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Ironic Episode Title

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A title that usually implies something optimistic, happy, and generally positive... for an episode that's not. Favorites include traditionally joyous holidays (Christmas, Valentine's Day), emotions on the positive side of the spectrum (Love, Joy), and optimistic words (Beautiful, Wonderful).

Expect the Wham Episode to use this. Deceptively Silly Title is a subtrope.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Fan Works 
  • The third story in the Angel of the Bat trilogy is named, "Da Pacem Domine", which is Latin for, "Give peace, Lord." The phrase is borrowed from a chant utilized during the Crusades and is tied in with the story's villains, who are most certainly not peaceful.
  • Best Friends Forever concerns Twilight Sparkle's maddened attempts to keep her friends alive for all eternity, which feature her repeatedly regressing them to infancy against their will and destroying their minds in the process. Oh, and Twilight was driven to this conclusion while watching Fluttershy slowly die of old age. For good measure, the story ends with Celestia killing Twilight to spare the Mane Six from any more of this, leaving Celestia struggling with the guilt of having killed her former friend.
  • A decidedly downplayed and simple example would be "Camping on a Deserted Rock is FUN!", from Calvin & Hobbes: The Series.
  • The One to Make It Stay has All the Laughs We Had in the Past, so named not just as a reference to Lush's Etheriel, but referring to the nostalgia surrounding Team Miraculous in happier, less stressful times. Said story features some of the strain between the teammates coming to a head, turning into a massive Wham Episode when Adrien loses his ring to Miracle Queen and it ends up in Hawkmoth's hands, heralding major changes.
  • Sasha and the Frogs: Chapter 23 is titled "What a Wonderful Hiber-Day", implying a lighthearted story similar in tone to its corresponding canon episode. However, since Sasha doesn't have the context that Anne did in canon, it ends up being one of the darkest chapters of the entire fic, as she is left paranoid and alone in a frozen wasteland for an entire week, convinced that everyone she knows has died with no explanation.
  • Vile and Blasphemous: "Vile and Blasphemous" is something Lute calls Vaggie and Charlie's relationship, though it's unclear if she's talking about them being both women or Vaggie being an angel and Charlie being a demon. In this fic, Lute has a romance with a female demon named Eve.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Do the Right Thing: By the end of the movie, it is seriously questionable that anybody did the right thing, as one of the main themes of the movie is that it is often difficult to do the right thing in the real world.
  • La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet) is about a woman who never smiles, trapped as she is in a desperately unhappy marriage to a boor.
  • The unnamed lead character in the 2018 Canadian short film Attainment (which contains no dialogue) is so obsessed with becoming the best competitive figure skater in the world that he over-trains to the point where he suffers from a complete mental and physical breakdown. His dream is thus shattered and it becomes unattainable.
  • The James Bond film No Time to Die. Both Felix Leiter and Bond himself die in this one.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5 has several episodes with deliberately unassuming titles that contain very important events, for example, "Interludes and Examinations", in which several important characters variously die, leave their job because of addiction, and make a deal with the devil. Among other things.
  • "Taking a Break from All Your Worries" from Battlestar Galactica (2003). According to the producers, the original concept was supposed to fit the title. It turned into an episode about drowning your marital problems at the bar and interrogating Baltar with psychotropic drugs.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • "Fool for Love" is exploration of Spike's backstory, and while there are a few moments of romance, it's mostly bad-assed carnage as Spike tells the stories of how previously he killed two slayers. It's also a Literary Allusion Title to the Sam Shepard play of the same name, which is very similar in structure.
    • Word of God confirms that the fourth season episode where Faith wakes up from a coma and steal Buffy's body was originally called "rise and shine".
  • Choujin Sentai Jetman has the episode "Glory of the Emperor Tranza", which ends with the emperor in question completely beaten down by the heroes, physically forced to acknowledge The Starscream as the new emperor, and finally being mind raped by said new emperor and left drooling and rambling in an insane asylum.
  • Cold Case has "Justice", where the victim was a college Serial Rapist With Good Publicity thanks to his victims being slut-shamed, and they never got the titular 'justice' they desired. Ultimately subverted though when the team decides their own brand of justice by letting his killer (the younger brother of one of his victims) go free on self-defence charges, preventing a monster like him from enjoying even the posthumous avenging other episodes' Asshole Victims get.
  • The first season finale of Desperate Housewives, "One Wonderful Day". Wonderful indeed - at the end of the episode, one husband is dead, another husband is in prison, and a third character is Left for Dead. (The Stephen Sondheim song suggested by the show's Idiosyncratic Episode Naming, however, doesn't go any darker than an Ironic Echo.)
  • The last episode of Doctor Who before the show was cancelled was called "Survival". The show has since returned.
  • Gotham's Grand Finale was named "The Beginning", in reference to it being the start of Bruce Wayne's tenure as Batman.
  • The House episode "Merry Little Christmas" was anything but. It ends with House sprawling in a pool of his own vomit/drool in front of the TV after nearly overdosing on Vicodin, while his "best friend" Wilson just looks at him lying there then walks away in disgust. The irony is questionable, since this is is obviously a reference to the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, which is really a pretty nasty piece of work in the first place. The original lyrics are even bleaker, but Judy Garland refused to sing them. It's a pun title, since the patient of the week is a little person.
  • How I Met Your Mother has the episode "Happily Ever After" which happens right after Ted is left at the altar by his fiancée Stella.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): In the "Episode Insider" featurette of "No Pain", an executive producer of the series confirms that this episode title is ironic.
    Mark Johnson: "No Pain" is the name of [Season 2] episode 3, and it is ironic because the whole episode is about pain.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is this trope when applied to an entire show, but usually tend to avoid using these kinds of episode titles with the exception of "A Very Sunny Christmas" which has Charlie finding out he's a Son of a Whore, a Mall Santa's ear getting bitten off, and theft. (Granted, sunshine isn't very Christmas-y).
  • The Lost episodes "Something Nice Back Home" and "There's No Place Like Home" both feature unpleasant flashforwards of the time after the Oceanic 6 get home.
  • The concept of the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker". Although the stockbroker himself may agree with the title.
  • The Stargate Atlantis episode "Sunday" because it sounds like an episode about the characters relaxing and having a day off and mostly is... until they kill off a main character.
  • The series finale of Stargate SG-1 was called "Unending".
  • Supernatural:
    • "Everybody Loves a Clown", also a candidate for horrific.
    • "The Kids Are Alright." They are not. They are really really not.
    • "Time Is On My side" given it comes an episode before Dean's contract is due.
    • "A Very Supernatural Christmas" — anything but merry. Features evil old people and torn out fingernails.
    • "I Believe the Children Are Our Future" is something of a subversion in that Antichrist Jesse turns out to be a nice kid.
    • "The Hero's Journey" denies all heroic moves to both Sam and Dean, who have to be saved by Garth all the way through.
  • The very first episode of Red Dwarf was called "The End". Borderline because the episode actually did deal with a massive accident that wiped out almost the entire crew, setting up the series for After the End. (And with that situation set up, the episode ended with a caption in the same font, saying "The Beginning".)
  • Overlapping with Initialism Title, the finale of The Americans is ttled "START," in reference to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty whose negotiations just started.
  • Veronica Mars:
    • "An Echolls Family Christmas", one of the most highly-regarded episodes, ends with a character being stabbed at his own Christmas party by a woman he cheated on his wife with at a Halloween party...while he was making eyes at another woman (also not his wife).
    • "Happy Go Lucky." He really isn't.
  • The momentous The X-Files episode "Nothing Important Happened Today", named after King George III's supposed diary entry for July 4, 1776, the day the United States declared its independence from Britain. (Of course George could be forgiven for his ignorance given the lack of telecommunications in those days.)
  • The Young Ones episode "Boring" has lots of interesting things going on, but Rick, Viv, Neil and Mike just don't happen to notice any of them.

