Non Indicative Name / Live-Action Films

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• Abbott And Costello Go To Mars: Despite the title, the title characters go to Venus, rather than Mars (though Mars was their original intended destination).
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a borderline case. Frankenstein being the monster gets a pass. But the duo also meet Dracula and The Wolfman, making the title very reductive.
• In Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, you'll never expect the big reveal that the mysterious killer is not Boris Karloff's character! Though he does try to make Freddie (Costello) commit suicide.
• Abduction features no kidnappings whatsoever.
• In Airheads, Chazz's rock band has three members and is called The Lone Rangers. Ian the DJ points out that they would more accurately be called The Three Rangers.
• At no point in the Alone in the Dark (2005), are any of the characters ever alone in the dark. They are either with someone else at the time, or they are not in the dark. The film was based on a video game in which the player character is alone in a haunted house.
• In the documentary American Movie: The Making of Northwestern, the subject Mark Borchardt quickly abandons his more ambitious feature film Northwestern and instead finishes "Coven," a black-and-white short film.
• Antichrist: The Antichrist never shows up in the film, nor does anything explicitly Satanic aside from certain references by She. The title comes from the original ending, where it's revealed that Satan made this world as opposed to God.
• The world doesn't end in Apocalypse of the Dead^note Then again, apocalypse doesn't mean "end of the world", but instead "unveiling" or "revelation" (the original name for "Book of Revelation" was "The Book of the Apocalypse", with the apocalypse being the unveiling of future events to John.)
• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) actually takes place in "Precinct 9, Division 13." The title was chosen by the film's distributor, who basically thought "Precinct 13" sounded cool and ominous.
• Atlantic Wall: The eponymous Atlantic Wall (beach fortifications) built by the Germans in occupied France is actually never seen, not even the beach of the Normandy coastal town where the film is mostly set. The only things that could more or less said to be part of it are the German Anti-Air batteries that shoot Jeff's Avro Lancaster bomber down at the beginning.
• The titular character of Axeman is more of a Psycho Knife Nut than an axeman, though he does wield an axe a couple times.
• The titular battle royale tournament in Bad Times at the Battle Royale is more of a sporting tournament than non-stop fisticuffs. According to Hélène, the fine print on the poster even acknowledges how inaccurate of a name it is. As does one of the commentators, Chris P. Bacon, at the start of the Ping-Pong match. Even the trailer calls it the "inaccurately-named yet incredibly varied battle royale tournament."
• Woody Allen's movie Bananas doesn't have any bananas in it. In an interview, Allen admitted he gave it that title for that very reason. It is set in a very stereotypical Banana Republic, for what that's worth.
• The Barbarian Invasions is not a Conan the Barbarian-ripoff, but a story about French Canadian intellectuals talking about sex, aging and politics. Its predecessor The Decline of the American Empire is, well, more of the same.
• Batman:
  • In Batman Returns there's no indication whatsoever that Batman has been absent from Gotham for an extended period of time nor does he at any point in the film make a grand return of any sort. The title is apparently a reference to the fact that Batman has "returned" to star in another movie.
  • Batman Forever: The Nygma Tech Box. It looks like a blender with fins, and it's not boxlike at all.
  • Batman & Robin is not entirely about the titular duo, although one subplot has them go through a bit of a fallout because Robin is under the influence of Poison Ivy's spores. Also, Batgirl is introduced and featured throughout the film; as pointed out by some critics, it would've made more sense if it and Batman Forever swapped titles.
• There are no Beatniks in The Beatniks and it's really not clear why it's called that, though viewers have speculated that whoever came up with the title was under the mistaken impression that "beatnik" was slang for a teenage delinquent, which is what the movie is actually about.
• Beetlejuice. The title character is not a beetle (though he briefly transforms himself into one) and has nothing to do with juice. In fact, technically speaking, "Beetlejuice" isn't even his name; he is known officially as "Betelgeuse" (like the star in the constellation Orion, which apparently has nothing to do with the film, making it in itself an example!), and "Beetlejuice" is simply a folk etymology (phonetic rendering) of the true spelling. That said, Betelgeuse does eat a raw beetle.
