Visual Title Drop

The Title Drop in fictional works occurs when the title of a work is spoken as a line of dialogue, usually to emphasize a theme of the work or to draw attention to something as important.

However, the title of the work isn't always spoken out loud. The title may be represented visually, in a particular shot composition or by placing a particular object in the frame. This is most often used in the same way, to draw attention to something important or to emphasize a theme.

Subtrope of Title Drop. May overlap with Finale Title Drop. See also Diegetic Interface, Justified Title, In-Scene Title Text, Metafictional Title, and Visual Pun. Super-trope to Self-Referential Track Placement.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Bruno says goodbye to Giorno and floats away to the heavens enveloped in a golden wind.

Fan Works

• Remnant Inferis: DOOM: What happens in the chapter Kneecapped With A High-Powered Energy Pistol? The Slayer kneecaps Adam Taurus with his high-powered energy pistol.

Films — Animation

• In Turning Red, the title is physically present in the Title Sequence as big red block letters. Mei leans on it causing the title to fall down and creating the Stealth Pun of a literal Title Drop.

Films — Live-Action

• The first scene of $ (that's the name of the movie!) has a crane hauling around a large dollar sign of the sort one might put on the side of a building.
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed: Comes near the end, when the camera catches a report written by one of the psychiatrists who treated Barbara Goldin, and how Barbara discussed "all the beauty and the bloodshed" when she was looking at a Rorshach inkblot.
• The Artist includes a brief shot of a newspaper article in which George Valentin is quoted as saying "I'm an artist."
• Apocalypse Now has a shot of a wall at Kurtz's compound with the words "OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW" scrawled on it.
• In Bird Box at the end of the movie they show that Mallory carries a box of birds so she can know when the monsters, creatures or mysterious force that causes suicides is near.
• Boogie Nights opens with a shot on a billboard advertising a movie called "Boogie Nights".
• Cat's Eye opens with a tight closeup of — a cat's eye.
• The Cranes Are Flying has a shot of cranes flying over Moscow at the beginning of World War II and at the end, symbolizing the heroine's happiness before the war ruined everything, and how she's still carrying on after it ends.
• The Dark Knight Rises ends with Blake discovering the Batcave and stepping on a rising platform, which fits if the implication is that Robin will become the new Batman.
• In Der Schuh des Manitu (The Shoe of Manitu) when the characters reach the eponymous mountain it literally is a giant shoe made of rock.
• Dodsworth opens with Sam Dodsworth standing against a window, with his name visible through the window on the wall of the auto factory he owns. Dodsworth has sold his business and he doesn't feel good about it.
• Footsteps in the Dark opens with the opening title onscreen as the camera shows...footsteps in the dark, namely the feet of two people walking across a lawn at night.
• Goodbye Lenin is about the fall of Communism and the ways it affected people in East Germany. Late in the film one character looks out the window and sees a statue of Lenin being taken away by a crane. Lenin is holding his hand up to make a dramatic gesture, but the statue is actually tilted towards the woman so it looks as if he's waving goodbye.
• The Harder They Fall: Ends with Eddie the sportswriter sitting at his typewriter and starting to write his expose on corrupt boxing, titled "THE HARDER THEY FALL".
• Heureux Anniversaire: The wife has gone to the trouble of printing out a little card that says "Heureux Anniversaire" that she puts in the middle of the dinner table.
• Illustrious Corpses: The opening scene shows a man walking through Palermo's creepiest tourist attraction, the Catacombs of the Capuchins, where dozens of mummies of Palermo's upper crust have been preserved and put on public display.
• The title for Inside Llewyn Davis appears on an album cover in the middle of the film.
• In Knife in the Water Andrzej hurls the young man's switchblade off the boat and into the lake during their final violent confrontation.
• The title "Lawrence of Arabia" is never spoken in the film but it appears as a headline in the newspaper towards the end.
• The penultimate scene of Layer Cake is the main character having dinner with his friends and deciding he doesn't want to be part of organized crime anymore. Guess what they're eating.
• In Lilya 4-ever, the heroine and her best friend carve the movie's title into a bench.
• Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels does in fact feature a shot of the two gun barrels, smoking.
• Manhattan has its title show up as neon sign on a building, as opposed to Woody Allen's usual choice of white Windsor text on a black background.
• The Naked Spur opens with a Feet-First Introduction of James Stewart's spurs. He's a bounty hunter after an escaped murderer.
• The Story of a Cheat: The "Cheat" writes "Le Roman d'un tricheur" ("The Story of a Cheat" in French) in his composition book as the title of his memoir.
• Both Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland Dr., two film noirs about the movie business set in Los Angeles, open with shots of street signs of the streets that form the titles.
• The only reference to the title of 10 Cloverfield Lane is a mailbox address coming into view in the final minutes of the movie.
• The opening shot of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri shows the titular three billboards.
• Tore's virgin daughter is raped and murdered in The Virgin Spring. At the end, after he pledges to build a church at the site of her murder, he picks up her body and a spring bursts forth from the ground.
• The title of Zero Dark Thirty is never uttered in the film but during the climactic raid, the camera catches a shot of a clock showing the time as 0030, that is, 12:30 a.m.
• Because of their storybook-esque atmosphere, three of Wes Anderson's films (The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel) have their titles shown on the covers of library books.

