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"Cartz"?! You can't be xerioux...

"Reactions resulted in the product being coined 'Krazy Glue'; a product so crazy that it requires intentional misspelling."

Certain letterz of the English alphabetz are just "kewler" than others. As such, many peoplez will intentionalli mizzpel wordz by xubztituting ðese letterz, in the hopez that this will draw moar attentshun from young peoplez and make the rezult look moar youþ-oriented.

Whether this actually works on the youth crowd is debatable; this is a pop-culture phenomenon that comes and goes like many other fads, sometimes losing its appeal almost immediately out of the gate.

Although, when it is used, it is often Played for Laughs to point out marketing groups that fail to understand an audience or, more often, weak attempts to seem hip to the younger generation.

The most common substitutionz are:

  • "K" in place of a hard "C" (like in Mortal Kombat and Korn). This is often used to give characters that "medieval," "Germanic," or "Soviet Russia" tinge. In actual German, however, spelling things with "C" instead of K (or Z, often seen in circuses spelling themselves "Circus" instead of the dictionary's "Zirkus") would have the exact same effect, or make words look old-fashioned (because they were written with C in former times).
    • The reversal, substituting "C" instead of "K," is also very common in the Hip Hop community. It is also used in languages that don't use the letter C for a "k" sound, such as German.
    • Replacing "ck" with "cc" (for example, "thicc" instead of "thick") is also seen, especially in internet memes. This originates from the Crips gang, who dislike using the letters "CK" as it can stand for "Crip Killer".
    • Substituting "ck" for hard "c," especially at ends of words, also has a Phantasy Spelling flavour.
  • "X" substituted for "Ex," especially in the word "Extreme," or just slapped onto a name for no apparent reason. This is supposed to give off a scientific, futuristic and/or technological tone to the word.
    • Also, "ix" substituted for "ics" or "icks" at the end of a word, to the same effect.
  • "Y" instead of "I" in the myddle of a word, also tends to give off a sciencey and/or "ye olde" medieval tone to the word.
  • "I" instead of "Y" at the veri end of a word. This makes the word look like it's of Latin and/or Asian origin.
  • "Z" instead of "S" at the end of plural wordz, to give off an African, German, Polish, or scientific tone.
  • "Q" in place of a "K" sound at the end of a word, adds a Middle Eastern/Arabian and/or Chinese flavour, as well as making the word look royal or magical.
  • "A" substituted for "er" or "or" at the end of a word.
  • "DGE" (e.g. bridge) substituted for "J" (brij) tends to give off a rebellious "punk" tone, especially since the letter J is well-known for its infrequency, being the third least-common letter.
  • "F" replaced with "PH" also tends to come off as rebellious and punk-esque.
  • Spelling "cool" as "kool" or "kewl."
  • Anything with Added Alliterative Appeal, such as "Kool Kids."

Less-common variantz include:

Interestingly, this trope tends to favor letters constructed primarily from hard straight lines and sharp angles — "X," "K," "Z," so on. These letters are also worth many points in English-language Scrabble, though examples of this trope would probably not be considered legal words.

This can also extend to acronyms/abbreviations/initializations to make them more memorable, even if the chosen letter isn't, technically, the one in the original word. "X-Tensible Markup Language," for example, is easier to remember by its initialization of "XML" than "EML."

"Leet speak" (or "1337") can be considered this trope played to extremes, where almost every normal letter is replaced by some form of "extreme" counterpart, which to those unfamiliar with the meme can vary anywhere from "slightly different" to "utterly unreadable," depending on how "hardcore" the user wishes to appear; it's believed that leet originated from the crackingnote  community, which may explain why it's never spread beyond circles of computer geeks, online gamers, and Homestucks.

"Text speak," originating in IM and a popular shorthand for use with mobile phones, is similar to "1337," though the hardcore consider it a different language.

One possible justification for Xtreme Kool Letterz in Real Life is that, at least in the United States, product names that are generic or that are descriptive without acquired secondary meaning cannot be trademarked as-is, but deliberate misspellings can.

The overall trope is Older Than Television, and possibly Older Than Radio, with deliberate misspellings being used for humor at least since the Victorian era. (And back then, of course, semiliteracy was such a problem that many otherwise articulate people unintentionally misspelled words, making this trope not only comical but also satirical.) In academic study of English, this is known as "sensational spelling."

Xtreme Kool Letterz shows up around this wiki as well, with titles such as Friends of Really Kool Sobriquet, and yes, this article.

Compare The Backwards Я, Double X, Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut, Inherited Illiteracy Title, Letters 2 Numbers, Lucky Charms Title, Myspeld Rökband, Phantasy Spelling, Shoehorned Acronym, "X" Makes Anything Cool (for "X" used by itself), Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, and more from the Text Tropes index.

See also A Villain Named "Z__rg", My Nayme Is, Names to Run Away from Really Fast (K ones are its own kind), Totally Radical (one result of marketers trying this), and more of the Naming Conventions index.


Xamplez:

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    Advertyzing 
  • Early advertising example: A 1950s print ad for Heinz baked beans in the UK included the caption, "Beanz Buildz Kidz!" And that wasn't even their main slogan... it was "Beanz Meanz Heinz".note 
  • The soda MDX, which stands for Mountain Dew Xtreme.
  • Bratz (doll lines, animated series, DVDs) totally qualifies. Not just with the name, but the name of every single doll line they have. Doll names with a short I also have a double II for no apparent reason. Once they got to stringing together names like "Bratz Babyz Ponyz," you get to wondering how much longer until they trademarked the letter z and we'd all have to start paying them to be able to use it.
    • One Bratz book is actually named Xtreme Kool.
  • Sprint's new WiMax service will be called "XOHM" (pronounced Zoam). ''"It's an invented term that went through extensive market research and tested well with consumer and business audiences," said Sprint's John Polivka. "There is a certain 'cool factor' with the X in it..." (source)
  • Sheetz convenience stores have a fast food counter that sells "Bagelz" and "Wrapz".
  • Intel's Xeon processors — oddly enough, not really targeted at the "extreme" gaming crowd (they're mostly designed for use in commercial servers, where their support for multiple sockets, multiple CPUs per socket, and error-correcting memory are more useful).
  • The Kia Forte is available as a four door sedan, or as a two door Koup.
  • There are "freeline skates" with the brand name Xliders as well as a pumped-up Razor scooter called a Xootr.
  • As of 2008, the packaging and advertising for Goldfish snack crackers features four anthropomorphic crackers as mascots. One of these cracker characters is named Xtreme.
  • According to Wikipedia, Kool-Aid (originally Kool-Ade) was first sold in 1927, and Kool cigarettes were first sold in 1933.
  • The banners on this page right now, which, many thanks to Ads by Google, are currently "XTREME Ringtones," "Xtreme Machine Wheels" and "Xtreme Diesel Performance."
  • Many things marketed to kids seem to use this trope, probably in an attempt to make their product seem "cooler".
    • Kidz Bop probably falls under this category
    • "1-877-Kars-4-Kids. K-A-R-S, Kars-4-Kids..."
  • There used to be a cider called "Xider". It may intend to evoke an American pronunciation of "exciter," but everyone around Sweden just said "kseeder". Then regulations changed and the stuff could no longer be legally referred to as a cider, so they changed the name to "Xide," whatever that's supposed to mean.
  • Trix, and Kix.
  • The next big global compact sedan from General Motors is sold in Europe, and will be sold in the U.S., as the Chevrolet Cruze.
  • PlayStation Network has a sort of video-magazine entitled Qore (Core).
  • Even fairly mundane things like public transport follow this trope. The transport manufacturer Bombardier is particularly fond.
    • They have the "Flexity" tram and the "CX-100" people mover as two examples. Just to really make sure they keep this trope, most of their vehicles run on FLEXX bogies (or trucks). The fact one version is the FLEXX Eco is a trope in itself, as these days it's cool to be "eco".
    • Also from Bombardier, the TRAXX locomotive. "Stands for Transnational Railway Applications with eXtreme fleXibility." TRAEF would not have sounded anything like as good.
  • UNIX got its name when Unics became a Non-Indicative Name by no longer being a uniplexing (i.e. one thing at a time) system.
  • Although it wasn't named this way for kewlness, Cheez Whiznote  definitely fits the spelling pattern.
  • Pringles "Xtreme" flavors.
  • DiGiorno Pizza & Wyngz. They actually couldn't legally call them "wings" due to the absence of any actual wing meat.
  • The "ambient electronic device" Karotz, successor to the Nabaztag.
  • Springfield Armory Company imports the Croatian-made HS 2000 handgun into the U.S. and sells it under the name "Springfield XD". The "XD" is short for "eXtreme Duty".
  • The fast food chain Zaxby's replaces "S" with "Z" at the end of words, bar their chicken wings, because "wingz" implies they aren't actually chicken wings. Appetizers is turned into Zappetizers, as well.
  • King Kullen, one of the first self-service markets. Buy one and get Added Alliterative Appeal for free. (Or the other way round.)
  • As a general thing, commercial products are more likely to use this trope because the more unique a name, the easier it is to trademark. Notice all the Transformers toys, for example, that bear either completely made-up names (Optimus Prime, Megatron) or names following this trope (Spittor, Demolishor, etc).
  • In 1990, Pfister was billed as "The pfabulous pfaucet with the pfunny name."
  • Irn-Bru, Scotland's most popular carbonated drink and hangover remedy, is actually an involuntary example. The Advertising Standards Agency wanted Barr Soft Drinks to change the name from "Iron Brew" lest it mislead people into trying to use it as an over-the-counter anaemia remedy, but Barr had based their campaign on the fact the new drink was a similar colour to iron ore and gone all-out with the Forging Scene imagery for the TV spots etc, and didn't want to have to start over from scratch. A compromise was reached by spelling the name phonetically, and the rest is history. The fact that it looks vaguely Gaelic doesn't hurt either.
  • In the spring of 2019, Bosch power tools ran adverts on YouTube declaring that something X-TRA REVOLUTIONARY was coming. The X was red, the rest was black.
  • The Chick-fil-A Cows are all over this trope. In-universe, they communicate to humans by wearing and waving around badly spelled signs.
  • Funyuns chips, a portmanteau of "fun" and "onions".
  • Kellogg's Froot Loops cereal.

    Animez & Mangaz 
  • The official English translation of the Bokurano manga explains the name "Zearth" by invoking this trope (justified, in that it's a bunch of kids piloting the robot). It is worth noting that the real reason for the name Zearth is that it's the Japanese pronunciation of "The Earth" rendered back into different English characters. On the one hand, even in a direct translation, the kids did go with "Zearth" instead of "The Earth" because it sounded cooler. On the other, has anyone ever actually said "the z makes it more extreme!" with a straight face? In the world of Bokurano they might.
  • Transformers examples:
    • "Lazorbeak" from Beast Wars. (The Generation 1 character is always spelled "Laserbeak," as are the Cybertron and Animated ones. Expect a lot of people to get it wrong anyways.)
  • Ikki Tousen's fourth season, Xtreme Xecutor
  • Digimon examples:
  • The anime Texhnolyze.
  • The Japanese title of Day Break Illusion (幻影ヲ駆ケル太陽) uses katakana where hiragana would normally be used.
  • Symphogear G: Kirika's attack names are spelled in a bizarre mishmash of randomly-sized Japanese and English characters, written in neon-colored "violent" calligraphy and accompanied by the sound of a witch's cackling. This is fitting for her nature as a Cloudcuckoolander and a massive chuuni.
  • Discussed by Osaka in Azumanga Daioh, in reference to fictional commercial for hemorrhoid treatment which wrote "痔" as "ぢ" rather than the grammatically correct "じ".
  • A type of Doppelgänger spirit in Ayakashi Triangle is called an "omokage". It's pronounced like the Japanese word for "image/vestige", but instead of the standard kanji spelling ("面影" or "俤"), it's written as either an Alternate Character Reading of "分身" (normally read as "bunshin", meaning "other self") or just in katakana.
  • The Japanese title of Mitama Security: Spirit Busters uses the kanji "rei" (霊, "spirit") to replace the "ri" in "Security", going hand in hand with the series' Running Gag of inserting "rei" puns into sentences.