• The protagonist of Big Daddy is neither big (he's average-sized at best), nor a daddy (well, not until the final scene, at least). And at no point does he ever hold a position of authority over others, which is what the metaphorical "Big Daddy" refers to.
• Dr. Leopold, the doctor in Blood Waters of Dr. Z does not have a Z anywhere in his last name. This was actually because the film's real title was Zaat, but it was never released in theaters because the distributor unexpectedly went bankrupt at the last minute. It was released on video under a number of different titles. In this case, whoever released it mistakenly thought that "Zaat" was Dr. Leopold's name.
• Blue Monkey was originally titled Green Monkey, even though there's no monkey of either color in the film.
• Bolero has no bolero. At most it has Bo Derek, while serving as a reminder of 10 (1979), where both her and Ravel's Bolero were featured.
• In Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, there was no mention of any "Book of Shadows."
• The Terry Gilliam movie Brazil does not have a single scene set in Brazil, nor is the country relevant to the plot in any way or even mentioned once. Its only significance is that an old song titled "Brazil" is played throughout, perhaps because its romantic imagery provides a thematic counterpoint to the bureaucratic police state in which the story takes place.
• The Brain That Wouldn't Die doesn't feature a Brain in a Jar: The title is most likely referring to the character Jan, who spends most of the film as a living severed head, not just a brain. You could also argue that "Wouldn't Die" should be "Couldn't Die": "Wouldn't" implies that she refuses to die, when in fact she's being kept alive against her will and repeatedly begs for someone to kill her. The Working Title was the more accurate The Head That Wouldn't Die, but the film makers decided to follow a trend of sci-fi b-movies with "Brain" somewhere in the title.
• Bringing Up Baby is a misleading movie title. Who would have thought Baby was a leopard. And the story has little to do with any bringing up.
• Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror only took place over the course of one night.
• The Candy Tangerine Man: Despite what the theme song implies, the protagonist's pimp name isn't "The Candy Tangerine Man." It's "The Black Baron."
• Cave Dwellers, Film Ventures International's re-release of The Blade Master. The cave dwellers only appear for a few minutes and have nothing to do with the plot. It would be possible to completely edit them out without making the film much more awkward than it already is.
• In Chinatown, only the very last scene takes place in that neighborhood of Los Angeles. However, Gittes does use Chinatown as a metaphor a few times.
• Clash of the Titans does not in fact involve any Titans, clashing or otherwise. Their existence is acknowledged in the backstory, but by the time the plot starts they've all been defeated. Though it incorrectly refers to a Gorgon's head being used to fight a sea monster as "a titan against another titan."
• Mr. Green in Clue. All of the other guests have Meaningful Names that reflect their appearance or attire, but Mr. Green does not wear green or have green eyes or hair. In some versions of the film, he's under an assumed identity, and therefore a "plant."
• The Curse Of The Cat People doesn't involve a curse, and you'd be hard-pressed to see what it had to do with any "cat people" unless you saw Cat People, the film it was a sequel to, first: Irena, one of the characters from the first film, appears as a ghost in the sequel... But her involuntary shape-shifting into a cat is never brought up or seen, and it's totally irrelevant to the plot at any rate.
• Nobody is simultaneously a cyborg and a cop in Cyborg Cop. However, a cyborg is made out of a dead cop's body.
• The Day After Halloween, the Market-Based Title under which Snapshot (1979) was released in the US. This film actually has nothing to do with 'Halloween' whatsoever. It is neither set on the 1st November nor is it significantly a horror movie like Halloween (1978)'' but more a suspense-thriller.
• The Dead Are Alive does not feature any undead, despite all the film's advertising trying to convince viewers otherwise. The film actually is a proto-Giallo with characters being offed by a very human killer. In fact, the main character specifically dismisses the possibility of the dead being alive within the first 15 minutes of the movie. Its Italian title translates as "The Etruscan Kills Again," which is equally inaccurate.
• No ducklings get tortured in Don't Torture a Duckling, though a mutilated Donald Duck doll turns out to be an important clue.
