Follow TV Tropes

Following

Title by Year

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_1eea7ea69_94ae_41db_ad76_1bc62279c5332.png

If a year is related to your work, then name it after that!

Usually, that's because the year is relevant in some way, such as being the year of the events it depicts, but it doesn't have to be.

This trope is for whenever a year is mentioned in a title.

Sub-Trope of Title by Number.

If the year in the title is the year of release, or plays on it, then it's the Sub-Trope, Annual Title.

It may occur in tandem with One-Word Title, for titles that are just numbers that are also years and are written in numerical form, like 1776. And also a lot of overlap with Event Title because a year is a span of time for things to happen in.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 

    Comedy 
  • Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner performed an updated version of their "2000 Year Old Man" routine, titled "The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000" (performed in 1997).

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • The America 2040 series of books, written from 1986 to 1988. Oddly enough, the title is a bit of a misnomer; most of the series takes place in space, and only a small portion of the first book is set in 2040.
  • Isaac Asimov's "2430 A.D.": The title is the year of the setting, when all of the world's animal biomass is predicted to consist entirely of human beings.
  • Roberto Bolaño's 2666 could possibly be a year, although it is not mentioned in the novel itself. It is mentioned in one of his other novels, however.
  • Eric Flint's 1632 books.
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four. In-Universe, the protagonist thinks this is probably the current year, but due to the totalitarian state he lives and the nature in which it controls all information, he can't be sure. Out-of-universe, George Orwell planned to name it 1948 (the book was released a year after he finished it, in 1949), but he just flipped the last two digits to indicate a 20 Minutes into the Future timeframe.
  • The Space Odyssey Series: Multiple, following an Idiosyncratic Episode Naming pattern of "[Year]: [Phrase with "Odyssey" in it.]":
    • 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    • 2010: Odyssey Two.
    • 2061: Odyssey Three.
    • 3001: The Final Odyssey.
  • David Peace's "Red Riding Quartet" series of novels, adapted as the TV series Red Riding, are titled Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three. A later stand-alone novel by him was called GB84.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Our Miss Brooks has "Christmas Show 1952"
  • 2057 is a speculative docudrama that tried to predict technological advances that would occur by that year.
  • American Horror Story: 1984, the ninth season of American Horror Story, primarily takes place in...wait for it...1984! It pays homage to the slasher genre popular in the '80s.
  • The Arrowverse has a few episodes titled after the years in which they are (at least partially) set:
  • Beyond Tomorrow: This is an Australian science and invention documentary series based on The BBC's Tomorrow's World. Originally titled Towards 2000, the show got a make-over in 1985 and the producers decided 2000 was too close to be aiming "towards" any more. They changed it to Beyond 2000, but changed names again, to Beyond Tomorrow, since "Beyond 2000" now also seems old-fashioned...
  • The German spy thriller series Deutschland 83, set in 1983, and its sequel series Deutschland '86 and Deutschland '89.
  • Heroes episode "1961".
  • The season one finale of Halt and Catch Fire was simply titled "1984" partly in reference to Apple's "1984" ad for the Macintosh.
  • Laverne & Shirley: There's an episode called "New Year's Eve 1960".
  • The HBO Latin America original series Magnifica 70.
  • Space: Above and Beyond was retitled Space 2063 (after the year it kicks off) in several European countries.
  • Stargate SG-1: Several episodes used a year as the title:
  • Total Recall 2070
  • When Match Game was revived in 1973, it was revived as Match Game '73, with the year updated every New Year's Eve through the end of the CBS run in 1979. This did not apply to the concurrent syndicated run; since there was no guarantee when those episodes would air, or even if they'd air in the right order, adding the year would have been pointless.
  • The Night Gallery episode "Class of '99", featuring Vincent Price in a bizarre dystopia 20 Minutes into the Future.

    Music 

    Software 
  • Microsoft
    • Microsoft Windows: Used for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000. Averted with subsequent releases of desktop Windows, but the server versions continue to play it straight.
    • Almost all versions of Microsoft Office and its component applications.
    • Used for most versions of Visual Studio as well, save for the one released in 1998, which was instead named Visual Studio 6.0.
  • Ubuntu names its releases using the format {last 2 digits of year}.{2 digit month}. For instance, the version released in April 2022 is 22.04.

    Tabletop Games 
  • 2300 AD, AKA Traveller 2300. The 2300 is the century in which the game takes place.
  • Twilight: 2000, a game from the 1980s set in the war-torn future year 2000.
  • Warhammer 40,000 goes twenty times better than the standard, although the current timeline is in or near the 42nd millennium.

    Theatre 

    Toys 
  • G.I. Joe has a subteam called "Battle Force 2000", whose purpose is to "field-test experimental equipment under battlefield conditions". The figures and vehicles were introduced in 1987 and stayed in production for a few years, then were reissued as fan club exclusives in 2017.
  • LEGO Dino Attack (which was released in 2005 and is set in 2010) has the Market-Based Title Dino 2010 in Europe.

    Video Games 

    Visual Novels 

    Web Original 
  • 17776 is set almost 16,000 years in the future; its sequel, 20020, also qualifies.

    Western Animation 
  • Futurama has two episodes referencing the year they take place.
    • "Space Pilot 3000": The pilot episode, showing how Fry was cryogenically frozen as midnight strikes on New Year's Eve 1999 and wakes up almost 1000 years later in New Year's Eve 2999. By the end of the episode, it's New Year's Day 3000.
    • "Decision 3012" takes place during the 3012 Presidential election.
  • Parodied in Gravity Falls, when Soos finds an old video game made by "Year 2000 Electronics", Soos doesn't realize that the year 2000 was more than a decade before his own time.
    Soos: Man, I can't wait for the year 2000!
  • Phantom 2040, futuristic adaptation of The Phantom.
  • Rugrats: An episode called "Reptar 2010", named for the Show Within a Show that's named for its future setting of 2010.
  • Sealab 2020 by Hanna-Barbera Studios, about a marine research facility on the ocean floor. 2020 is said by the Opening Narration as the year it's set in:
    This is the year two thousand and twenty.
  • Sealab 2021 by Cartoon Network Studios is a parody of Sealab 2020, wherein an undersea community has Gone Horribly Wrong, implied that 2021 is the year it's set in.
  • South Park parodied and mocked the trope in season 4 by having the first four episodes end with 2000 for no reason other than to mock its overuse at the time.

Top