingly so, there actually is a scene of the grannies sexually harassing a bellhop...
  • Peepoodo & the Super Fuck Friends is quite possibly one of the most "wtf"-inducing titles ever conceived for a cartoon. As the name suggests, it's not for kids, being a sex-themed Edutainment parody of preschool shows.
  • The Powerpuff Girls is a perfectly innocent name, but it's actually a Bowdlerisation of the original name for the series: The Whoopass Girls. (The original formula for how the girls were made was "Sugar, Spice, Everything Nice, and a can of Whoopass")
  • Some of the episode names for TV Funhouse (both on Saturday Night Live and its own series) recurring sketch The Ambiguously Gay Duo, including: "Blow Hot, Blow Cold", "A Hard One To Swallow", "Trouble Coming Twice", "The Third Leg Of Justice", "First Served, First Come". But considering the whole point of the show is to slap around random innuendos, the episode titles are tame.
  • Episode titles don't get much more intentionally awkward than The Simpsons episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy".
  • South Park has several awkward episode titles. There were some that actually got censored, such as "An Elephant Fucks a Pig" (censored to "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", which Trey Parker found ridiculous) and "Chickenfucker" (censored to "Chickenlover" - both terms are used in the episode itself).
    • "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut" (and its sequel, "Cartman's Mom is Still a Dirty Slut")
    • "Chef's Salty Chocolate Balls"
    • "Sexual Harassment Panda"
    • "Cat Orgy"
    • "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub"
    • "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000"
    • "Cartman Joins NAMBLA"
    • "Something You Can Do With Your Finger"
    • "The Wacky Molestation Adventure"
    • "Cripple Fight"
    • "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow"
    • "Proper Condom Use"
    • "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society"
    • "Child Abduction Is Not Funny"
    • "The Biggest Douche in the Universe"
    • "Butt Out"
    • "You Got F'd in the A". This one was originally actually titled "You Got Fucked in the Ass", and some sources simply refer to it as "You Got...", but Cartman uses the phrase in the episode.
    • "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset"
    • "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina"
    • "Erection Day"
    • "Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy"
    • "More Crap"
    • "Major Boobage"
    • "Eek, a Penis!"
    • "Butters' Bottom Bitch"
    • "W.T.F."
    • "The F Word"
    • "Crippled Summer"
    • "Crack Baby Athletic Association"
    • "Ass Burgers"
    • "Bass to Mouth"
    • "Reverse Cowgirl"
    • "Informative Murder Porn"
    • "Taming Strange"
    • "A Song of Ass and Fire"
    • "Titties and Dragons"
    • "Go Fund Yourself"
    • "Cock Magic"
    • "Wieners Out"
    • "Super Hard PCness"
    • "Dead Kids"
  • When it came to picking a show's name, Stripperella probably wasn't the best to go by, as well as her alter ego going by the name "Erotica Jones". Stan Lee and Pamela Anderson have since admitted that marketing such a show would be impossible, despite opting for a PG-rated tone, as the name of the character would undermine the effort.
  • Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, and yes, the exclamation point is part of the official title. If you can avoid giggling to yourself when you say this out loud and can spit the whole thing in a single breath, the people you said it to will usually react with raised eyebrows, Flat "What", polite giggles or stepping away slowly. Which is a pity, since the show is actually pretty good, the title is just deliberately over-the-top.
  • Wishfart has the exact kind of title that causes people to raise their eyebrows when they hear or read it, with most assuming it to be Toilet Humor and little else. However the show's title is actually a play on "brainfart", since the show's about a leprechaun who grants wishes that always go wrong. Furthermore, the show itself actually has very little potty humor, being mostly a surreal Urban Fantasy.

    Real Life 
  • North Carolina's yearly What The Hell Con is a minor example.
  • On a slightly more local scale than most examples, the improv comedy club at the University of California, Irvine is called "Live Nude People".
  • The Government of Ontario, Canada has an energy conservation campaign called "FLICK OFF", with the already-titillating slogan universally written in uppercase letters with a slightly curved L. The website for the campaign is replete with Double Entendre.
  • The Victoria University of Wellington Student Association ran a campaign in 2008 promoting sexual health checkups for men. The campaign's name? "I Heart My Penis". It got a bit awkward when the Association president wore a shirt with the campaign name on it to a graduation ceremony.
  • An annual sex Q&A/safety education thing at one college: "I <3 Female Orgasm". Besides posters all over campus, there were also 2-inch buttons handed out for publicity.
  • There have recently been a few irreverent breast cancer campaigns. To wit: "Save the Ta-Tas" (started by film critic Joe Bob Briggs), "Feel Your Boobies", "Boobapalooza", etc. One made for Mexico pictured women wearing a T-shirt with the legend "Favor de tocar" ("Please touch").
  • In the 1960s an anarchist group formed that called themselves "Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers", mainly to frustrate news media by having an "unprintable" name.
  • A clothing store in Gujarat, India, made international headlines in 2012 when it was discovered that it was operating under the name "Hitler", complete with a little swastika nestled in the dot of the "i".
  • The audio electronics company Schiit. Three guesses as to how you pronounce the name. And they're proud of it. From their front page:
    Yes, that is our name. Shih-tah. It's a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world...
    Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name, and it's pronounced, well, like "hey man, that's some really good Schiit!" And now that we have your attention...
  • A street sign in Fountain, Colorado reads "A Dog Will Lick His Butt But Won't Eat A Pickle Rd". It's not an officially recognized street name - reportedly, it was an originally unnamed dirt road on private property, and the local Homeowners Association insisted the property owners give it a name and a street sign.
  • The company Big Ass Fans is most well-known for designing and manufacturing very large industrial-grade cooling fans for places like factories and barns. Founded under the name HVLS Fan Co., the company changed its name after receiving call after call from prospective customers asking if they made "those big-ass fans". Being an American company, they're fully aware of the name and wholly embrace it- they describe everything they do as "Big Ass", made their company mascot a donkey named Fanny, prominently feature Fanny's hindquarters in their company logos, and maintain both a YouTube channel and a Facebook gallery of hate mail from people offended by their name.
  • The JavaScript test running tool Testacular was renamed Karma because people familiar with its technical merits were reluctant to use it on work projects or write blog posts about it, which is generally fatal to open-source software. (OSS codes of conduct usually favor inclusiveness.)
  • Rooster Teeth:
    • Rooster Teeth once hosted a panel at South by Southwest which they were originally going to just call "Rooster Teeth Panel" but they decided to change it to something better and deliberately came up with "the longest, most ridiculous title" they could possibly think of. They settled on "Alternative Careers in Gaming: The Science of Play Redefined as Art via Content Creation in the Ongoing & Evolving Paradigm of the Post-Network Media Environment. What Does it Mean to You? (featuring Rooster Teeth)". Related in this Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures episode.
    • Averted by Rooster Teeth themselves, as they originally intended on calling themselves "Cock Bite", but decided to go with a more advertising-friendly name.
  • There's a Norwegian underwear company named Comfyballs.
  • There is a British energy drink called Pussy. For a while, they were forced to display the name on the cans as "P***y" due to complaints, but this was reversed when the creator successfully argued that the name referred to cats.

Top