• The Shaw Brothers film, Dragon Swamp, has a swamp, but no dragons. The monster living in the swamp is actually a plesiosaur-like Stock Ness Monster. Justified however, since the film is set in the Ming Dynasty (a long time before the term "Loch Ness Monster" was even invented) any large, reptilian-like monster would simply be referred to as a "dragon".
• In Dr. Dolittle, Rodney the guinea pig ponders how he came to that name, since "I'm not Italian, and I'm not pork."
• Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is not actually the third installment of a series. The two previous movies it purports to be based on don't actually exist — which is the joke.
• In Evan Almighty, unlike Bruce Almighty, where the title character was briefly given God's powers, the protagonist Evan never gains any supernatural powers, let alone becomes almighty. For that matter, the Evan of this movie barely has any resemblance to the one in Bruce Almighty, showing how it was an unrelated script turned into a sequel.
• The Evil of Frankenstein is actually the Hammer Frankenstein film that depicts Baron Frankenstein (as usual played by Peter Cushing) as somewhat sympathetic. He's more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist in an unsupportive world that just thinks that all Science is the work of the Devil. The truly evil character is Zoltan, the hypnotist who tries to use the monster for his own murderous purposes.
• In The Extra Girl, the main character's misadventures in Hollywood never actually include being employed as an extra. She works in the wardrobe department, and has one disastrous screen test for a leading role.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: The subtitle, "The Crimes of Grindelwald", gives the audience the impression the film's focus will be on Grindelwald's Reign of Terror. In truth, the main focus of the film is Credence and the various factions hunting him down for their own reasons - the wizarding governments of the world consider him too dangerous to live and all the Aurors in the world are looking him with orders to kill on sight, Dumbledore, Newt, and Tina believe he can be redeemed and want to save him, while Grindelwald wants him as a Living Weapon for his cause. In the end, Grindelwald is the winner.
• Fargo has one scene set in Fargo, North Dakota. The rest of it takes place in Minnesota.
• Flash Gordon does not, in fact, conquer the universe in the serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.
• Frankenstein does not conquer the world in Frankenstein Conquers the World.
• Frankenstein's Bloody Terror is about...werewolves. Fighting vampires. This is actually Handwaved in the prologue, which explains that the family of werewolves that in the film is actually descended from the Frankenstein family. The reasons behind the title change are more interesting than the actual film. The US distributor promised theaters a Frankenstein picture, but ran out of money midway through production. In desperation, they acquired the rights to an unrelated Spanish picture called Mark of the Wolfman, added the aforementioned prologue, and released it hoping that no one would notice.
• In a similar vein to the Star Wars lightsabres, the titular weapon in Full Moon Scimitar is shaped like a half moon.
• Future War. Take a wild guess as to whether or not it takes place in the future. Now take another wild guess as to whether or not it's about a war.
• Ain't no ghosts in Ghost World. It works pretty well as a metaphor though.
• Godzilla:
  • The word "Gojira" is a portmanteau of "kujira" (whale) and gorilla. Early on in the production, they hadn't decided what Godzilla was going to look like, and the pretty cool name for one scrapped design was eventually combined with a different, really cool design...of a lizard.
  • There's no such monster as "Astro-Monster" in Invasion of Astro-Monster; the Big Bad of the film is King Ghidorah.^note  The original Japanese title was 怪獣大戦争 (Kaiju Daisensō), roughly meaning The Giant Monster War Averted with the film's alternate English title, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero; "Monster Zero" is a code name used for King Ghidorah by the Xiliens.
  • All Monsters Attack was renamed in America as Godzilla's Revenge, although at no point in the film does Godzilla really get "revenge" on anyone. Technically, he doesn't even exist in the context of the film; his scenes only occur with the imagination of a little boy who's a fan of Godzilla movies. The title All Monsters Attack is slightly more accurate... but the monsters, again, are only "attacking" as Stock Footage in the boy's imagination.
  • Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II is not a sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. The two films don't even take place in the same continuity (the latter film was made after the Continuity Reboot The Return of Godzilla). It's not even really a remake, strictly speaking; it features a significantly reimagined version of Mechagodzilla, who's a heroic Humongous Mecha built by humans (instead of an evil one built by aliens).