    Azian Anym@tion 
  • The Motu Patlu episode "Ants Land" is referred to as "Antz Land" in the title of its official YouTube upload.

    Board Gamez 
  • The title of Dungeon Petz. Kind of odd, considering that it's a pretty complex and math-heavy Euro Game with no "x-treme" elements.

    Kard Gamez 
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! card game:
    • It includes a card called Mind Haxorz in the set Rise of Destiny. Really! It's fun to mention that the original Japanese name of the card is merely "Mind Hack".
    • We also have Meklord Astro Mekanikle. Deserves special mentions because in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds it's the trump card used by the villain.
    • Invoked with the Xyz monsters introduced in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL and the card sets. It's pronounced "ik-seez" and is a reference to spacial coordinatesnote . Humorously, up to the point of their announcement in the TCG, fansubbers of the show never caught that meaning, assuming it was "Exceed" because it was the closest-sounding actual word.
    • "Kozmo" cards.
  • Magic: The Gathering's Phyrexia, with names like Gix, Xantcha, and Skithiryx. As Tom LaPille puts it, "Are you more intimidated by the thought of the dread reign of Firecsia or Phyrexia?"

    Komix Bookz 
  • X-Men examples:
    • X-Treme X-Men. Generally considered a really silly title, one online reviewer referred to the first three issues of the original 2001 series as That Claremont Book. Ironically, when, after 46 issues, the book was canceled and the writer moved the characters to Uncanny X-Men, the team was renamed "X-Treme Sanctions Executive." Marvel still reused the title for a 2012 series by a different creative team, and again for another Claremont series in 2022.
      • "Storm claims it was an inside joke, and blames Gambit. Gambit blames Rogue. I blame society." — Cable, X-Men: Future History - The Messiah War Sourcebook.
      • It helps that the initials XSE also match the team Bishop was part of in his Bad Future: the Xavier Security Enforcers. The name really exists so Bishop can go "Oh, Crap!, the XSE! It's coming true after all."
    • Arguably, the X-Men themselves. In the first issue, Professor Xavier notes that it stands for "X-tra power!" Fortunately, it's been retconned to stand for both Xavier's name and the X Factor, the unknown genetic factor that gives mutants their powers.
    • And then there's Professor Xavier's name:
      • There's all the adaptations that pronounce it "Professor Ex-avier," just to make it clear to stupid viewers that there's an X in his name. "Xavier" is an archaic Spanish spelling of "Javier," so it should be "Khavi-air" (or "Zavvy-ay", in French — or if you're very forgiving of pronounciation errors, "Zay-vier" will do. That said, "Ex-avier" is a common (mis)pronunciation of "Xavier" in Real Life, though).
      • The Spanish dubs fortunately make a point of pronouncing his name "Khavi-air".
      • There is a comic where Xavier admits that technically it isn't pronounced like that — he just prefers it.
    • And the X-Men spin-off book X-Force once had a character called Adam-X, the X-Treme. Ah, the '90s. Thankfully, "the X-Treme" part rarely appeared outside of cover announcements of his guest appearances.
    • Before Adam-X, there was Magik. Although magik, pronounced with a long 'a' and a hard 'g', is an actual word in Russian; it means "magician". The question is if Chris Claremont knew that when he gave the Siberian mutant that name.
    • Even earlier, there was Alex Summers, aka Havok.
    • Played with in two spin-off titles launched by Chris Claremont, Excalibur and GeNext. In both cases the "X" was the biggest letter in the cover logo. It went even further in the Age of Apocalypse crossover in the 90's, when Excalibur became X-Calibre.
    • Averted in the first arc in Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, which was titled "E is for Extinction." Let's just say that another writer might have emphasized a different letter of that word. Except that the "X-tinction" title had already been used multiple times throughout the history of the team. He probably just wasn't allowed to use it again.
    • When the second incarnation of the X-Force was threatened with legal action over their name, leader the Orphan simply changes it — to "X-Statix". He says it came to him in a dream and he doesn't really know what it's supposed to mean.
    • This was a subject of a Take That! moment in an issue of Blood Syndicate. A Reality Warper villain briefly caused the team to transform into parodies of the X-Men and X-Force, and as such, everyone now had ridiculously misspelled names. Brickhouse became "Brique," DMZ became "Mister Ree," Flashback became "Regrette," Kwai became "Kwiklash," and so on.
  • In the second issue of Hyperkind, one of the newly empowered Hyperkind decides to adopt "Logic" as his Code Name. Another member (the resident comic nerd of the team) stops him, telling him to call himself "Logix" because, "That's how it's done!" Said comic nerd then decides to call himself Amokk, for the same reason.
  • In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, Mina delivers a Take That! to the producers of the film adaptation when she identifies a rocket as being American because "who else would think that 'extra' starts with an 'X'?" The League movie was often referred to as LXG.
  • In The DCU:
    • The hero Aztek was named by a newspaper. Drawing on the South American motif in his costume, a reporter dubbed him Aztek "with a 'K' — because of all the neat high-tech stuff he's got on his uniform."
    • Kobra
    • Mister Magik, who started going by The White Magician after becoming a Fallen Hero.
    • Professor Pyg.
  • Underground Comix (only rarely: Komix). So called to distinguish them from mainstream comics.
  • Kimota! ("Atomik" spelled backwards).
  • In the weekly Anthology Comic The Beano, there is comic strip entitled Ratz.
  • Captain America of Marvel's Super Soldier program was Weapon 1. 40 years later came the last major Super Soldier trial: Weapon X.
  • The Anthology Comic The Dandy was reinvented as Dandy Xtreme in the 2000s. It reverted back to being The Dandy at the start of The New '10s for its final years as a print comic.
  • This trope was popular during The Dark Age of Comic Books and the Speculator Boom when comic creators were looking to make a quick buck off of original characters. The reasoning for using Xtreme Kool Letterz at this time was likely done to help insure that whatever name a creator came up with for their '90s Anti-Hero could be trademarked. You can't retain the rights to "Strike", but you can retain the rights to "Stryke".
    • Although Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (the creator of "Kirby Krackle") also indulged in this, e. g. with names like Klaw, Kalibak and Apokolips (this last one replacing a 'y' with an 'i'). Other Marvel examples from the 1970s and 1980s include Deathlok the Demolisher, Drax the Destroyer, Karisma, Mahkizmo, Nekra, Terrax the Tamer and Terrex. Also, Frank Miller called Daredevil's first love Elektra, while "Electra" is the more common spelling in English; however it was justified by making her Greek.
  • There was a short lived company in (of course) The '90s making creator-owned sci-fi comics under the banner of Tekno Comix.
  • A case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurred with this in Spider-Girl - upon hearing about Kaine, Spider-Girl initially thinks that his name is Cane, and can't find any information when she tries looking him up.
  • An interesting case is Dethstryk, the Big Bad from the Marvel 2099 series Ravage 2099, as it's ultimately revealed to be a corruption of his real name, Meredeth Stryker.
  • Astro City: One of Vivi Victor's schemes involves robotic "Xentinels". What prompted her to call them that isn't stated, but then, she is mad.

    Komix Stripz 
  • Krazy Kat is one of the very first examples. She had bit parts in George Herriman's assorted Sunday comics as early as 1903, was called "Kat" by 1909, and "Krazy Kat" by 1910. By the time she got her standalone strip in 1913, she'd developed her personal dialect, a mixture of Spanish and Yiddish accents with Ks everywhere.
  • Parodied in a FoxTrot strip. Jason buys a gory video game called Mortal Karnage that his mother dislikes, and she lectures him on how inappropriate it is: "You're too young for this sort of thing. I mean, look at what it teaches: that human disembowelment is entertainment...that "winners" decapitate their enemies...that carnage is spelled with a 'K'..." When he says "I know carnage isn't spelled with a 'K'.", she replies, "The sad part is, that's the least of my concerns." Even funnier when you realize that at the time, his mother was a newspaper columnist.

    Fan Workz 

    Filmz — Anym@ted 

    Filmz — Lyve-Aktion 
  • American Dreamz parodies this. The title is the name of the show-within-a-show, an American Idol knockoff with a contestant played by Mandy Moore, who at one point sings a ridiculously vapid ballad with the chorus, "American Dreamz... dreamz... with a Z."
  • Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: Wyld Stallyns!! Played for laughs, of course.
  • The titles of the hood classics Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society.
  • The religious film C Me Dance.
  • Cryptz: The titular strip club is spelled with a z.
  • In Each to His Own, Olivia DeHavilland's character makes her fortune as selling "Lady Vyvyan" cosmetics. As her lowlife partner remarks "Classy, hunh?"
  • eXistenZ could be justified because "Existenz" is the German word for existence and "isten" is Hungarian for "God," giving the director a reason to frame it with Caps.
  • The title of the direct-to-DVD kid flick EZ Money and the Ez Loan company featured within it.
  • Independence Day was widely marketed in posters and toys as ID4 - despite the fact that the inclusion of the '4' is completely redundant.
  • Averted in The Karate Kid: Cobra Kai is exactly the type of organization that would spell its name "Kobra Kai", both for '80s edginess and Added Alliterative Appeal, but... nope. It's always "Cobra Kai".
  • From the silent movies, the Keystone Kops were the inspiration for many later examples. Although at this time, K's weren't meaning "cool," but rather "funny," as in "ha ha, those guys can't spell correctly."
  • Kruel: Well, the title of the movie IS Kruel.
  • The marketing for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen used the acronym "LXG".
  • Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive uses a lot of these for their title, since text messaging is a core aspecy of the film.
  • When the teleplay The Quatermass Experiment was made into a film, it was titled The Quatermass Xperiment, apparently in reference to its BBFC X certificate (the film is nowadays rated PG).
  • Pixxi de la Chasse in Repo Chick. Her parents obviously didn't think that Pixie was Xxtreme enough.
  • The 1950 film Rocketship X-M, where the titular spaceship's name is short for "Expeditionary Mission".
  • That Thing You Do!: Faye (Liv Tyler) names the band "The Oneders" (because The Beatles also used a pun in their name) and it ends up being mispronounced by literally everyone until their manager forces them to change it.
  • While Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut is a case of "everything's cooler with umlauts," This is Spın̈al Tap takes it up a notch: the trema in the band's logo is not even over a vowel, but rests proudly atop the letter N.
  • The "Rekall" brand in Total Recall (1990) and the remake.
  • The low-budget direct-to-video 2004 film Vampiyaz, about urban bloodsuckers.
  • Pete Smith, producer of over 150 short films for MGM from the 1930s to the 1950s, had a habit of this. His 1949 short film about a water skier doing stunts was titled Water Trix.
  • Zardoz has some curious spelling like this, but it seems to be meant more as Futuristic Fonetiks ("applz" for "apples"). Not to mention the revelation that it's actually The Wizard of Oz.