    Music 
  • Broken Iris's song "A New Hope" is about feeling hopeless after the death of a loved one.
    I guess I'll spend another lifetime / Searching for a new hope
  • "My Happy Ending" by Avril Lavigne is a sad Break-Up Song.
    You were everything, everything that I wanted
    We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it
    All of the memories, so close to me, just fade away
    All this time you were pretending
    So much for my happy ending
  • Demi Lovato's "I Love Me" is about being their own worst enemy: "I'm a black belt when I'm beating up on myself" and "I always got my finger on the self destruct."
  • Lord of the Lost has a song about hatred and love and regret and envy and endless grief. The song's titled "Euphoria."
  • Origami Angel: "Thank You, New Jersey" is actually about how Ryland hates the summer he spent in New Jersey because the beaches are overcrowded and the people are rude.
    ''Sure, this party's spaced out in the South Atlantic Sea
    But wouldn't you wanna be sittin' on a beach right next to me
    Where you can't even move a muscle
    Cause you'd be on someone else's property?
  • Taylor Swift's "peace" expresses a lot of conflicting emotions as the narrator warns her beloved that she can never give them peace.
  • Yasmin Levy's "La alegria" (Spanish for "joy") is a bitter, sorrowful song about lost love in which the narrator says she will never be happy again.
  • Saint Motel:
    • Inverted in "Cold Cold Man", where the singer assures his partner that although he seems cold because he doesn't show much emotion, he's still head over heels in love with her.
    • "Sweet Talk" sounds like one of their Silly Love Songs, but the lyrics make it clear that the object of the protagonist's affections doesn't like him at all and barely even pays attention to him (only either making fun of him or telling him to "piss off"), but he's so desperate he interprets any attention as a good thing.