  • Godzilla's arch-nemesis, King Ghidorah, has a signature attack known as Gravity Beams. However, they're always portrayed as bolts of lightning which have no anti-gravitational effect. The only time they actually did manipulate gravity was when they were being used by an Expy of King Ghidorah in Godzilla: Final Wars.
  • A Justified Trope in Godzilla (2014). M.U.T.O. stands for "Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism," and it originally described the so-labeled beast pretty well. However, the label became obsolete with a recent development, in which Stenz describes the creature as "no longer terrestrial" in movement. It still applies to the female one, however.
• The title and theatrical poster for the Chinese film, Gone With the Bullets, implies it to be a John Woo-esque action film with shootouts-a-plenty, Heroic Bloodshed style. It's NOT, its actually a 2 hour 21 minutes drama movie about a beauty pageant, with a lot of talky scenes.
• Gorilla, Interrupted: The title is a reference to Girl, Interrupted, but it isn't a parody of that film or have anything to do with it. It does have a Killer Gorilla, but he's only one of four main characters, and the plot does not revolve around him.
• In Guns, Girls and Gambling, John Smith keeps pointing out 'The Girl Next Door' is an inaccurate descriptor for Cindy because he doesn't actually live in the apartment where she first met him. It is later revealed that she doesn't live in the building either.
• The Hong Kong film Hak se wui yi wo wai kwai is known as Election 2 in English. It isn't a sequel to the American film Election or any other film. The American release fixed this by naming the film Triad Election.
• Haunted Honeymoon: The characters are not on their honeymoon. In fact, they're not even married yet.
• The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia is not set in Connecticut, but it is in Georgia.
• At no point during Help Me, I'm Possessed is anyone possessed.
• High School Musical 2 has nothing to do with a high school musical. In fact, the movie takes place during summer vacation with the characters working at a country club.
• Holocaust 2000: The movie doesn't take place in the year 2000, and the plot is not related to the Holocaust (it's only briefly mentioned when the villain explains his plans for a nuclear holocaust). Instead, it's a Religious Horror film about The Antichrist set in the 1970s.
• The main character of Home Alone: The Holiday Heist is never home alone. His sister was in the house the whole time, though she does get locked in a room at one point.
• House of Dracula. There's a house, and Dracula is there (among others), but it isn't Dracula's house.
• House of Frankenstein: Not only does the house not belong to Frankenstein, but no member of the (by this point, quite extensive) Frankenstein family even visits. The Monster stops by, though.
• In both House of the Dead movies, the first one has a house that's actually a small shack, while the second has an entire college campus.
• Not one drop of blood is spilled in The House That Dripped Blood.
• No one wakes up screaming in I Wake Up Screaming.
• One of the three Incredible Hulk TV movies, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, plays with this trope. Bruce... or rather, "David" Banner^note Bruce is portrayed as being his middle name...just like in comics, although in the latter, he prefers to go by his middle name, rather than his (real) first name, Robert. is awaiting trial for a crime he didn't commit (with Daredevil as his lawyer, no less), but neither he, nor the Hulk are ever actually seen in a courtroom, let alone on actual trial. That said, there technically was a trial with the Hulk (now in his trademark purple pants) being tried, but that turned out to just be a dream sequence.
• The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (famously riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000) is about a single ordinary (if poorly written) human being who gets lightly scarred by acid and hypnotized to become a mindless killer, remaining 100% alive and un-mixed-up for the entirety of the story (at least until he's shot and killed by the police, at which point he stops living and becomes dead). The weird title also implies that the film is some sort of comedy or parody, when it is in fact played completely straight.
• It Comes at Night: How the title relates to the film is unclear. There is no apparent "it" that "comes at night." The title and marketing imply that there is some sort of supernatural menace in the film, but it's mostly about survivors of a supervirus; there might be some sort of supernatural menace involved somehow, but it's ambiguous at best.
• It Conquered the World: It didn't even conquer a small town.
• The classic Frank Capra romantic comedy It Happened One Night takes place over several nights, and no one of them is more significant to the plot than any other.
• The 1958 film It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Needless to say, a monster that comes from Mars is not from "beyond space."