    Lyterature 

* Angela Nicely: “Starstruck!” features a band called New Boyz.
  • J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series has a number of main characters with Names to Run Away from Really Fast coupled with this sort of spelling. Some examples include: Phury, Rhage, Zsadist, Rehvenge, and Tohrment.
  • A Confusion of Princes uses this for the names of the three technologies in the Empire: Mektek, Psitek, and Bitek.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
    • One brand of carrot sticks is Xtreme Sports Stix (despite them having nothing to do with sports).
    • One book Greg's mother hates is called "Xtreme Pop-up Sharks".
    • One comic strip mentioned is called "Xtreme Sk8ters". Another is "Action Fighterz", which features a character "Captain Klobber", another is "Wacky Dawg" and another is "Office Antix".
    • A brand of shoes Greg buys is Sportsterz.
  • Discworld:
    • In Soul Music, an all-troll Music With Rocks In It band want to call themselves simply "Trolls" they're told, "But you've got to spell it with a Z. Trollz." Funnily enough, on a non-Discworld note, when the Trolls doll line was revived for the 21st century (along with an animated series), the powers that be did just that.
    • The vampires in Carpe Jugulum express a desire to spell it "vampyres", as the Y makes it look more modern. Even though said spelling is probably older.
    • Dr. Hix in Unseen Academicals, head of the Department of Postmortem Communications, is really named Hicks, but with his black robe and skull ring he "would have been mad, or let us say even madder, to pass up a chance to have an X in his name." (This actually goes along with a change in his character; he appears first in Making Money but there is more sheepish and actually cares about the rules, and is still spelled Dr. Hicks. Apparently his Card-Carrying Villain, by university statute, personality came with the placement of an X in his name.)
    • Agnes Nitt's alter ego Perdita has the middle initial X ("Perdita X Dream"), which stands for "a person who has a cool and exciting middle name." Unfortunately, the village/kingdom of Lancre suffers from a massive lack of Rule of Cool, so everyone refers to her as "that girl that calls herself Perditax."
    • And of course, there's the whole continent called XXXX. But pronounced "Fourecks" (and named after a Real Life brand of Australian lager).
  • One Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel has a character being dubbed "code-boy" by another because he spends a lot of time doing computer programming. You know, writing code. He loses his real name and ends up known as Kode, likely because of this trope.
  • In The Edge Chronicles, the academics of Sanctaphrax want to seem educated, and all the Leaguesmen want to sound like them. The result is a lot of polysyllabic names.
    • There is also the species of cruel humanoid birds called "shrykes". They are obviously named after shrikes, birds widely known for impaling prey on thorns, only with a "y" instead.
  • Rob Grant's Fat had a pop group parodying Girls Aloud by the name of "Gurlz Banned".
  • Species in Peter David's Hidden Earth Chronicles include Mandraques, Firedraques and draqons.
  • It All Started with Columbus credits the Ku Klux Klan with the introduction of phonetic spelling, which "gave us such words as Kleenex, Krispies and Krazy Kat."
  • The Matthew Martin series by Paula Danziger features a character who spells her name "Jil!" because she got bored with "Jill."
    • Another children's book has a character named Susan who changes her name to, well, the title says it all: My Name is Sus5an Smith. The 5 is Silent.
  • Oryx and Crake pictures a future where hyper-rich corporations call themselves things like HelthWyzer and RejooveNation with a straight face. It's never explained, but one gets the feeling they have been forced to come up with these "creative" spellings because all the normal ones had been trademarked. Unless they actually thought it sounded cool.
  • Public School Superhero: Kenny Wright has a Superhero persona that he fantasizes about being. He calls him "Stainlezz Steel".
  • Same goes for most personal names in A Song of Ice and Fire. The letter "y" is particularly common.
    • True for several titles as well. For example, "Ser" instead of "Sir". "Maester" instead of "Master".
  • Halfway through Ready Player One, Wade Watts consults a black-market data-auction site called the "L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus" to disguise his identity from I.O.I. and also buy maintenance passwords to hack into the company's network later on.
  • Invoked in Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder". The bizarre spelling on the time-travel safari sign is the first clue the characters have that killing a butterfly in the past dramatically changed the future.
  • Star Island features an oversexed young pop star with the Stage Name Cherry Pye, who is proud to announce that her latest album will be titled "Skantily Klad, with all k's." A prerelease copy is panned in Spin magazine as "Skankily Klad."
  • Stranger Than Fanfiction: Cash Carter's favourite amusement park from his childhood is called "High Tydes". When he thinks they're on the highway leading to it, he gets super excited and begs the Downer's Grove gang to go there instead of their intended destination. However, since Mo didn't know it was called "High Tydes", she was looking for "High Tides".
  • Several names in The Wheel of Time are actually perfectly ordinary names that have been grossly misspelled. Examples include "Elayne" (Elaine), "Padraig" (Patrick), "Birgitte" (Bridget), and "Logain" (Logan). Padraig is a legitimate Irish variation of Patrick in its own right and Birgitte is a legitimate Scandinavian variant of Bridget. It should be noted that in the Norwegian translation of The Wheel of Time, Birgitte's name is translated to the more exotic sounding Bergithe, as Birgitte is quite an usual name in Norway.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: One of the rookies at the evil Wizarding School is named Starlyght Mornyngmyst, a name which has way too many superfluous 'y's' for no good reason. She is mocked by the others, with one noting that her parents must have hated her.
  • Patton Oswalt's book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland contains a number of fake script treatments he sent into Paramount Pictures as a joke. One of these was for an inner-city high school drama called "Carvin' it up 2 da Streetz".

    Lyve-Aktion TV 

Networks:

  • The shameless cable network Disney XD, which outright tells you they're both extreme and 'wit it', as the XD part is an "extreme!" emoticon denoting extreme happiness.
  • American premium network The Movie Channel renamed its lone multiplex channel, originally called The Movie Channel 2, as The Movie Channel Xtra (sans the "E") in 2001. Interestingly, its parent network Showtime avoided this for its action-oriented multiplex channel Showtime Extreme (although a pre-launch logo did emphasize the "X" over the first "E" in the name).

Series:

  • 30 Rock: Whenever Jack references NBC's new parent company, he always calls it "Kabletown... with a K," his voice dripping with disdain.
  • All in the Family: In the episode "Archie and the KKK", the Kweens Kouncil of Krusaders organization that Archie considers joining goes only by this name ... but it becomes very obvious to Archie, once the group announces its plans to burn a cross on Mike's lawn (for writing an editorial with whom the group's members took issue), that this group is actually the Ku Klux Klan going by an alias.
  • BattleBots:
    • A bot named War? EZ! (pronounced War? Easy!) in the Discovery Channel reboot. The name also doubles as a play on builder Jonathan Juarez's last name, making the "Ju" to "W" switch part of this trope too.
    • Rotator's name is stylized as "ROTATOЯ", all caps with the last "R" backwards.
  • On Big Time Rush, when James briefly joins Hawk Records, they change his name to Jamez. And as can be seen from the posters in their studio, all of their other artists have a 'Z' in their name too.
  • Ed Helms filed a report on The Daily Show about an insurance made especially for teenagers and concluded with a fake ad that said it even covers you if you break your coccyx while skating — spelled kokkyx.
  • Da Ali G Show is a chronic abuser of this, with such recurring words like "Respek" being used intentionally by the titular character, who referenced that all respect had been lost in the world since the word "respek" had been removed from the dictionary. But of course...
  • Doctor Who: In "Resolution", during the climax, the Thirteenth Doctor proudly announces that she has "skillz. With a zed."
  • Get Krack!n: The show carries on its title theme by replacing 'C' with 'K' in all of its segment titles. And if the segment doesn't have a 'C' in its title, they randomly insert a 'K' anyway.
  • Impractical Jokers: Joe announces to a busy restaurant that he's quitting his job as a waiter to manage his boy band "The Yoloboyz (with a Z on the end)". Their motto is "Hey! Do it, but do it with a Z!" In another episode, Joe and Murr pitch the latest in home security, "Safe Dogz" (live dogs that are capable of storing one's valuables).
  • The French series Kaamelott, parodying the Arthurian legends. A lone stylized "K" is also used prominently during the credits and even on fictitious heraldry. The author justifies this as being close to an ancient variant of spelling for "Camelot"; hence, here the effect aimed at isn't to look "cool" but "antiquated".
  • Kamen Rider Double's Super Mode is literally called CycloneJokerXtreme. This is primarily because the show's Transformation Trinket relies upon USB flash drive-like devices, each with a logo consisting of a stylized version first letter of its name that also represents its power (for example, a volcano shaped like an "M" for "Magma").
  • MXC: Most Xtreme Elimination Challenge. Used tongue in cheek, since it's a Gag Dub show.
  • The Price Is Right has a pricing game called Eazy az 1 2 3.
  • A late episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch involved Sabrina, Roxie and Morgan forming a girl group called "Girlz." During their first audition, they think they can easily beat the guy who went on before them because they have a Z in their name; however, his name turns out to be Zeke.
  • Saturday Night Live: Parodied in the "Z shirt" sketch from the episode hosted by Kevin Hart. The sketch is a commercial for the "Z-shirt" (which is just a T-shirt with the letter "Z" on it), and Hart's character keeps asking what kind of shirt it is, using every letter of the alphabet in order ("Is that an A-shirt?" "Is it a B-shirt?" etc.).
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Parodied in "Wormhole X-Treme" with the eponymous Show Within a Show. One character comments that he "wanted to call it Going to Other Planets, but the network said that shows with 'X' in the name get better ratings."
    • Of course, the titles of all Stargate series do the same thing, replacing the second "A" in "Stargate" with the gate symbol for Earth (Λ̊). Not mandatory, thankfully. Which, incidentally, is just an uppercase lambda with a kroužek (ring) on top of it. A rather strange blend of a Greek letter with a Scandinavian and central European diacritic (Å). It is described in-show as representing the Sun rising above the Great Pyramid of Giza.
      • However it was more likely a fluke that the symbol looks like a combination of those, even though it is "sort of" a letter in the canon, as it did only "become" a letter in a much later episode where we find out the Ancients DID apply sounds to Stargate symbols anyway.
  • In political satire The Thick of It, Emma wonders why people leaving hate mail on her boss Peter's blog spell "hate" as "h8". "If you're going to leave a message, at least spell it correctly."
  • Thunderbirds: In "Cry Wolf", the boys who like to play at being International Rescue have a sign on their door that says "Internashunal Rescue".
  • Variant: On Top Gear, their homebuilt electric car (the Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust) was named with a lowercase "i" because it was the Xtreme Kool Letter for the eco-friendly set.
  • Johnny Xtreme, one of the most recurrent non-intern (nor host, obviously) characters in X-Play. He was pretty much the Anthropomorphic Personification of "extremeness". He even tattooed Xs onto his arms and cut his beard in X shape. Given the tone of the show, it is pretty certain that Adam or Morgan must have pointed out the fact that there was an "X" on their show's name for no real reason.
    • In reality, the show started out as "Extended Play" and received a retitle when it was relaunched, reducing "Extended" to "X". XP was floated as a title before the producers realized people would be confused that it was a tech show about Windows XP.
    • During a review of Mortal Kombat, Adam and Morgan commented on the title, saying "everything is cooler when spelled with a K."

