Name-Tron

ZX Spectrum games/programs of "Tron".

"In the '80s, everything was '-tron'! Megatron, Voltron, TRON... the movie. You get the idea."

— The Angry Video Game Nerd, The Angry Video Game Nerd

"Tron" is Greek for a form of instrument (such as the "Metatron" from mythology was an instrument of God). These days, it's used as a suffix for advanced electronic technology in general, because of that Latin word "Electron" as well as the trope Tron Lines.

But this trope is about how in fiction, it's used as a suffix just for Rule of Cool. Sometimes it's a name, sometimes it's a device that doesn't really fit the suffix, but it's called that anyway.

Compare Thing-O-Matic, The Something Force, Law of Alien Names and Xtreme Kool Letterz. See also Advanced Tech 2000, where an object's name is suffixed with a large number to make it sound impressive (and is sometimes used with this trope to make the name even more outlandish).

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Example-tron:

Animetron & Mangatron

• When GoLion and Dairugger XV were combined into a new series for the US, it was dubbed Voltron, and all follow ups kept that name.
• Noein features enemy mechas called "Destructrons", which is somewhat of a narm for some, as it doesn't really fit the series' serious tone.
• Flint the Time Detective had Mons that did a Face–Heel Turn when stamped on the forehead by Applied Phlebotinum, and "Tron" slapped at the end of their names.
• Nurse Witch Komugi: Magical Maid Koyori once turned Tokyo Big Sight into a giant Transforming Mecha, calling it "Big Sightron". It got its own Animated OP in the DVD special features. (Misspelled in this video as "Big Cytron".)
• The early Japanese Transformers renamed the Autobots and Decepticons to 'Cybertrons' and 'Destrons' respectively (this has been retconned to the US names as of the film series).

Card-tron Games

• Magic: The Gathering has three lands that are collectively nicknamed the "Urzatron". Assemblying Urza's Tower, Urza's Mine, and Urza's Power Plant will greatly increase each land's mana production.
• In fitting with the superhero theme, the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse has Omnitron, a rogue artificial intelligence intended to mass produce weapons to end wars.

Comic-tron Books

• Ultron, recurring foe of The Avengers. Could be a portmanteau of the prefix ultra- and tron.
• Batman: Professor Pyg refers to his surgically modified minions as "Dollotrons". While the "doll" part of their name makes sense (given their appearance and Pyg's own obsessions), the "-tron" suffix is less explicable, as the Dollotrons are by all accounts entirely human, with no electronic components. Of course, Professor Pyg isn't the most rational person to begin with; the name likely makes sense to him and him alone.
• In addition to the roster of infamous Transformers characters, the rare Transformers In 3-D comic had a group of Canon Discontinuity villains called the Destructrons.

Comic-tron Strips

• FoxTrot: The Big Bad of Jason's Slug-Man comics is the vile Paige-o-Tron, a repulsive cyborg with the appearance and personality of Jason's big sister, Paige.

Fan-tron Works

• The world of Gametron, which is based on the Grid from the movie TRON in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Inside The Game".

Films-tron — Live-Action

• Kamen Rider: Beyond Generations has Kamen Rider Century's transformation belt, the Cyclotron Driver, which got its name by applying this trope to the name of Ichigo's motorcycle, the Cyclone. Fittingly, the Driver itself is created in 2071 and resembles a futuristic version of Ichigo's Typhoon belt.
• TRON is so awesome that it doesn't need a prefix. The creator stated that the inspiration was a shortening of electronic. By complete coincidence there is a "tron" command^note "trace on", to track the order of code execution from several varieties of the BASIC programming language.
• One of the Puppet Master films (no relation to the Heinlein book) had a doll called the "Decapatron".
• Orgasmatron from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper.
• Speaking of Metatron, Alan Rickman plays one in Dogma.

Litera-tron

• A Wrinkle in Time: Meg's nickname is Megatron, many years before The Transformers made it cool.
• Breakfast of Champions and later novels by Kurt Vonnegut have Barrytron, Limited, a weapons manufacturing company and the largest employer in Midland City. It was named after its founder, Fred T. Barry.
• Cakes in Space has Nom-O-Tron, the food replicator on board the ship.
• In David Macaulay's book Mill, the epilogue has the last cotton mill in Wicksbridge acquired by the Fabritron Corporation, who eventually shut it down as obsolete.
• The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death has the Alligatron, an avocado-based computer.