• Joey (1997): The train station in Harrisville's "Midnight express" leaves at 1:00 am. Naturally, the midday train leaves at 1:00 pm.
  Billy: But if it's the Midnight Express...
  Ticket Master: Son, I've worked here for 32 years and I still can't work it out. You asked me why the midnight express doesn't come through at midnight. I tell you, because we don't have a midnight express that comes through at midnight. Any train station worth the tracks it's laid on needs a midnight express. The closest express we've got coming through near midnight is at one o'clock, so by process of elimination, that's the midnight express.
• In The Karate Kid (2010) remake, there is still a kid, but he does not do any karate. It's set in China, so he learns kung fu instead.
• The titular protagonist of Kid Detective (2020) is very decidedly an adult. He was, however, a kid detective 18 years before the film's events.
• The titular "kid" from The Kid with the Golden Arm is played by a 24-year-old actor. The movie tries to justify this by saying he's been trained in the martial arts skill of the Golden Arm since he was a kid, and somehow the name got stuck.
• In the second Kill Bill movie, Bill comments that there weren't 88 members of the Crazy 88; they just called themselves that "because it sounded cool."
• Is there a Kiss of Death in 1947 Film Noir Kiss of Death? No, no there is not.
• Krakatoa, East of Java. Krakatoa is, in fact, west of Java, but they wanted a more exotic-sounding title.
• The weapon in Krull is identified as "The Glaive". It isn't a curved-blade polearm, but rather a starfish-shaped throwing weapon. Even if you take the older meaning of "glaive" as "sword", it doesn't fit. Due to the film's popularity, a number of other works have named similar weapons "glaives", such as Warcraft and Blade: The Series.
• Kung-Fu Master! (1988): What sounds like a cheesy martial arts flick is actually a pensive French drama about the relationship between an adult woman and an underage boy, who's a fan of the video game Kung Fu Master. According to Varda, many distributors were misled by the title.
• Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. Is he a cable guy or a health inspector?
• The Last Boy Scout does not feature any boy scouts (current or former).
• Toho's Latitude Zero features a monster named Black Moth. Take a wild guess what the monster is. Go on... Give up? It's a flying lion/eagle hybrid.
• The 1921 comedy Leap Year is called that for no apparent reason. Feb. 29 is never mentioned and it's not really clear what time of year it's supposed to be.
• Legend of the Dinosaurs doesn't technically feature any dinosaurs, only a plesiosaur and a pterosaur.
• Licorice Pizza features neither. The title is a nickname for vinyl records (they're big black disks, after all), by the way of an eponymous record store, both of which also are not in the movie.
• In Love and Death, Old Nehampkin is younger than Young Nehampkin. Woody Allen's character lampshades it while delirious later in the movie.
• While Toecutter from Mad Max is a brutal thug, he never cuts off anyone's toes.
• There are three unrelated films called Madhouse, only one of which is actually set in a mental institution. The 1990 John Larroquette and Kirstie Alley film is about a house being overrun by uninvited guests that could figuratively be called a "madhouse." In the 1974 Vincent Price film, it's a plot point that Price's character was once in a mental institution, but no scenes actually take place there. The Vincent Price one was originally going to be called The Revenge Of Dr. Death or The Return of Dr. Death, both of which would have been more descriptive of the plot, but the producers thought it would be mistaken for a sequel; It didn't help that there had been a recent film called Dr. Death, Seeker of Souls either.
• The Magic Blade is a kung-fu film that runs on Wire Fu and loaded with swordplay. but precisely none of the onscreen weapons used are magical.
• A Man Called Tiger doesn't have any character with the name "Tiger", nickname or otherwise.
• The Man With Two Heads only has one head. It's an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, Tony Stark's first suit was made from steel scrap parts, but his later ones are more advanced. He lampshades the trope when he first sees the media nickname:
    Tony Stark: Iron Man? That's kinda catchy. Not technically accurate, since it's a gold-titanium alloy, but...
  • In Iron Man 3, the fortune cookie example in the Real Life page is used in one of the Mandarin's speech videos.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron draws more inspiration from the Ultron Unlimited storyline than Age of Ultron (though the latter is later visited in a What If...? episode). In a similar vein, Avengers: Infinity War is mostly based on The Infinity Gauntlet, not The Infinity War.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, we meet the King of the Dwarves... who turns out to be a giant easily twice Thor's height. With the proportions of a human with dwarfism.