    Muzik 
  • You think "Muzak" is just slang? Think again... it's originally a brand name, created in 1934, to sell background music to retail stores and other buildings.
  • The Korean Pop Music Girl Group Pristin used to be called Pledis Girlz. Siyeon's stage name is Xiyeon, making it ultra kewl.
  • The record label Avex Trax, while Avex is an acronym of Audio Visual Label, the word Trax came from "tracks".
  • The musical group Gorillaz.
    • Also, the film to go with it, Bananaz.
    • And the short non-clip animations are Gorillabitez.
    • And their fifth studio album, Humanz.
  • P!nk's album M!ssundaztood. "P!nk" is more of a Lucky Charms Title.
  • Kool Keith
  • Kon Kan, the Canadian synthpop duo, shortened their name from "Contenu Canadien," (Canadian Content) in reference to the CRTC mandate on domestic programming. Justified in that "con" is a French obscenity that loosely translates to "shithead."
  • Kreator
  • The Lonely Island songs Just 2 Guyz, We Like Sportz and We'll Kill U.
  • Megadeth is suppose to be spelled without a second "A".
  • Kool & the Gang.
  • During Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" phase, she was usually referred to as "Xtina", because "X" is used as an abbreviation for "Christ" (as in "Xmas") for reasons dating back to Greek times — in Greek, the name started with the letter chi, which looks like an X.
    • Her 'Love Me 4 Me' uses extremely cool letters.
  • Xzibit, or as he likes to say, "X to the Z Xzibit." Hell, one of his most famous songs is "X"!
  • Rap group Onyx has their debut album titled "Bacdafucup" and their sophomore titled album "All We Got Iz Us", as well as a good number of their songs. Also, one of the members' name is Sticky Fingaz.
  • French example: la Tecktonik. Xtreme Kool Letterz (in particular the use of "ck") is also very popular amongst its practitioners around the world, either for individual aliases or group names.
  • The entire genre of jazz may owe its name to this. The name is derived from the Cajun patois word jass (referring to "strenuous activity" in general, and one activity in particular), and reputedly, it started being spelled with the double-z not only because "jazz" looked cooler, but more mundanely, at least in part because jokers kept stealing the letter J from the billboards.
  • Katy Perry has quite a few, "Hot N Cold", "Ur So Gay", and "California Gurls".
  • The US Power Metal band Kamelot. (And no, the Arthurian Camelot is usually spelled with a C in German.)
  • Dethklok and to a lesser extent their "kvlt" spelling Dëthkløk.
  • Those Y's guys from Pyrymyd.
  • Strangely inverted with the Japanese band Polysics, whose name is based on a synthesizer named Korg Polysix
  • Electronic artist Sasha's hard-to-pronounce remix compilation: Invol2ver.
  • One of Enigma's latest CDs replaced the initial E with a Greek letter sigma. Sigma-nigma?
  • The UK disco house label Hed Kandi, taking it to the vowels as well.
  • British pagan rock band Inkubus Sukkubus. Technically, they were originally named Incubus Succubus, but changed it to Inkubus Sukkubus for "numerological reasons."
  • Pick a nu metal band. ANY nu metal band.
  • Primal Scream's seventh album is a bit... conflicted about this. Its title is spelled XTRMNTR on the mostly vowelless album cover, but then again the band's name is similarly written "PRML SCRM" there, and Exterminator is written in some other places.
  • Def Leppard, whose name is misspelled to make them sound less punk.
  • Led Zeppelin. Because their manager thought dropping the 'a' from Lead would help to prevent "thick Americans" from pronouncing it "leed". Famously produced an album with a 'title' that could not be vocalised or spelled at all, only four symbols, which veers beyond this trope through Lucky Charms Title to The Unpronounceable.
  • Boyz II Men.
  • For Synth musicians, most are familiar with these days with Yamaha XG Lite (that XG stands for Yamaha's proprietary eXtension to General MIDI, of course).
  • Hello! Project group Berryz Koubou. ZYX also counts.
  • A few songs by Swedish hair band Crashdïet, like Knokk 'Em Down and Breaking the Chainz.
  • Avril Lavigne's song "Sk8er Boi."
  • Industrial bands in general love swapping "K" for "hard C".
  • Metallica sometimes spelled their names like this (Jaymz, Larz).S&M does it for some songs.
    • Beatallica follows/parodies it. Their lyrics are transcripted with gratuitous "Z" everywhere, and the band members are The Beatles + Metallica mashups written with Xtreme Kool Letterz (Jaymz Lennfield, Grg Hammetson, Kliff McBurtney, Ringo Larz).
  • The American Hip Hop duo OutKast.
  • The acid house group Phuture.
  • The Southern California ska band Shame & Skandal.
  • Prince abused this a lot in his song titles (2 and U used wherever possible), combined with Lucky Charms Title (an eye-symbol for I), and he even wrote his lyrics and liner notes in Xtreme Kool Letterz. Famously swapped his own name for a symbol that transcended this trope altogether.
  • Klymaxx, an all-female band best known for the soft rock single "I Miss You".
  • An awful lot of songs by 2Pac. 2pac himself was also an example, though rather than "to", it replaces "tu" (his real name was Tupac).
  • Stewart Copeland, ex-The Police drummer, in the first 2 years of the band's existence, released some solo material under the name "Klark Kent". One of the songs was titled "Too Kool To Kalypso". On top of that, a CD compilation of Klark Kent material, released in 1995 was named "Kollected Works". And to top that all, his private little recording label is called "Kryptone Records."
  • One of Linkin Park's remix albums, Reanimation, has almost all of its song's names written this way. And, of course, Linkin Park itself. They originally set out to call themselves Lincoln Park, but they went for the misspelled version because it made it easier to acquire a .com domain name.
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd, naturally.
  • Then there's the American New Wave/synthpop band Ebn Ozn, whose band name was taken from each of the main band members' last names, Ned Liben (EBN) and Robert Rosen (OZN).
  • EMINƎM.
  • There's also a Scottish post-punk band named Fingerprintz who wrote and recorded songs such as "Wet Job" and "Bulletproof Heart" before basically rebooting and renaming themselves into the more familiar The Silencers.
  • There's also a British jazz-funk band named Freeez that had a minor hit with a song called "Southern Freeez". Curiously, like EBN OZN above, they too had their most major hit with a song with the refrain "AEIOU" (Freeez's was just titled "I.O.U." as they were punning on "I owe you"), though EBN OZN's song featured spoken word lyrics and Freeez's featured falsetto vocals.
  • And there's a pop/rock band that existed in the 1960s and '70s called Jaggerz, best known for their song "The Rapper."
  • Litefoot. U may kno him moar 4 da Mortal Kombat moovee n Da NDN n da Cubberd but hee iz allso a rappr. Eeven haz hiz pwn laybel. Itz djuzt lyke inny otha rekrd laybel tho, nkloodin skrewin hiz sined artiztz.
  • Classic rock band Slade has this in spades: "Cum On Feel The Noize" being one of the more harmless (and well-known) examples; then there are "Cuz I Luv You", "Look Wot You Dun", "Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me", "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", "Gudbuy T'Jane", etc.
  • Blaqk Audio. It's either to pronounce it as "Black" or else it sounds like "blak-k" and "Blak-k Audio" just sounds dumb.
  • One of the song intros in Tom Lehrer's live album An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer mentions an eccentric who changed his name to Hen3ry with a silent 3.
  • Split Enz, although they chose that spelling as a nod to their home country of New Zealand, not just because it looked cool. Also, before changing the spelling, they actually released a few early singles as Split Ends.
  • 2 CHAINZ!!!!!!
  • Country music group SHeDAISY, complete with idiosyncratic capitalization. The name is derived from the Navajo word shideezhí, meaning "my little sister".
  • The Christian rock/ska band The Insyderz.
  • British Boy Band 5ive.
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers' album Blood Sugar Sex Magik spells "magic" with a "k" and all the single words as one long word.
  • Sarah McLachlan's "U Want Me 2"
  • For a long time KMFDM gave every one of their albums a five-letter title, which led to album names like "Xtort" and "Attak".
  • "DGTal Blood" by Helalyn Flowers. "Digital" pronounced with an Italian accent.
  • Covenant's Ritual Noise single has a B-side titled "Xrds"(pronounced Crossroads).
  • Power Pop group The Superfriendz. They probably went with that spelling to avoid confusion with Superfriends.
  • Epic Records has a division dedicated to film soundtracks called Epic Soundtrax. They initially wanted to go with the proper spelling, but were sued by musician Epic Soundtracks, who had laid claim to his Stage Name first.
  • Country music duo Bomshel.
  • There's a bluegrass group called Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out. Yes, you read that right, a bluegrass group.
  • Country duo Florida Georgia Line has an EP titled It'z Just What We Do.
  • Big & Rich released a song called "Party Like Cowboyz" in early 2013.
  • The Kovenant, who were originally named Covenant until a lawsuit from the EBM band of the same name; they also had to spell their name with a K to avoid conflict with another metal group named The Covenant.
  • They Might Be Giants has a song called "Mr. Xcitement", as well as one called "Mr. Klaw".
  • Australian duo The Bumblebeez (formerly known as Bumblebeez 81 in America)
  • Scottish synthpop trio Chvrches. Although their name is pronounced "Churches," they replaced the "u" with a "v" because they wanted to show up more easily on Google Suggest. Replacing Us with Vs has since become their thing.
  • Rapper SpaceGhostPurrp and his hip hop collective Raider Klan have invented the "Raider hieroglyphics," which replaces all A's and U's with V's all other vowels with X's (for example, "Spaceghostpurrp" is now stylized as "SPVCXGHXZTPXRRP" and "Raider Klan" becomes "RVXDXR KLVN").
  • Ferry Corsten's WKND(Weekend) album.
  • The KLF may stand for "Kopyright Liberation Front" or even "Kopyrite Liberation Front"; the latter would have 23 letters.
  • Miley Cyrus' 2013 album title Bangerz.
    • One of her YouTube accounts, which she opened after she had trouble posting videos on her own website, was (with some irony) called "MCForRealzzz".
    • When making The Miley And Mandy Show, she nicknamed herself and her dancer friend/co-host Mandy Jiroux "Milez" and "Manderz" in many episodes.
    • Her free 2015 album, Miley Cyrus And Her Dead Petz.
  • Skinny Puppy are frequent abusers, to the point where oddly spelled song titles are sort of a signature. Random examples include "Worlock", "Ambiantz", "Cullorblind", "Empte", and "Illisit".
  • Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex writes K in place of C in many words just to force the hard Classical Latin pronunciation.
  • Adam and the Ants:
    • All the Ants albums have 'ADAM' written as 'AⱭAM'
    • Very early in their career, mainly on singles and Dirk Wears White Sox, 'ANTS' is spelled 'ANTZ'.
  • Del tha Funkee Homosapien: The word "Tha" instead of "the" in his name and the word "funkee" instead of "funky".
  • A lot of bands in the 1960s myspeld their names, often for a "psychedelic" effect from 1965-66 onward. This was arguably kickstarted by The Beatles in England in the early '60s, then by The Byrds in America in 1965. The Left Banke had a big hit in 1966 with "Walk Away Renee." Then you had lesser-known bands like the Myddle Class (featuring future Steely Dan member David Palmer on vocals), Kenny and the Kasuals (whose best-known song is called "Journey to Tyme"), and Zakary Thaks (who didn't have any members named Zachary...or Zakary), just to name a few.
    • Subverted by The Turtles, who were briefly known as "The Tyrtles" before reverting to the conventional spelling.
  • The song (and album) "Tuff Enuff" by The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
  • ABBA usually spells their name with the first "B" backwards.
  • According to an episode of VH1's Pop Up Video, Rockwell (of "Somebody's Watching Me" fame) initially wanted to call himself "Roqwell", but was afraid people would think he as illiterate.
  • J. Cole has "Wet Dreamz", "No Role Modelz" and "Love Yourz", all three being released in a row and ending with "Z".
  • Kesha's 2010 consecutive chart-topper "Tik Tok" was the biggest song of the year.
  • British Hair Metal band Wrathchild use this in most of their song and album titles. Examples include "Stakk Attakk," "Nukklear Rokket," "Stikky Fingerz," and "The Biz Suxx."
  • "Böhse Onkelz", a German band of a... questionable political stance.
  • Charli XCX. It was originally her MSN Messenger screen name, the XCX standing for "Kiss Charli Kiss", though when she was first signed to a label, she told them that it actually meant "X-Rated Cunt X-Rated" in order to make it sound cooler.
  • The BEMANI duo TËЯRA sometimes uses random symbols and letters from foreign alphabets to make text look cooler, regardless of the actual pronunciation and meaning.
    • Their name contains a gratuitous backwards R and a gratuitous umlaut.
    • The song titles "ZËNITH" and "ULTiM∧TE".
    • The albums RЁVOLUTIΦN and ЁVOLUTIΦN, which also feature Title Tracks.
  • South Florida-based rapper Denzel Curry's third studio album TA13OO has all track names stylized in all caps, followed by a numerical spelling. The letter "B" is replaced with "13", I is replaced with "1", and S is replaced with "Z".
  • The Doo-wop group The Jive Five, formed in The '50s, released some records in The '70s as The Jyve Fyve.
  • Tucson-based Hard Rock band Ph8 combines this trope with Letters 2 Numbers.
  • Thousand Foot Krutch.
  • Rave The Reqviem. The name of the band and many of their songs.
  • KPop Girl Group ITZY's name is a stylized spelling of 있지 (issji). This trope is also present in their album titles "IT'z DIFFERENT," "IT'z ICY," and "IT'z ME."
  • BTS are obsessed with this trope, especially in their early albums which have titles like: "Skool Luv Affair", "2 Cool 4 Skool", and the skit "Skit: R U Happy Now?" They have a thing for spelling love as luv, as seen in "Boy in Luv" and its sequel "Boy with Luv".
  • Eazy-E not only used this in his name, but also in all of his album titles and some of the song ones, such as Eazy-Duz-It.
  • TIX.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic sings about this,
    "You should ne-ver / spell words with numbers / unless you're in pre-school / or your name is Prince!"
  • A$AP Rocky and Ty Dolla $ign stylize their names with, well, the dollar sign in place of the "S".