Live-Action TV-tron

• Community has Boob-a-tron, a cardboard robot made by Abed in the hopes that someone will spill bong-water on it, causing it to become sentient.
• Doctor Who: In "Dalek", Collector of the Strange Henry van Statten calls the only living thing in his collection, the titular Dalek, "Metaltron" before he knows what it is.
• A number of monsters in Power Rangers, although 'crons might be more common. It was even taken to the extreme in Power Rangers: Beast Morphers with the Monsters Of The Week, Robotrons, with each one has a "-tron" suffix at the end of their names. It was even Lampshaded by the show's stunt team at Power Morphicon when they had a fan play a monster named "Hairgelatron".
• Mitchell and Web parody it in the 'Vectron' sketch. See it here.^note Railfans will find this sketch extra silly as these people are technically worshiping a locomotive.
• Metatron is the name of an important angel in Supernatural.
• Zeltron from the 70s-80s French show Les Aventures électriques de Zeltron. He is a brightly colored puppet who retrospectively looks like a CGI cartoon character.
• The Angelatron, one of Angela’s computer inventions for reconstructing faces and recreating crimes on Bones
• Ultra Series:
  • Ultraman Tiga has Ligatron, a cyborg monster created when a space organism fused with an Earth shuttle.
  • Ultraman Orb has a new Mechanical Monster kaiju called Galactron. It was originally supposed to be named either "Galaxy Dragon" or "Salvatron", but later the names got combined.

Musictron

• One of Motörhead's best-known songs is "Orgasmatron".
• The UK band Ladytron, named after a song by Roxy Music.
• Megadeth's song "Psychotron".
• Freezepop's song "Robotron 2000".

Pro Wrestlingtron

• The big screen that's part of WWE's set is traditionally referred to as the Titantron, after the former name of the parent company, Titan Sports.
• Hector Guerrero briefly worked as a masked wrestler named "Lasertron", winning the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title while in Jim Crocket Promotions.
• Chris Jericho's Highlight Reel segments featured the "obscenely expensive" Jeritron 3000

Tabletoptron Games

• One of the factions in Monsterpocalypse is Ubercorp International. They produce mechanical versions of enemy Kaiju. So what do they call the rip-off of the Planet Eater Gorghadra? Why, Gorghadtron of course!

Themetron Parks

• The Accelatron device in Storm Force Accelatron at Universal's Islands of Adventure.

Toys-tron

• Absolutely everywhere in LEGO's many space factions in the 1980s into the '90s: Futuron, Blacktron, M-Tron, Unitron...
• Several Transformers have had this over the years, most notably Megatron and Galvatron, and the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron. Other notables from the toylines include Banzai-Tron, Magmatron, and Computron. In Japan, quite a few evil factions have been known as the Destrons, while their good counterparts were known as Cybertrons (the planet was called Seibertron instead).
• The Gobots have the homeworld Gobotron.

