When naming anything —a place, a weapon, a title, a society, anything— just add a prepositional phrase to get instant AWESOME! This is most commonly seen when being used to beef up the titles of movies and books. The most frequently used preposition for this is "of (put noun of choice here)", but "with" and "for" are also usable. Often times, when this is used, the thing being upgraded wouldn't be half as cool or interesting without their handy-dandy prepositional phrases.
A Super-Trope to:
- The X of Y
- The Legend of X
- The Noun and the Noun
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase
- In Which a Trope Is Described
- Recycled with a Gimmick
- Revenge of the Sequel
Tropes involving these phrases include:
Compare Prepositions Are Not to End Sentences With. Can often be A Good Name for a Rock Band, even if that trope name's not an example of one.
Examples:
- Most of these are likely to be introduced by translations, rather than being original to the Japanese versions, simply because there is almost always another possible word order the translation could use, but didn't.
- The Familiar of Zero
- There's a reason fans of Naruto tend to prefer the subtitles' name for the last battle between Naruto and Sasuke in Part One over the dub's name. Compare the Valley of the End to the Final Valley and make your own decision.
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes
- Highschool of the Dead though this probably isn't from translation as its a reference to Dawn Of The Dead and the rest of the movies in that series.
- Horus: Prince of the Sun
- The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots
- The Batman of Arkham
- Death of the Family
- The Death of Superman
- The Final Days of Superman
- The Killers of Krypton
- Last Daughter of Krypton
- Throne of Atlantis
- Red Daughter of Krypton
- The Trial of the Flash
- The Books of Magic
- Wrath of the First Lantern
- "The Death of Koschei the Deathless"
- "The Feather of Finist the Falcon"
- "The Homunculus of Maimonides"
- "The Lord of the Winds"
- Jeft seems to think so in With Strings Attached, according to the names he gave various places and people in his handmade world Damaeren: the Plains of Death, the Brothers of Doom, the Forest of Screams, and so forth.
- The title of the Total Drama story, Courtney and the Violin of Despair throws in The X of Y for good measure and adds coolness by giving billing to the story's Artifact of Death.
- The Legend of Total Drama Island. Knowing that the story is a legend is all very well, but the coolness-adding prepositional phrase reveals what the legend pertains to.
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- Every title in the Indiana Jones series of movies has one of these. Except The Last Crusade, but it still fits Character Name and the Noun Phrase.
- Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith
- The Adventures of Milo and Otis
- Planet of the Apes
- 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Enemy at the Gates
- Once Upon a Time in the West
- Once Upon a Time in America
- Once Upon a Time in Mexico
- Road to Perdition
- Children of the Corn
- Village of the Damned (1960)
- Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985)
- Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
- The Chronicles of Narnia and Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
- Harry Potter books 2 through 5 combine The X of Y and Character Name and the Noun Phrase
- One of the rare double prepositional phrase examples: The Curious Incident (#1) of the Dog (#2) in the Night-Time (chosen by Literary Allusion Title, though).
- And another: Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
- Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.
- The titles of most Sherlock Holmes stories fit this trope (e.g. A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, etc.), not to mention the short story collections: The Adventures of, The Casebook of, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
- The Lord of the Rings — and bonus volume titles The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King
- The Chronicles of Prydain has this in its series title; additionally, the novels The Book of Three and The Castle of Llyr have The X of Y going for them.
- Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and other Fear and Loathing books.
- A Song of Ice and Fire, definitely. As well as the titles of all its seven volumes.
- Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal.
- Erich Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
- Bill Nye the Science Guy uses this all the time to describes his gadgets. For example, the Huge Magnetic Pendulum- OF SCIENCE! * fanfare*
- Blood Over Water
- Doctor Who has been particularly fond of this when it comes to naming its episodes, particularly the "[Blank] of [Blank]" variety. "Day of the Daleks", "Reign of Terror", "Forest of the Dead", to name but a few. Used less in the new episodes, but pick any story arc from the classic show and there's a very good chance the title contains the word "of".
- House of the Dragon
- Land Of The Lost
- Leave It to Beaver
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
- Lost in Space
- Married... with Children
- Malcolm in the Middle
- Another double phrase example: Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
- Italian symphonic metal band Rhapsody of Fire, though they changed their name from "Rhapsody" because of a trademark dispute. Still ... "The power of the Dragonflame will burn brighter than ever before!"
- Same goes for Nanowar, who became "Nanowar of Steel" due to trademark shenanigans.
- A few of the songs from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra fit this trope, like "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve," "Queen of the Winter Night," and "The Dreams of Candlelight."
- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot.
- "The Battle of Evermore" by Led Zeppelin.
- "The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria" by Blue Öyster Cult.
- The albums The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, and The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
- The albums Selling England by the Pound, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and A Trick of the Tail by Genesis.
- "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits.
- "Day of the Baphomets" and "Drunkship of Lanterns" by The Mars Volta.
- Our very own stick of off-topic thumping.
- "The [Somewhat-Generic-Description-of-Device] Of Science!" from Bill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock!, just like the TV show it was based off.
- Phineas and Ferb: The Perry the Platypus theme song describes Perry with "He's a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal OF ACTION!"
- The Brak Show: While showing Brak around his home, Mr. Thundercleese points out "a light switch... OF TOTAL DEVASTATION!"