    Nyoo Me-D-ya 
  • Microsoft Windows NT 5.1, also known as XP, which is supposed to be short for eXPerience.
  • Applications written for the Linux "KDE" desktop environment tend to be named with K's replacing hard C's (Konqueror, Konsole). Sometimes the "K" usage is a tad bit more... nonsensical, as with the name of the bundled golf game, Kolf. (Admittedly, Kgolf would've looked stupid.)
    • Though KDE is a project that started on Germany, and several of those words are valid German words (like Konsole).
    • Originally KDE was supposed to stand for Kool Desktop Environment (currently it's simply K Desktop Environment; the K no longer stands for anything), with the Xtreme Kool Letterz spelling of "cool" being chosen for a good reason, in that the commercial Common Desktop Environment (which is a proprietary (i.e. not open-source) program with more restrictive terms than KDE) already claimed the name CDE, so KDE was chosen instead to avoid lawsuits from the owners of CDE. Plus, well, "kool" is better than "common." (Eventually KDE and its rivals GNOME and Xfce went on to replace CDE on Linux and some other Unix-like systems.)
      • The aforementioned desktop environments are all based on a certain common GUI system. This system is named... X. Just like that.
      • It's part of a pattern. It was the successor to the W GUI system, which was used by the V operating system. No Y yet.
      • W, as in "windowed". X, being the letter after W, was a perfectly legitimate name for W's successor.
    • And then there's POSIX. It stands for Portable Operating System Interface. Where does the X come from? It looks cool.
      • Probably from UNIX which is 'successor' of Multics (Multi-/Uni-) with an Xtreme Kool Letter at the end.
      • Ken Thompson's original version of the OS, written in Assembly, was called UNICS, a pun on MULTICS. Dennis Ritchie's C rewrite saw the name change to Unix.
    • An interesting case is the music player Amarok, which was originally spelled amaroK until it was decided that looked stupid. "Amarok" is the name of a real Inuit deity, however.
  • There was the Newgrounds troll group the "Kitty Krew". This sometimes lead to some unfortunate acronyms with some anti-KK groups, such as the "Kitty Krew Killers".
  • The music database MusicBrainz.
  • it iz common 4 teenz 2 do dis when textinq, also there iz a trend of usinq q instead of g.

    Pynball 

    Prophezzional Wreztling 
  • The Hardy Boyz, and their perennial WWE rivals The Dudley Boyz.
    • The Hardy's stable with Lita was also referred to as Team Xtreme
    • Spotlighted in a promo by Edge and Christian, the rivals of both teams, when mentioning "The Hardyz, and the Dudleyz, both of whom inexplicably spell their names with Z's"
    • Edge and Christian once brought out two senior citizens dressed as the Hardys to mock them, claiming that they were the Hardy Boyz from the future. Christian asked them if, in the future, people still spell things with Z's instead of S's.
  • There's NXT. Doesn't stand for anything, that's just the "xtreme kool" way of spelling "next", since the program is the "next" generation of WWE, though at least one promotion, The Scottish Wrestling Alliance, did it beforehand.
  • After many years of identifying WrestleMania events with Roman numerals, #17 was officially X-Seven — pronounced "ecks-seven". And the next year saw X8, "ecks-eight". From #19 (XIX) onwards, all-Roman numbers have been back in vogue.
  • ECW's Rhino was renamed Rhyno when he went to WWF. That wasn't about being "Xtreme" though, that was so WWF/E could establish a trademark, hence why he went back to being Rhino after they canned his ass.
  • ECW itself was an xception to the rulez, so to speak, by correctly using an E for Extreme. (Other wrestling promotions such as XPW are not so grammatically-minded.) It was founded in 1992, though: you can bet that 10 or so years later there would have been an X in there for sure; their late-period pay-per-view Anarchy Rulz submitted to this trope, for instance. They also started out as Eastern Championship Wrestling.
  • Shawn Michaels and Triple H (and X-Pac, Chyna, Road Dogg and Billy Gunn ARE D-Generation X, and they've got two words for ya...
  • Vince Russo's Sports Entertainment Xtreme faction from the early days of TNA. Russo was especially fond of this. He used to pen a regular article in WWE Magazine in the 90's where he changed any hard "S" sound to a z. For instance:
    "What killz me iz that my kidz could put more heart into a match than theze guyz"
  • Towards the end of WCW, wrestler Disco Inferno started spelling his name "Disqo Inferno".
  • NWA-TNA had a B Show in 2002 called Xplosion. In 2010, Xplosion Nacional de Lucha Libre in Chile joined the National Wrestling Alliance.
  • Kid Kash
  • CHIKARA's Xyberhawx 2000: Nytehawk, Sylverhawk, Razerhawk and Danjerhawk.
  • The "Control" in Damage CTRL's name is spelled in abbreviation and is written in all caps.

    Ray-D-O 
  • Many radio stations – especially those using a Top 40, rock, or classic hits/oldies format, although other formats have been known to use it, too – will often use one of the rarely letters of the alphabet (most often, Q, X or Z, with K the next most-frequently used) along with the frequency as part of its on-air identity, such as "Q106" or "97X."note 
    • Early promos for WHTZ New York (better known as "Z100") referred to "HTZ" as "the new way to spell 'hits'".
  • Adam and Joe introduced a series of Song Wars Classics, which they insisted was spelt Song Wars Kqllasixcq (with a silent X).
  • Univision uses the "La Kalle" brand for many of its music stations in the U.S.
  • "Kool" is also a common radio brand, used primarily on oldies stations.
  • Sometimes a station's official call letters will feature a form of this. Los Angeles has a number of examples, including KROQ (pronounced "K-Rock"), KOST (pronounced "Coast"), and KIIS (pronounced "Kiss").

    Sportz 
  • Many minor league sports teams use Xtreme Kool Letterz in their names, especially indoor football teams. A few examples: Kissimmee Kreatures, Nashville Kats, Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz, Kalamazoo Xplosion, Lehigh Valley Outlawz, Kansas Koyotes, Memphis Xplorers. Baseball has the Northern Colorado Owlz (formerly Orem Owlz) and many varieties of "Sox". Baseball also had the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx for several years, but that team later became the far more mundane Jackson Generals until being contracted out in Major League Baseball's 2021 reorganization of the minor leagues.
    • The Orem Owlz were one of the final examples of a period of history in the state of Utah when this trope got out of hand. After people started making the connection that the three main professional sports teams in the state all had a double Z (the Jazz, the Grizzlies and the Buzz) people decided every team in Utah needed to follow suit. This led to such team names as the Freezze, the Starzz, the Blitzz and the Owlz. Even the Buzz was changed to the Stingerzz for a while. This fad has since been proven to be stupid and doesn't show up with new teams. And at least one of the "zz" teams abandoned this; the former Buzz/Stingerzz/Stingers are now the Salt Lake Bees (reinstating the name of a historic Salt Lake City minor-league franchise).
  • Another French example: Le Parkour.
  • The XFL lived on this trope... which is why it died after a single season.
  • Bearkats seems to be the preferred spelling for Texas high schools, probably inspired by the Sam Houston State University Bearkats, who adopted that name in 1923.
  • Subversion: The Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox baseball teams didn't get their names because they looked cooler than "Red Stockings" or "White Stockings" (their original names), but because it was easier for the newspapers to print "Sox" than "Stockings". Eventually, the names stuck.
  • Quebec City's minor league basketball team is known as the "Kebs," short for "Kebekwa" — a phonetic spelling of Québécois, but rather ironically in English phonetics.
  • ESPN's Summer and Winter X Games, originally the "Extreme Games".

    Taybletop Gamez 
  • Dark Age has one character known simply as "X'cess". It's... almost the correct way to spell "excess"!
  • Dungeons & Dragons gives an abbreviated "experience points" as "XP".
  • Jenga Xtreme, a version with parallelogram-shaped blocks, spells the title like that to convey that it's harder and more "extreme" than normal Jenga.
  • Waste World presents some kool spelling variationz like "skavengers," "drakonium," "konvoys," "kimera" and the like.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • In addition to their species name, da Orkz' Funetik Aksent is spelled by liberals replacing letters with z's, k's and the like. They have one notable aversion — their larger tribes are clans, not... you know...
    • Many daemon names are also spelled this way, when they don't look like they've been spelt by randomly punching a keyboard.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: In the Italian translation, the Gloomspite Gitz are called Tizi Odiozkuro ("Darkhatred Dudes"), with a "z" and "k" instead of the "s" and "c" in "oscuro".

    Toyz 
  • In the original Worlds of Wonder version of Lazer Tagnote , the gun was referred to as a "Starlyte".
  • In Legends of Chima, the speeders are referred as "Speedorz"
  • In Nexo Knights, the fortress is called "Fortrex"
  • Diva Starz, which is similar in concept to, but predates...
  • Bratz
    • Moxie Girlz, from the same companynote 
  • G.I. Joe Extreme, as one could expect from its name, indulges in this quite a bit. The main villain is named "Iron Klaw", one of the G.I. Joe member is "Quick Stryke", and the K in "SKAR" stands for "Kaos".
  • The alien invaders in Snap Ships are known as "the Komplex", and virtually all of their ships are named in the format "[Kit Name] K.L.A.W. [Role]", e.g. "Sawfly K.L.A.W. Light Scout," "Scarab K.L.A.W. Interceptor" and so on, combining this trope with Fun with Acronyms.