Videotron Games

• ARMS has Springtron, a robotic doppelgänger of Spring Man.
• Protectrons in Fallout 3 Similarly, Securitrons in Fallout: New Vegas.
• Positron from City of Heroes, who's named after the real-life antimatter counterpart to the electron.
• The Syndicate games have a mind control device called the Persuadertron.
• The Arachnotron from the Doom series.
• In MySims, one of the tasks you may get from Dr. F is to build a Zap-o-Tron. Apparently, its function is to sit around, and when a Sim touches it, it zaps them.
• The Enertron in Chrono Trigger gives you a full night's sleep in a few seconds. HP and MP restored! ...but you're still hungry.
• Kingdom of Loathing has the Annoy-o-Tron 5000, which emits low-frequency waves that enrage monsters all over the Kingdom, making them slightly tougher (and worth more experience).
• Tron Bonne from Mega Man Legends, though she's actually a human girl. Sort of.
• Gadgetron in the Ratchet & Clank series. Also, the Groovatron.
• Maimtron 9000, a clockwork Humongous Mecha in Sam & Max Season 2.
• Militron from Faces of Evil GO AND KILL!
• LittleBigPlanet 2 has the Negativitron and, at one point, "Positivitron beams".
  • The third game has a menu called the Organisertron.
• Carltron, Professor Ruffleberg's butler (and also the Final Boss) from Secret of Evermore.
• The Gravitron in VVVVVV.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Burning Crusade features a Fel Reaver named Negatron, obviously as a reference to Megatron.
  • In Wrath of the Lich King, the name of Ulduar boss Mimiron's Combining Mecha sounds close enough, V-07-TR-0N.
  • Cataclysm has the Omnitron Defense System, consisting of four Dark Iron Dwarf golems- Electron, Arcanotron, Magmatron, and Toxitron.
• Hearthstone has Annoy-o-tron and V-07-TR-0N as part of the Goblins vs Gnomes expansion. It also has the aforementioned Omnitron Defense System as bosses in Blackrock Mountain.
• Skeletron of Terraria though it's not actually mechanical. Skeletron Prime, on the other hand, is a definite example.
• Vectron for the Intellivision was inspired in gameplay and name by Tempest, which had vector graphics. (The "tron" suffix came to be because the game's Working Title, Vectrix, was too similar to the recently announced Vectrex.)
• The Psychotron, an "Interactive Mystery Movie" from the mid-1990s.
• Quazatron, the ZX Spectrum adaptation of Paradroid, and its sequel Magnetron.
• Newtron, a Chunsoft/Enix game for the PC-88, was named in reference to Isaac Newton.
• Super Paper Mario has Tiptron, a robotic Replacement Goldfish for Tippi.
• Sinistron, a horizontally scrolling shooter for the TurboGrafx-16.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has JudgeTron, a non-functioning robot in the GYAXA Robotics Lab, visible during chapter 5-5.
• Burger Shop has the food-making machine BurgerTron 2000.
• Played with in the Shin Megami Tensei series. The angel Metatron is almost always depicted as a shiny silver and gold android with wings.
• Zombot Tomorrow-Tron from Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time.
  • Also Disco-Tron 3000.
• In the expansion pack for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, one of Yuri's vehicles is called the Magnetron.
• One of the first Arcade Games released by Sega in Japan was a Pong clone titled Pong-Tron.
• Cytron, a Psygnosis game starring a robot which can be split into its two component parts, Cyt and Ron. (This makes almost as little logical sense as Jack Handey's etymology of "mankind" as the compound of the mystery words "mank" and "ind.")
• Axelay has a Giant Spider boss called the Arachnatron.
• There is a lot of automation machines across Thimbleweed Park that serve different purposes, and all of them end in "Tron": BloodTron, FingerTron, FaceTron, PrintTron... To top it off, they have the 3000 suffix after "Tron". Gadgeteer Genius Chuck made all of them.
• One of the early weapons in Warframe was a Corpus Sniper Rifle called Snipetron, but it was replaced with visually identical Lanka due to conflicting with Corpus' status as a producer of energy weapons^note You can still get a blueprint for it from the occasional Plague Star event, and Corpus occasionally offers parts to its improved Vandal variant as invasion payment.. There's also Detron, a sidearm plasma shotgun.

Web Animatron

• Spoofed in an episode of Teen Girl Squad, in which So-and-So preps for final exams by turning into a Voltron-esque robot named "Scantron" (actually the name of the machines used to scan and grade standardized tests).

Web Comictron

• Sluggy Freelance did an Affectionate Parody of the Five-Man Band Humongous Mecha anime called Gofotron.
• In xkcd #497, Ron Paul evolves into... TRON PAUL!

Web Originatron

• Moetron is a mish-mash of several Moe archetypes.
• SCP-1370 of the SCP Foundation once declared itself to be "ShivaTron, Despoiler of Mirth"... shortly before being knocked over by a potted plant.

Web Videotron

• Ken Block's various Cool Cars for his Gymkhana videos had a variety of names, like the Hoonicorn, the Hoonipigasus, and the Hoonitruck^note , all derived from the name of his Hoonigan Racing Division, but his Hoonitron was so named for being his very first to be an electric car.
• Video Game critic, Jon Jafari a.k.a. JonTron! (Audible Gleam)
• The Time Machine in Le Visiteur du Futur is called the Tempusfugitron, as revealed on its user manual.