Live-Action TV

• 7 Yüz:
  • The opening of "Refakatçiler" reveals that "7 Yüz" is the name of the apartment complex that appears in every episode of the anthology.
  • The draft Pınar delivers to Eray at the end of their episode is titled "Hayatın Musikisi", itself a reference to Oşa's earlier comment.
• No one actually says the words Black Mirror aloud in any of the standalone episodes — however, since the series' Central Theme is about how technology affects humanity, episodes will often have characters looking into screens to emphasize this.
  Charlie Brooker: The 'black mirror' of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone.
• Columbo episode "Playback" has a shot of the high-tech home surveillance system the bad guy uses in a murder, with a label saying "PLAYBACK" visible on a control panel.
• CSI: NY:
  • "Cavallino Rampante": The title is Italian for "prancing horse" or "rearing horse" and refers to Ferrari's emblem which is shown on several stolen vehicles.
  • "Nine Thirteen": The street number of the building where the victim-of-the-week is found, 913, is shown attached to its facade as team members discuss some other odd things which have occurred at that location.
• How I Met Your Mother has chock full of these when it comes to episode titles. Notable ones include:
  • "Purple Giraffe", has Ted going to Robin, who was reporting about a child who got stuck inside a claw machine when he tries to get the toy.
    Ted: Did they let him keep the purple giraffe?
    Robin: Yeah, they let him keep all the toys, he was in there a long time and little kids have small bladders.
  • ''Sandcastles in the Sand", has Robin playing the eponymous music video from her Teen Idol days, with her in a beach setting with the occasional shots of sandcastles.
  • "The Naked Man", is a guy named Mitch, who shares his secret move to the gang in order for their partner to have sex with them. It's effective 2 out of 3 times.
  • "The Leap" has the gang leaping into the next building as a symbolism of them taking a leap of faith.
  • "P.S. I Love You", has Robin with another music video, this time with her as "Robin Daggers", singing a stalker song.
  • One of the series finale's final shots has Ted starting a conversation with The Mother, after lightly arguing over the yellow umbrella. The alternative ending drops it even further:
    Future Ted: See? Easy. And that kids, is how I met your mother.
• It's Okay to Not Be Okay: "It's OK to not be OK" is is the mission statement of the OK Psychiactric Hospital, as seen on a poster on the wall in episode 3. (The central theme of the series is how people with mental illness adjust to the world.)
• L.A. Law opened with a car trunk slamming, showing the (vanity) license plate bearing the title of the show.
• Mr. Robot is also the name of an in-universe computer repair shop. For added emphasis, the shop’s logo is set in the same font as the title card. The character nicknamed Mr. Robot always wears a jacket with the logo.
  • In season 1, episode 9, the repair shop’s signage is actually used as the title card: the camera pans to make the sign fill the frame, and the usual "Created by Sam Esmail" note pops up under it.
• Russian Doll has at a certain point Nadia finding a Russian nesting doll in Ruth's home.
• Sandglass: President Yoon, a a very shady, mobbed-up casino owner and father to female lead Yoon Hye-rin, keeps an hourglass ("sandglass") on his desk. He tends to flip it around when he is in a contemplative mood, or when giving orders.
• The episode "Chapter 4: Will the Wise" of Stranger Things gets its title from a drawing◊ in Will's bedroom titled "Will the Wise".
• The Veronica Mars episode "Not Pictured" combines this with a Wham Shot. After Veronica runs out of leads in her investigation of the bus crash, she realizes that the perpetrator was likely a member of Goodman's softball team who he molested. So, she goes to find a picture of the team and finds an unassuming person she hasn't looked into, then notices the caption "Not Pictured: Cassidy Casablancas." Suddenly, she realizes he was behind everything.
• Wallander episode "The Dogs of Riga" has Wallander encountering some aggressive barking police dogs.
• The X-Files episode "Home" begins (after a cold open) with a shot of home plate on an impromptu baseball field, followed by the Location Title: Home, Pennsylvania.