    Vydeo Gamez 
  • Nintendo:
  • GOG.com displays the message "Kewl, your purchase is complete" after you buy a game.
  • Super Mario Bros.: Bowser's vehicle in Super Mario World was originally called the Koopa Klown Kar. For certain reasons, it's spelled normally in newer games.
  • The Mortal Kombat series takes this to an extreme. Nearly every word which starts with a hard C (with some of the exceptions being Johnny Cage, the male Chameleon, and the live-action series Mortal Kombat: Conquest) is spelt with a K. Worse still, those are apparently the proper spellings of those words in the MK universe. Damn.
    • According to pinball designer Steve Ritchie (who voices Shao Kahn), he came up with "Kombat" specifically because of this trope.
      Steve Ritchie: I made up that name and gave it to Ed Boon. They had 'Mortal' on the white board. I added the word 'Kombat'... because it was cool.
    • Mortal Kombat X has a stage in an E3 demo build called "The Cove", which Boon apologized for misnaming sans the 'K' during an interview. Sure enough, in the final release, it was spelled with a K.
    • Lampshaded in the 2021 MK film, where Cole points out "Are you serious? The word "combat" isn't even spelled right!"
    • Also lampshaded in one of Cassie Cage's intros in Mortal Kombat 11. She enters the fight drinking from a coffe place cup which has the name "Kassie" crossed out and "Cassie" written below.
  • Gruntz is a puzzle game where plurals end in Z instead of S in the help file and in-game text. There are a few missed instances, however.
  • In Haunting Starring Polterguy there are magic spells called "supr-scare" and "ecto-xtra" for you to pick up.
  • In the Jak and Daxter videogame series, the police Mooks are called the Krimzon Guard, despite the fact that the elites are dressed in yellow armor. (To be fair, the normal Krimzon Guard do dress in red.)
  • Kingdom Hearts is especially bad with this one:
    • Every single member of Organization XIII has an X in his or her name. What's more, their names are anagrams on their real names with an X thrown in for Theme Naming. 'Roxas' is also a real name (both place and person — it's mostly popular in the Philippines), which helped to shade the obvious anagram that would ruin the Tomato in the Mirror. The more you know! Axel and Xion are real names as well, and the three make up the most sympathetic members of the Org.
    • Word of God from the Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Ultimania vaguely justifies the Organization's Xtreme Kool Letteringz as being due to Xemnas's memories of his former self Xehanort's goals to obtain the χ-blade.
      • Subversion in the above rules, as normally the foreign letters aren't pronounced any different, but here χ-blade was not pronounced as X-blade but as "chi" blade (which actually sounds more like keyblade, so it fits).
  • HeadGames made a series of extreme sports games, including eXtreme PaintBrawl, eXtreme Watersports, and eXtreme Bull Riding.
  • The unofficial abbreviation usually used for the PlayStation (until the PlayStation 2 came out, at least) was "PSX." This is because the console's codename during development was the "PlayStation Experimental." Made much worse by the fact that Sony actually released a separate console called the PSX (only in Japan, of course) which incorporated a video, photo, and music player with DVR support, along with the capability of playing PS/PS2 games.
  • This is just a screw-up of IGN's, but in a video report they referred to a game as "Sigma Harmonix" in text. Ten seconds later, we have a shot of the game's logo, which spells "Harmonics" like a normal person would. (Harmonix [spelled that way] is a different brand entirely.)
  • The titular Krazy Ivan. No, NOT Crazy Ivan, that would be silly, but Krazy Ivan.
  • Parodied repeatedly in Kingdom of Loathing, especially in the eXtreme Slope zone.
  • The XBAND service used a primitive modem cartridge for the SNES/Genesis to connect to players (as if on a BBS) through a now-defunct service. The company that made it went on to create a Windows-based MPlayer service, which also eventually shut down. What made it even more Xtreme was the A in the logo was upside-down. Wait for it... XB∀ND!
  • The earlier Donkey Kong Country games see the heroes fighting against various species of Kremlings, many of which have names that start with "K" in place of "C". An installment of Battle Of The Video Game Heroes lampshades this by having DK ask if they honestly have to keep doing it. This is sometimes also reflected in Alliterative Name levels, such as "Kannon's Klaim" and "Krevice Kreepers".
  • The Shutokou Battle series of street racing games is known as Tokyo Xtreme Racer in North America.
  • Grandia Xtreme: A spin-off from the Grandia series.
  • Pokémon:
    • The series name outside of Japan is this. It's a shortened form of its Japanese name, Pocket Monsters, so were the trope not present, it should be Pockemon.
    • The Spiritual Successor to Pokémon Colosseum, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. Apparently, "XD" stands for "eXtra Dimension." The pronounciation is actually supposed to be "Excess," but really, no one says that.
    • Introduced in Pokémon Red and Blue, Arbok is a cobra Pokémon, and its name combines this trope with Sdrawkcab Name. Also, Blastoise's name in Japanese is Kamex, which is just the Japanese word for turtle with an added "X" at the end, although it could also be a pun on "max". There’s also Seel & Dewgong.
    • Pokémon Black and White introduces us to Klink, Klang, and Klinklang, an animated set of living gears. There is also Krokorok and Krookodile, which are bipedal crocodile Pokémon. Averted with the first in the evolutionary line, Sandile.
  • Left 4 Dead ostensibly has a reason for doing this, but it would be a blatant lie if we said the marketing team didn't use the 4 in the title for this reason.
  • The undeniably awesome "Petz" genre for the DS, namely the related "Dogz," "Catz" and "Horsez." How can you resist these 4 awesome names?
    • Who wants to play Party Babyz!!!
    • The trend started with PF Magic's original development of the Petz, Babyz, and Oddballz games. PF Magic was also responsible for Ballz.
  • Telenet Japan's Action RPG series Exile was originally called XZR in Japan. They are pronounced the same if you torture the phonetics enough.
  • The Big Bad in Final Fantasy VIII replaces every c with a k. Although the Big Bad isn't really that cool or extreme in the relative sense. That didn't stop her theme music from being called "The Extreme".
  • In-universe example in Hypnospace Outlaw, which features an Expy of Pokémon called "Squisherz", being set in an alternate 1990's.
  • A lot of Rare's early games for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Jetpac, Tranz Am, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde, Blackwyche and Dragon Skulle, half of these could be added to Ye Olde Butchered English as well.
  • Certain expansion packs of Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games bear the subtitle of Xtreme Legends.
  • The name of BattleTanx just says it all really, with bonus points for making it a Wiki Word. Also apply to one of its little-know spinoff, WDL: War Jetz.
  • Somewhat lampshaded in Brütal Legend, where Eddie Riggs names his faction Ironheade, with an E to let others know that they're not kidding.
  • Intelligent Qube gets an honorable mention. It has a Q so it can be shortened to IQ. The European version goes for the more hard-hitting "Kurushi".
  • Gears of War: Marcus Fenix, sort of. Maybe they were targeting it to a base that they knew couldn't spell "phoenix"?
  • Skeleton Krew have the "Crew" in it's title. And the game's main villain is an Evilutionary Biologist named Dr. Moribund Kadaver.
  • Did Blizzard think players of StarCraft wouldn't be able to spell "phoenix?" One of the Protoss characters is named Fenix.
    • Justified. He's a Protoss, not human. Said Scary Dogmatic Aliens also have names like Zeratul, Aldaris, Artanis and Raszagalnote .
    • Warcraft 2 had a good amount of this, with words like "magiks" and "berzerker" seemingly to make the universe sound more arcane and exotic. It seems Blizzard dropped this by the time Warcraft 3 came around though, and they reverted back to normal spelling.
      Gul'dan: And back then, 'daemon' had an 'a' in it, like I intended! It looks more mystical that way.
  • The interface used on the PS3, PSP, and some Sony TVs is officially named the XrossMediaBar (pronounced cross media bar).
  • Some of the Sonic the Hedgehog series' music albums sometimes have the word 'Traxx' or 'Soundtrax' within its title. There's also Sonic Xtreme.
  • THE iDOLM@STER
  • I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1
  • Comix Zone
  • Dynowarz
  • ClockWerx
  • F.3.A.R.. Usually satirically pronounced as F'three'er, Eff'three'er, or even Free'r.
  • Frequently used in MMORPGs when a player really wants a name that has already been picked by someone else.
  • Jaleco's Karnaaj Rally is a rather confusing variation. After a quick analyzation you've probably come to the realization that it's "Carnage Rally". It seems they changed "C" to "K", which is common ever since Mortal Kombat. They added an extra "A" and changed the last two letters to "J".
  • Aggressors of Dark Kombat, the title of a Fighting Game for the Neo Geo, played on both Mortal Kombat and the name of the company that created it, ADK.
  • Samurai Gunn. Yes, two "n"s.
  • The obscure 1982 Midway Arcade Game Kozmik Krooz'r.
  • The Turtlez in Tales of Graces talk with letter Z'z replacing S'z in not just plural wordz, but also random wordz.
  • Streemerz from Action 52
  • Loopz and its remake Super Loopz
  • Xexyz
  • The Mega Man Franchise:
  • Skeleton Krew goes a bit krazy with K's. When Amiga Power previewed the game, writer 'Khris Lloyd' wrote the entire preview in this style.
  • EZ2DJ, apart from the title itself, has a judgement called "COOL"...followed by a higher judgement called "KOOL".
  • Crimzon Clover
  • In the X-Universe series, the highest Combat rank and the highest Trading rank are both called X-TREME - both of which require you to slaughter tens of thousands of capital ships or utterly dominate the economy, respectively. There's also the expansion pack for the first game, called X:Tension. The signature ship of the first game (which can be re-acquired in X3: Terran Conflict) is called the Xperimental Shuttle. In the Xtended Terran Conflict Game Mod, there's also the "XTREME" difficulty setting.
  • Dynamite Dux
  • The entire 4X game genre. eXplore, eXploit, eXpand, eXterminate!
  • Counter-Strike 1.6 has the Terrorist faction L337 Krew.
  • Qix. (Proof that it's this trope: The Sparx.)
  • DethKarz, a futuristic racing game.
  • Shuuz, a horseshoe-pitching Arcade Game.
  • The Just Dance series has a song called "Chiwawa" note .
  • SUPERBEAT XONiC
  • Dragon Ball FighterZ. Contrary to its stylization and the pronunciation of Dragon Ball Z, it is simply pronounced "Dragon Ball Fighters", making it this trope.
  • Pictured above, a recurring joke in the Club Penguin comics was a penguin who created X-Treme versions of the games by adding jet packs.
  • Moshi Monsters:
    • One shop is called Dodgy Dealz. Another is Katsuma Klothes.
    • There's a cereal called Katsuma Krunch.
  • The online flash game creator Sploder has a power-up called the Power Gluv.
  • Oddworld: The hick chicken folk encountered in Stranger's Wrath are called Clakkerz.
  • SimTunes: The little musical insects in the game are called Bugz.
  • Spyro the Dragon: Spyro's dragonfly sidekick is named Sparx.
  • Splatoon mostly averts this, which is surprising considering the whole 90's vibe the game is going for. Regardless, this shows up with the in-game Rhythm Game/Sound Test minigame, Squid Beatz.
  • BearZerkers
  • Yakuza 6: the street gang JUSTIS decided to spell "justice" with an S because... it was cooler? Subverted. It turns out the leader wasn't as good at English as he thought.
  • Linx: The game's title is spelled this way, rather than Links.
  • It's 10tons's Jydge not Judge. Jydge is a game in the Neon Chrome setting where Y occasionally replaces a vowel in a word. You're in the cyberpunk city of Edenbyrg not Edinburg and your Gavel Mk1 can fire heavy ryckets not rockets.
  • Boom Blox and its sequel have it right in the title. The word is always spelled as "Blox" within the games as well.
  • X-Kaliber 2097 - no, it's not "Excalibur", that's the name of your Cool Sword.
  • Flippin Kaktus: Even in the game, the Player Character is called a kaktus.

    Vizual Novelz 

    Web Anym@tion 
  • Parodied on Homestar Runner: the creators have intentionally used Xtreme Kool Letterz in ways that make no sense:
    • Spelling "awesome" as "awexome."
    • The best is "Videlectrix Kidx."
    • For April Fools' Day, they make an intro for HSR Xeriouxly Forxe. Homestar... er, "H. Star" pronounces this with each X as a "KS" sound, rexulting in him getting xcolded by "S. Bad," who replaxes all hix xibilant conxonantx with pronounxed X's.
  • DSBT InsaniT: The title of the series itself, which uses 'insaniT' instead of 'insanity'
  • RWBY: Raven Branwen and her twin brother are named after ravens and crows. Her brother was given his name because his Semblance causes misfortune and crows are considered a symbol of bad luck. He makes the best of it by having a reputation for being the heroine's Cool Uncle. That's why his name is spelled "Qrow".

    Webkomix 
  • Penny Arcade's Tycho has a fit when he hears about "Gamez N Flix."
  • In a similar fashion, Erin from Critical Miss has an "English gland" that flares up that flares when the language is abused, and becomes an Eldritch Abomination when she sees too much of this.
  • Khaos Komix. It fit the original comic a bit better than the current incarnation.
  • xkcd: The apparent acronym has no particular meaning, but hits a few kool letterz. According to the author: "It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation — a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings."
  • In Start of Darkness, a print addendum to the popular webcomic The Order of the Stick, Xykon's main goal while he was alive was to be a "badass evil villain". To this end, he not only invents a "cool-sounding name with an 'X' in it" for himself, he splits hairs over how people spell it.
    Xykon: ... and my name is Xykon.
    Right-Eye: Um, yes, OK, great and powerful sorcerer Zykon—
    Xykon: No, no, no! With an X, not a Z! Z's are for pussies.
  • A.I. in Schlock Mercenary sometimes use numbers to substitute for letters, and even whole syllables, in their names; for example, "5er0" (pronounced "Ver-None," with 5 substituting for its Roman equivalent, V) instead of Vernon.
  • Last Res0rt has it right in the title, though Word of God justifies it on the basis of having a hard time securing a domain name in the "correct" spelling.
  • Parodied in Overcompensating.
  • The title Loserz has to be a bit sarcastic about this.
  • Slackerz, (even in the title) alludes to this constantly.
  • And there's "Mylytant Femynyst" from Precocious, for the "wymyn" version (see below).
  • The trolls of Homestuck, who seem to be in a Lensman Arms Race for the most obnoxious IM behavior, among other things pathologically replace letters with Xtra Kool ones, or with numbers.
    • An update gave us the most literal example of this trope with Latula Pyrope.
  • Dan of El Goonish Shive sometimes uses these in the narration boxes.
  • Duzz talks like this in Luminary Children.