Western Animatron

• Dexter's Laboratory
  • Dexter made a device in his laboratory he called the "Beard-A-Tron" to grow one for him.
  • Interestingly it never comes up in the TRON episode.
• One episode of Darkwing Duck has positrons and negatrons, described as "the basic building blocks of good and evil".
• The Spongebob Squarepants episode "SB-129" had Squidward traveling to the future and meeting a cyborg version of Spongebob named Spongetron.
• In the Pilot Movie of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Evil Emperor Zurg dubbed his Mind Control Ray powered by the LGM's Uni-Mind the Zurgatronic Mega Ray. When one of his minions misnamed the "Zurgarrific Ray", he corrected them, but said it wasn't a bad name and decided to file it away for a future project.
• The Transformers: In "The Autobot Run", the Decepticons build a device called the Transfixatron to trap the Autobots in their vehicle modes. Megatron, his name being a nod to this trope, also refers to the test subject of said device as a "guinea pigatron".
• In Rugrats, Angelica once imagined herself as Angelitron. Her doll Cynthia became Cynthiatron but remained just as defunct.
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: The Episode Wonderbolts Academy brings the Dizzitron, which makes you dizzy.
• In The Simpsons short "Space Patrol", Bart is Bartron, the evil robot from Mars gone berserk.
• Family Guy has Cripple-Tron, a result of Joe and other handicapped people combining to combat Peter.
• Clone High has Mr. Butlertron, a robot version of Mr. Belvedere (and originally named Mr. Belvetron).
• The Patrick Star Show:
  • Parodied with Pat-Tron's home planet being called Tron-tron. This applies not only to Pat-Tron himself, but his grandfather Grand-Tron and cousin Inga-Tron.
  • In "The Star Games", Patrick gets around the house for Game Shows on a motorized vehicle called Host-Tron in the credits.

Real-tron

• Generically, any large-size video screen in a stadium is referred to as a Jumbotron.
  • Sony used -tron before the (original, non generic) JumboTron, with their Trinitron aperture grille CRTs.
  • The University of Texas has one that is over 7,000 square feet. It's nicknamed the Godzillatron.
• ThinkGeek sells a toy called the Annoy-O-Tron. It's a roughly inch-square device you can magnetically affix to anything metallic or just hide in any given cranny, which randomly beeps every so often.
  • The latest version can also imitate a cricket, emit an "incoming IM sound," or operate on a frequency that only younger people can hear.
  • And then, there's the EvilTron, which is like the Annoy-O-Tron, except spooky!
• The Maltron ergonomic keyboard, named after one of its inventors, Lilian Malt. No, the other inventor's name isn't Ron.
  • Similarly the Emitron line of early (1930s/50s) television cameras were named after the manufacturer EMI.
• Not related to high-tech, but the Modern Hebrew word for circus is "ziratron," from "zira," ring (i.e. the shape), and "teatron," theater (from the Ancient Greek "theatron"). Also don't forget Metatron, an angel in Judaism. This stems from the original Greek root.
• The "Orgasmatron" is... a head massaging device.
• Mid 20th century inventors of particle accelerators loved this trope, giving us cyclotron, synchrotron, Synchrocyclotron and betatron. (Also gyrotron, but this isn't a particle accelerator.)
• The device inside your microwave oven that produces the microwaves is technically known as a Magnetron. Which is a name just begging to be used by a supervillain. If Danny Ocean qualifies, an actual magnetron was used by a supervillain in Ocean's Thirteen.
• Mellotron, a tape-based, pre-sampler keyboard instrument that was capable of reproducing realistic recorded sounds, especially strings, flutes and choirs. Popularized by the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues, King Crimson, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra, The Bee Gees, Yes, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, etc., etc. in The '60s and The '70s.
  • Likewise, its short-lived, effectively Vaporware successor, the Birotron.
• There's an amusement park ride called the Gravitron (which, despite the name, actually uses centrifugal force).
• Since The '80s, schools have used Scantron papers to streamline the grading process for multiple-choice exams.
• Vestron, a 1980s VHS distribution company, took the first half of its name from the Roman goddess Vesta.
• The Vectron is a family of modern electric locomotives made by Siemens[1].
• Logotron, a British publisher of educational software and, for a few years in the 1980s, computer games, was apparently named after its first product, an implementation of the programming language Logo for the BBC Micro.
• Robotron, the largest electronics manufacturer in East Germany.

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