Music

• Paul's Boutique by Beastie Boys has as its cover a picture of some shops on the street, one of which has a sign that says "Paul's Boutique".
• Weezer album Hurley, which features on the front cover only a picture of Hurley from Lost.
• On the album cover Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek, there's a crude drawing of an angel on the ceiling of the train that Caroline is crawling through, in reference to the song on the album titled "Crude Drawing of an Angel."

Theatre

• Cactus Flower, Act Two, Scene Five:
  Doctor's office, the next morning. Stage is empty. There is one interesting change in the office. A special spot is directed at Stephanie's cactus plant which has blossomed! There is a good-sized, lovely flower. After a moment the rest of the lights come up.

Video Games

• Done quite literally in Bravely Second during the Final Boss. When Providence takes control of the game, you are taken back to the title screen, where Providence tries to force you to delete all of your save data. Yu intervenes, cutting the screen apart and revealing the title once more, and takes you back to the final battle.
• Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: Aside from the Character Title, the game's core concept involves Crash (and Coco) jumping into different time periods with the Time Twister, i.e being "warped" away.
• After the narrator tells the story of Sparda, the first Devil May Cry starts with a blonde girl falling from the sky at night and later walking into "Devil May Cry", the devil-hunting company of Dante, in the only shining sign of the town with that name (which is also the logo of the game).
• Devil May Cry 5: The opening sequence (which is also played in Mission 1) ends with the camera slowly panning over the "Devil May Cry" neon sign on Nico's van along with a small number "5" on the upper-right corner. After a few seconds, the screen transitions into the stylized title art for Devil May Cry 5.
• Lumino City is displayed in bright neon lights at the gate of the titular city.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has a gameplay one in the form of the Skyward Strike. When executing this move, Link will Stab the Sky and charge up power into his sword, allowing him to launch up Sword Beams and other techniques. It's also in the box art for the game.

Webcomics

• There are lots of phones in Broken Telephone, but a broken phone takes until the last chapter to appear, where the cell Lao tries to use to call for help is broken.
• A nonverbal one near the end of Blue Moon Blossom, when the moonlight-colored rabbit spirit releases the last of its power, dark blue flowers bloom where it crumbles away.
• The Makeup Remover: In the final challenge of Face Off Cinderella, Yeseul and Heewon's performances have to feature a product from the Cinderella line. They both use clear face cleansing wipes, also known as makeup remover.

Western Animation

• In The Flintstones (original 1960s series), the title of the show is first seen on the mailbox, during the opening credits.
• The first Gravity Falls episode opens with a closeup on a billboard reading "Welcome to Gravity Falls". This billboard also occasionally shows up in other episodes as well.
• The last scene of The Simpsons episode "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind", shows a party boat floating away into the moonshine.
• Bob's Burgers is the name of the show and the name of the restaurant. So it's natural to use the front of said restaurant in the opening.

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