    Web Ureejnul 
  • LOLCats: I can haz cheezburger?
  • Meez was guilty of this, though it has improved over the years. It would lead to a lot of Narm.
    "You have received an infraction for violating the Meez Rulz."
  • From The Onion: "Alphabet Updated With 15 Exciting New Replacement Letters"
  • Atop the Fourth Wall has a running gag whenever someone uses this (or other bad grammar) where an echoey version of Linkara's voice appears along with the text "Because Poor Literacy is Kewl." Later episodes have him swapping out "kewl" for another word or phrase. Elsewhere, he'll use some variation of this phrase to denote mistakes that could have been proofread out.
  • Brutalmoose discusses this in his review of Razor Freestyle Scooter: "The next level is called 'Schoolz Out'...with a z. Because, y'know, z is the hippest letter of the alphabet. It's what all the kids are into."
  • The entrance of the FBI headquarters in an animated adaptation of Digimon 3: Predator Vs Digimon is marked with "FBI Hedqu4rtrz".
  • Manic Pixie Dream Wife: Episode "Dude, Your Wife Is Hotttt" has multiplied 't' for x-tra koolness.
  • Youtuber Simply Nailogical admitted that she named her old tomcat Zyler, because she came up with Tyler and wanted to spice it up a little.

    Westurn Anym@tion 
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Knock It Off", Professor Dick Hardly is selling his PPG clones under the name "Powerpuff Girlz X-treme", even going as far as calling Chemical X "Chemical X-treme".
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends gives us Jamez Withazee. Get it?
  • Clone High parodied this with a Totally Radical energy drink called X-Stream Blu.
  • Presumably, the reason SWAT Kats isn't titled SWAT Cats is because of this trope. The fact that the subtitle is "The Radical Squadron" seems to support that (as does the whole series' tone).
  • The Simpsons: Following the "Keystone Kops" example above, "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious" has Krusty the Clown (which is an example right there) hosting "Krusty's Komedy Klassic" at the Apollo Theater. He really shouldn't have put the acronym on stage in big white letters in front of that many black people...
    Krusty: Hey, hey! It's great to be back at the Apollo Theater, and... [notices the three white Ks behind him onstage] KKK? That's not good!
  • Also related to the above example, SpongeBob SquarePants's principle restaurant is titled the Krusty Krab.
  • Another early example of this trope being applied deliberately: Dragon Flyz (from 1996).
  • "Sonic Sez" from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Of note, though, is the fact that "Sez" was written by Tails in each case, and when Sonic appeared, he would correct it to "Says". "Sez" was also used on newspaper headlines decades before AoStH came about.
  • X-Men: Evolution has Spyke and Berzerker.
  • Galactik Football
  • In Batman Beyond's future, the streets of Gotham City are plagued by a gang called the "Jokerz." Bruce is not impressed.
  • Code Lyoko does this with the monsters: Kankrelat (from French "cancrelat"), Blok, Krabe, Kongre, Rekin, Kalamar, Kolossus... Justified in-story with Odd doing most of the naming, and that's just the kind of thing he'd do. On the same note: "Lazer Arrow!"
  • The world of Invader Zim has no school, but rather a "Skool." Although it's not there to be cool, just to show how crappy their world is.
  • Disney had also originally intended to use that spelling of the word for the title of The Emperor's New School. They also have the main character Kuzco, whose name came from the Peruvian city Cuzco.
  • The X-DuckX play this totally straight.
  • Futurama:
  • Though it's not really in the cartoons themselves, these fan-made profiles for Simba and Timon & Pumbaa spell The Lion King (1994)'s villain's name as "Skar", despite it being spelled as "Scar" everywhere else.
  • Ellipsanime's Xcalibur drops the E from the name of a certain legendary sword to supposedly sound cool.
  • Wakfu makes largely use of Sdrawkcab Name, but sometimes combines it with this for some names, like "Rubilax" ([Exc]alibur again), "Kabrok" ("corbac", French slang for raven), "Sybannak" (Cannabis)...
  • The Amazing Spiez!, a spin-off series of Totally Spies!
  • Two episodes of Jimmy Two-Shoes: "No Rulez Rules Jimmy" and "Team X-treme Team."
  • The title character from The Legend of Korra. At first, the creators could not find a name for her, but when they were staying in an eco-lodge, the owner introduced them to his dog "Cora". They agreed on the name and changed it to "Korra", most likely to fit into the Water Tribe's tradition of having "K" somewhere in their name, so this trope might be a coincidence.
  • Ratz
  • Lampshaded in the Robot Chicken sketch "8 Carrot".
    Daffy: B-Rabbit, you're on.
    Bugs: Eh, I told you, Daffy, my name is Bugs.
    Daffy: No, your MC name is B-Rabbit! We've got to appeal to today's kids! No longer Looney Tunes, we're "Lizooney Tizunes"! Woo-hoo! Real hip-hop, dawg!
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog has Cats Katz.
  • The Problem Solverz and many of its episode titles. Interestingly, "Zoo Cops" is an exception to this. And bizarrely enough, Problem Solvers is actually spelled correctly in the pilot (just not in the title).
  • Cubix: Robots for Everyone. Standard robots will have 'ix' on the end of their names, while Doctor K's creations always have a name beginning with K. Kolossal, Krab, Katastrophe, Klobber, Kannon, the Kulminator...
  • A short-lived Saturday-Morning Cartoon on CBS in 1998 was called Birdz.
  • In Daria: Mystik Spiral, Trent Lane's band. Though he might change the name....
  • The third season of Franklin and Friends has Aunt T.'s Karate Klub.
  • There's also Klondike Kat, which was produced by Total Television (the makers of King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo, and Underdog).
  • In the second Disney episode of Doug, Doug's new school is having a contest to see who can come up with a name. One of Skeeter's suggestions is "Kool Skool". He then has to point out he spelled it wrong on purpose.
  • In the Harvey Street Kids episode "Elder Skelter", Audrey is asked to resolve a dispute between Melvin and Fredo when the former wants to change the "s" at the end of the Bloogey Boys' name to a "z".
  • Phineas and Ferb: Buford ties his shoes with "Tuff Shoo Laysizz".
  • Kamp Koral
  • Hoze Houndz
  • Taz-Mania is set on the island of Tazmania.
  • Hazbin Hotel: The Egg Boys are spelled "Egg Boiz".