    Theatre 

    Video Games 
  • To many people who played Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, "Poochy Ain't Stupid" comes across as this, due to the frustration of using the titular Poochy to navigate the stage. For what it's worth, the titular Poochy's controls are easy to understand after a little bit of practice; the problem many players face is that, depending on how you play the game, this Brutal Bonus Level may be the first time you've even seen the dog and a Lethal Lava Land is not the ideal environment to figure out said canine's controls.

    Web Animation 
  • Step 4 of There she is!!, entitled Paradise, is the episode where everything goes to hell for Doki and Nabi, as while the two of them have finally started dating, their entire community outside their closest friends has now started treating them like dirt (from simply denying them service to physically accosting them on the street) for being in an Interspecies Romance.

    Webcomics 
  • Motherlover: Chapter 9 is titled "Forsaking All Others". Imogen discovers that Jonathan has been cheating on her for quite some time.

    Web Original 
  • Survival of the Fittest can fall into this at times when a title of a thread sounds more cheerful and optimistic than it actually is, such as one where a character is getting killed. Sometimes it isn't intentional, and the handlers had no idea what exactly was going to happen in the thread. In other cases, it's intentional. One example in v4 pre-game is titled "Happily Ever Afters (Below The Waist)", which has JJ Sturn Kick the Dog by breaking up with Rosa Fiametta after sleeping with her and then hitting her. In v4 proper, another example was titled "Thank You For Being A Friend" in which Reiko Ishida crosses the Moral Event Horizon by strangling her only living friend to death in a fit of rage.

    Web Videos 
  • Nazo no Eizou - CM Channel: Despite its title, "Invincible Hero" is a Public Service Announcement about a Japanese average person's life crumbling apart because of bullying, dropping out of school, failing exams, and ending up homeless, only becoming "invincible" when they snap from the pent-up trauma and become a "joker" before closing the PSA with an implication they died of suicide afterward.

    Western Animation 
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil has an episode called "Bon Bon the Birthday Clown". The clown only shows up for one second.
  • Steven Universe:
    • In the episode "Dewey Wins", Nanefua Pizza wins the election and becomes mayor of Beach City, even though the title is clearly saying Dewey Wins. Although Dewey believed he'd be crushed by the pressure of an actual crisis, he admits Nanefua would be a better mayor than him. The title is a play on a famous picture of Harry Truman after the presidential election, holding up a newspaper with the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman". The headline was premature; Truman had actually won.
    • The third-last episode of Steven Universe: Future is entitled "Everything's Fine". Steven has been dealing with major mental health issues throughout all of Future and this is the episode where it reaches it's apex, hiding his mental instability behind a smile and a helpful attitude before having a complete emotional breakdown and turning into a monster. In other words, everything is NOT fine.
  • SWAT Kats and the episode "A Bright And Shiny Future". Guess what happens.
  • From Teen Titans; the three-part season finale episode of season four was called "The End". However, even though it dealt with the end of the world, it actually ended with the Earth being restored, and the show continued for another season. One of Raven's lines at the end of the episode is "I guess, in the end, there really is no end. Just new beginnings."
  • The last episode of the second season of Codename: Kids Next Door was called Operation E.N.D. The "end" of the KND was successfully prevented, and the show itself had four more seasons.
  • The Legend of Korra: The episode in which Zaheer kills the Earth Queen is titled "Long Live the Queen". However, there is context behind this; the title itself is taken from the traditional proclamation: "The King/Queen Is Dead, Long Live The King/Queen", making it a meaningful, Spoiler Title because it's usually announced after a monarch's death, but also ironic because in this case, no one has succeeded immediately after.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: The episode "The Precious, Wonderful, Adorable, Lovable Duckling" is about a duckling that only pretends to be cute and innocent, but is actually evil and violently jealous over Eustace, on whom he has imprinted. Doubles as Ironic Name.
  • Arthur:
    • An episode is titled "Vomitrocious", which is Muffy's catchphrase...but the episode is about Francine.
    • Subverted with "Binky Barnes, Art Expert". At first, the episode hinges on Binky's stupid idea for an art project — a bizarre insistence that a painting is being hung sideways in a museum. However, in the end, it turns out he was right all along, and did extensive research to prove it.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode "Good Neighbors" has SpongeBob and Patrick ruining Squidward's relaxing Sunday and getting him in trouble with the law, thanks to their ineptitude.
  • The Patrick Star Show: "Dr. Smart Science", which hinges on Patrick's lack of knowledge about science.
  • The 1951 Goofy cartoon "No Smoking (1951)" is about Goofy's smoking habit, which he vainly tries to kick. The short is permeated with tobacco products.

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