    TV Tropez Wyky 

    Reel Lyfe 
  • American English favors using a Z, instead of an S that sounds like a Z, in various words, including "recognize" and "analyze." This follows the general trend for American English to favor more symplified and phonetic spellings even when it messes with the etymology. However, 'recognize' (though not 'analyze') is a permissible spelling in British English, and is in fact closer to etymology: Latin 'izare', Ancient Greek 'izo, izein'. Spelling analyse with a Z is further from etymology, however; it is not '*anal' + 'ize' with an odd spelling shift, but a derivation of 'analysis'. The Z in '-ize' and 'lyse' does not simplify spelling, because the regular spelling for these words ending in similar sounds is S, and so a Z is aberrant. (This is not to say American spellings do not mess around with etymology, but only a few do: 'ae' and 'oe'/'e', for example.)
    • Inspector Morse once used this as a plot point; Morse noted that if someone were truly Oxford-educated as he claimed he would know his Greek roots well enough to spell "realize" with a "z", not with an "s".
  • America's Best Dance Crew is a particularly egregious example of this. Almost every crew have "kool letterz" their name, but as an example three crews have the word "crew" in their name. Here are the ways they spell that otherwise simple word: "Cru," "Kru," and "Cr3w."
  • For the same thing with different causes, see the womyn's movement and AZN pride.
  • Many of the baby names discussed at this page suffer from this. "Mackenzie" not unique and special enough? How about Makenzy? Mykynzy? Mkynzptlk.? Mxyzptlk?
  • When parents name their children with Xtreme Kool Letterz:
    • Common both in Brazil and in Hispanic countries around the Caribbean: many mothers (specially from poor families) like to put fancy, Xtremely Kool names on their children. From simply replacing 'c' with 'k' to entire contraptions with loads and loads of 'k', 'w', 'y', 'll' etc...
    • The tendency in Hispanic countries to uses names with a 'Y' somewhere, usually substituting 'J' if at the beginning of the name, and 'I' or the 'LL' sound if in the middle or at the end. The fad was so bad in Caribbean countries in general that Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez named her blog "Generación Y (Generation Y)", not only as a pun on "Generation X", but to point out the whole generation of people born from The '70s to The '90s saddled which such kind of names.
    • Filipino families today are guilty of naming their children with such names as Krizalyn and Johndex. And their names are written on their birth certificates. Their excuse is that the old Filipino names [taken from Spanish names] are a tad boring and the recent American names are quite becoming cliche, so they decided that it would be cool if they add an extra letter and change some letter.
  • The AHEM military contracting company formerly known as Blackwater has changed their name to Xe. One could say that these days, Blackwater's name is mud.... So they changed it. Plus, there is the irony of them changing their name to the chemical symbol of an almost inert gas. Rachel Maddow quickly took to pronouncing it "she."
    • In a further attempt to reinvent their PR image and distance themselves from their notoriety, Xe is now known as "Academi," which still hits this trope pretty hard.
  • There is a cable TV channel in Brazil (Telecine) that once a week broadcasts movies subtitled with Internet slang and Xtreme Kool Letterz.
  • A possible etymology for "OK" is that it was an Xtreme Kool Letterz version for "All Correct": "Oll Korrect".
    • There was a short-lived fad for these abbreviations around 1840, such as "KG" = "(K)no Go". OK seems to be the only one that caught on and lasted, at least partly because of its association with Martin Van Buren—his campaign actively linked the abbreviation with his nickname, "Old Kinderhook" (Kinderhook being his hometown in Upstate New York).
  • The Ku Klux Klan is clearly an example of this, and they have a potential to ruin an otherwise appealing use of Xtreme Kool Letterz when someone notices that the initials are KKK. Sometimes in comedy, as with Krusty's Komedy Klassic in The Simpsons or the Kappa Kappa Kappa sorority on MADtv, this unfortunate set of initials will be played for laughs. Remember, though, that Hitler Ate Sugar and this trope is still not a bad thing even though a group of equally repulsive racists has taken a liking to the use of Xtreme Kool Letterz.
    • In the 20s, a Klansman could meet at a Klavern to have a Klonversation with the local Kleagle. Don't know the rules? Don't worry, they're all laid out in the Kloran. (Apparently, the Klan had the same naming conventions as the Donkey Kong Country series.)
    • There's an urban legend that "Ku Klux" approximates the sound of a shotgun being cocked. Another idea was that "Ku Klux" is a bastardization of kuklos, Greek for "ring" or "circle". The Kuklos Adelphon was basically the KKK before it was the KKK. Rumor has it that "klan" was added to the end, because the founders of the KKK were Scots-Irish.
    • There are various theories (some with more credibility than others) about the origin of the name, but no one knows the true story. All of them, however, contain a tacit admission of "it was mostly done that way because it looked cool." Whatever the reason, it gave an unhelpfully tongue-twisting name that many people erroneously or accidentally render as Klu Klux Klan.
  • For trademark purposes, the Sci-Fi channel changed its name to "Syfy", which is Polish for "acne", and just happens to be (plural) short for syphilis. Parts of the sci-fi fanbase ran along with it. (No doubt you saw the subtle irony in the Polish translation.)
  • In the Japanese Writing System:
    • Using katakana in places where hiragana or kanji is normally used is something of an equivalent of Xtreme Kool Letterz. For example, オ早ウゴザイマス is considered more Xtreme than お早うございます. This is Older Than They Think: in medieval Japan, hiragana was considered an effeminate script, and many male writers used katakana instead. (Usually, when a character's lines are written in katakana, it's done to indicate that the character is speaking in a thick foreign accent or with No Indoor Voice. Katakana is normally used for loanwords originating in non-Japanese countries, especially English.)
    • There's also the inverse, writing foreign words in hiragana instead of katakana (example: "start" as "すた〜と" instead of "スタート").
    • Currently, it is considered 'kewl' to render foreign-originating words in Kanji for phonetic value ("Ateji", it's called; 'Touhou Project uses a lot of these, incidentally).
    • Using the archaic katakana wi (ヰ), wo (ヲ) and we (ヱ) as substitutes for i (イ), o (オ) and e (エ), which are pronounced exactly the same, in words such as "otaku". The 1946 reform of the Japanese language eliminated the use of wo within words, and abolished we and wi entirely.
    • When using romanized Japanese, using "c" to spell out syllables with "k" sounds... sometimes even before "i" or "e", which wouldn't work outside of Classical Latin.
  • The research paper database arXiv (the X is a Greek chi). Its pronounced "archive."
  • Aleister Crowley popularized the "Magick" spelling for magic in the modern western world. Now, there are people who spell it "majyyk."note 
  • All X-perimental aircrafts by the USAF, from the Bell X-1 to the Boeing X-53 are called X-planes.
  • The Old English/Old Norse letter thorn (Þ / þ) has been used in place of a p in the "tongue sticking out" emoticon. Conversely the ð in Skaði (pronounced like the th in thus) has been turned into a d among astronomers.
  • In the UK at least, it is common to give limited-stop bus routes a number with an "X" prefix for Express, although this goes back many years. Of cource whilst giving a bus route an "X" prefix doesn't make it sound cooler (try as they do, making buses "cool" is very hard), it does make it sound faster. It is not uncommon to find "X" routes that are far from express.
  • Kamaz. It is actually an abbreviation, standing for Kamsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or "Kama Automobile Plant" (Kama is the name of a river).
  • The '50s and early '60s hot rod culture favored the term "kustom", particularly in George Barris' Kustom Kars (Barris is famous for many awesome TV Kars, including The Munsters' family koach, the Monkeemobile, the General Lee and the Batmobile).
  • In 11 markets, Comcast has changed the name of its "Triple Play" service to Xfinity, probably under the belief that it is "contemporary." Furthering this delusion, they have covered the site with Klavika (a sans-serif typeface with squarish curves that has become a go-to "web 2.0" face). Their mobile Internet service, meanwhile, is the predictably "kewl" Internet 2go.
  • The Monster Raving Loony Party has purposely misspelled "Education" in their suggestions (2) page for their manifesto.
  • Toys "Я" Us. In this case, it owes more to the idea that kids sometimes write letters backwards when they're very young and just learning to write.
  • Native Instruments seem not to be able to decide between Xtreme Kool Letterz and Gratuitous German. Product names like Reaktor or Kontakt fall into both categories, Komplete falls only into the former, and Maschine falls only into the latter.
  • Roland's top workstation generations of the 21st century have been named Fantom. The true reason, however, is that they weren't allowed to use Phantom.
  • The Oberheim Xpander synthesizer.
  • Wichita Falls, Texas has a mall called Sikes Senter.
  • The Improv Comedy troupe known as Comedy Sportz.
  • The computer hardware manufacturer Asus has a range of "Xtreme Design" motherboards.
  • "Tyre". Sure, it's the legitimate British and Commonwealth (apart from Canada) spelling of the word (for "the rubber thing you put on a wheel" — as distinct from "to weary", which remains tire), but it sure rubs off this way to North Americans.
    • Ditto for "kerb" and "gaol", and first names like "Graeme" and "Huw" (which is actually just the Welsh spelling of "Hugh").
  • An Android OS Twitter Client was renamed Twidroyd from Twidroid after being bought by Idealab's Tweet Up. The reasoning for this is that Lucas Films owns the trademark for the word Droid, nevermind the other bamillion apps with Droid in the name that aren't being sued right now.
  • In U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering units, pavement and heavy equipment operators are also known as "Dirt Boyz."
  • In the Philippines, there is a language called jejemon which follows the rules of this trope. And yes, the Filipino grammar nazis hate them.
  • Raven-Symoné. The accent serves no obvious purpose, since it's pronounced "Raven-Simone".
  • Phreaking, a now-discredited trope. (When was the last time you saw a phone booth?) Also, fone cards.
  • Coca-Cola had Coca-Cola Blak, a mixture of Coke and coffee. Not only was the spelling altered in "Blak", but the "A" had what was supposed to be a breve (Blăk), but which looked more like a tilde (Blãk). Some forms of the logo even rendered the mark as a macron (Blāk). Of course, it was just supposed to be pronounced as "black", rather than the actual pronunciations for those graphemes (Blăk and Blãk would both be something like "bluck", and Blāk would be "blake").
  • Many Christian youth-oriented church groups have been doing variants on this since the late 80's and like most, it's questionable if there's any payoff for doing it.
  • The Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris, which houses international students at the various Paris learning institutions, has a lot of fun with foreign letters on its signs, such as this or this. They don't even stay consistent throughout.
  • There's an office building in the St. Louis suburbs called Cequel III.
  • Xtian and Xmas are common abbreviations for Christian and Christmas. The X abbreviation is taken from the Greek letter X or Chi, the initial of Christ, though some feel that such abbreviations are a little irreverent especially as the letter X can refer to "unknown".
  • Behold... the Chevrolet Cruze Wagon!
  • The Citroën Xsara. Pronounced "Zara" in UK adverts.
  • The AMC AMX. Its full name is the American Motors Corporation American Motors eXperimental
  • Car and motorcycle manufacturers in general are very fond of the letter X, as it can be associated with sportiness, technology and luxury.
  • The now defunct Burger Chef chain, which was sold to Hardee's, had sandwiches named the Super Shef and the Top Shef (a burger with cheese and bacon).
  • As mentioned above in Sportz, there was a ZZ naming fad in Utah in the 1990s. Another surviving artifact of that era is one Salt Lake City suburb's community festival: Taylorsville Dayzz.
  • Sheetz a Mid-Atlantic convenience store chain replaces the plural S with a Z for many of their menu items EX: Saladz & Wrapz. As well as including the letters SH. EX: Shmuffin or Shwings.
  • A once-popular fad that might have receded by now was making cubes ("squares") out of flavored gelatin. When Knox-brand gelatin was used, the cubes were affectionately called "Knox blox."
  • Some Blood and Crip sets change spellings of words to fit their gang mentality. Bloods will replace "C" with "CK" meaning Crip Killer wherever applicable (or replace it with a B, as in the phrase "bickin back being bool.") Alternatively, Crips will replace any "CK" with a "C", and would write "kick back" as "kicc bacc."
  • Tastee-Freez, an American ice cream chain.
  • Also Karmelkorn, a mall-based popcorn vendor. Once popular in malls through the 1970s, it's now down to about 25 locations, almost all of which are co-branded with Dairy Queen and/or Orange Julius.
  • Donut vendor Krispy Kreme.
  • The Spanish language has the "hoygan" 'dialect' for those people who don't give a flying rat's ass about spelling. The rules involve adding or removing random "h"'s anywhere (since it's a silent letter, you can put as many as you want and not notice a thing in the final pronunciation!), and switching "b" and "v" around (same pronunciation), "y" and "i" or "y" and "ll" (depending on the sound); "qu", "c" and "k"; "g" and "j"; and "z", "c" and "s" as much as you want. And, of course, no accents whatsoever. So "Hoy es un buen día" would become "oi ez un vuen dya". Enjoy the eyebleed.
  • Philadelphia snack cake company "Tastykake".
  • The Great Northern Railway Klondyke-class locomotive of 1897 , named for the Klondike gold rush that happened that same year. Both spellings had equal currency on the GNR.
  • Kampgrounds of America (KOA), an American campground franchise.
  • The word "laser" is often misspelled "lazer" despite being an acronym.note 
  • Futurama writer/producer David X. Cohen, whose middle name is actually Samuel. There was already a writer credited as David S. Cohen in the Writers Guild of America and members are not allowed to have the same name, so he changed his middle initial to X because it "sounded sci-fi-ish" and he thought it would make him "the David Cohen people would remember".
  • In the early 90s, a cooking-ware company *very* briefly applied this to one of their product lines, resulting in "Kook's Klub".
  • There was once a restaurant named Goombazz Big City Eatzz, most known for being the subject of an episode of Restaurant: Impossible. As the owner was an old man with a technophobic streak, the edginess was unintentional: When host Robert Irvine asked him about the spelling, he said that the double Z's come from the word "pizza."
  • SpaceX, a.k.a. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. Elon Musk's other company, Tesla, has a car called the "Model X" despite having only a handful of different models (the model numbers spell "S3XY"). He also set up an online bank called X.com (which later merged with Confinity to become PayPal), as well as an AI startup called xAI, named one of his children X AE A-XII Musk, and in July 2023, announced that he was rebranding Twitter as X. Musk loves the letter X.
  • Some fan conventions use a "K" instead of a "C" for "Con" (short for "convention"). Notable examples include A-Kon in Dallas and Otakon in Washington DC. Those two are justified examples: "A-Kon" deriving from Project A-Ko and Otakon being a play on the word "Otaku".
  • KDE, one of the many desktop environments available for Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems, runs on this trope. Its name stands for "K Desktop Environment", with the K not standing for anything, and many of its included programs have the letter C in their names replaced with K, such as Konsole, or Kontact, or even just slap K in front of other words, like Kmail, or Ktorrent.
  • House of Kolor, a division of Sherwin-Williams' subsidiary Valspar.
  • A small rollercoaster erected on Brighton Pier in southern England was initially given a name meant to be a cool-sounding version of "cyclone" until it was pointed out that "Zyklon" was the poison gas used in the Holocaust.
  • Fry's Electronics had their own exclusive brand of disposable compressed air dusters known as "Xtreme Klean".
  • There's been a push to popularize "folx" as a gender-neutral version of the word "folks", but it's gotten pushback from people who've pointed out that "folks" itself is gender-neutral.
  • Some English surnames that include "-icks" have "-ix" as an alternate spelling, most famously "Hendrix" instead of "Hendricks" (they both mean "son of Hendrick"), and "Nixon" instead of "Nickson" ("son of Nick").
  • Many, many tech companies, such as Lyft, Flickr, Tumblr, Disqus, Grindr, and Netflix. In this case, it has a practical use, as the misspelled names are easier to get trademarks for.
  • The marketing for Zorbaz, a chain of pizza restaurants located in central Minnesota, replaces the S's with Z's in words that contain the former letter (i.e. with items such as "Zpecialty Pizzaz").
  • Vegan or dairy-free cheese substitutes are often referred to as "cheeze", the misspelling in this case intended to indicate that the product isn't "real" cheese.
  • The term "warez" for pirated copies of software originated in the 1980s with a subculture of BBS "d00dz" who are said to have embraced this trope thoroughly.
  • In 2023, twitter was (partly) rebranded as X for this reason. This was some months after purchase by a new owner, who has wanted to do this for a long time. Much fun was made of the rename, as twitter with its symbol was a lot more unique than a simple X, plus other proposed changes sounded pretty silly.

Because poor literacy is KeWL!

Alternative Title(s): Xtremely Kool Letterz, Because Poor Literacy Is Kewl

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