• Masked Avengers: The guys in the masks aren't the ones doing the avenging. They're the ones having vengeance wrought upon them.
• There are no dinosaurs (or any other prehistoric beasts, for that matter) in Massacre In Dinosaur Valley.
• Meatcleaver Massacre has nary a meat cleaver in sight.
• The 1990 Cher film Mermaids has nothing to do with mermaids at all; it's a Coming of Age dramedy about a single mother and her two daughters.
• The Mexican is not any person from Mexico. It's a gun from Mexico.
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation does not feature a nation going rogue. Instead, it is about a criminal syndicate claimed to be as big as a country, or is at least acting as in independent country. Effectively, a nation of rogues.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Black Beast of Aaaaargghh is actually green.
• Musa, called The Warrior in English, is not about one specific warrior. It has an ensemble cast, with three characters that more or less share the main spotlight.
• My Little Sister: The killer of the movie is a grown man known as the "Little Sister".
• In Mystery Men
  • The Blue Raja's costume consisted of almost every color except blue! There's also the issue with his British accent instead of an Indian one. But apparently, that has more to do with people not knowing the history of India and the British occupation... blah, blah, blah.
  • Then there's also The Spleen, who named himself after a body part that has nothing to do with his superpower. It may be a play on the saying "Vent your spleen," where you generally let loose with a rather noxious rant. And The Spleen does vent something quite noxious when he uses his power.
• Mystic Pizza isn't about pizza that is somehow mystical. It's the name of a pizza joint in Mystic, Connecticut, where the main characters work.
• Naked Lunch. "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title".
• National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets actually centers on finding a lost city of gold. The Book of Secrets is only a single road sign on the way to it. To put things in perspective, this is like giving the first movie the subtitle of "Ben Franklin's Letters."
• Never Say Never Again: The title has nothing to do with the plot of the film. It refers to Sean Connery returning to the role of James Bond after saying that he would never play the character again. Connery's wife suggested the title and is actually acknowledged for it in the credits.
• The 1955 William Castle crime film New Orleans Uncensored was approved under the The Hays Code and complied with its content restrictions, albeit during a less strict regime than during the 30's and 40's.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge: Freddy returns, but he isn't getting revenge on anyone. Nancy, the only survivor of the original film is not in this one, and she didn't even beat him then, prompting no actual revenge. There is also no hint that the kids' parents in this film were responsible for killing Freddy; Jesse's parents in particular only recently moved into the neighborhood.
• The Taiwanese period film, Ninja Wolves doesn't have any ninjas or wolves.
• 99 Cycling Swords is a kung-fu movie... with nary a sword in sight. Everyone fights with Good Old Fisticuffs for the entirety of the film.
• When American International Pictures picked up Jess Franco's Witch Hunt opus The Bloody Judge for American distribution, they re-titled it as Night of the Blood Monster and printed up posters featuring a suitably horrific "Blood Monster" that naturally never appears in the movie itself.
• No one ever gets strangled in Night Of The Strangler, though there are several murders committed through other methods. It also takes place over the course of several days rather than a single night.
• At the end of The Night The World Exploded, the Earth remains intact and unexploded.
• The Swedish movie November 30 actually takes place around June 6, the National Day of Sweden. The title comes from the fact that its theme is neo-Nazism and November 30 is a date when Swedish neo-Nazis often march to commemorate the death of King Charles XII.
• On the Waterfront: Johnny Friendly is by far the least friendly character in the movie.
• Our Friend Power 5:
  • The "Battle Soldiers" aliens are apparently very peace-loving, and struggled to fight back against The Shark Gang when first provoked.
  • The "Shark Gang" are a race of evil rat-like aliens.
• Pan's Labyrinth. The faun is never referred to as "Pan" in the film. The Spanish language version of the title translates to "The Labyrinth of the Faun."
• Peelers: The infected in the movie are never really referred to as "Peelers".
• Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge has a title that makes it sound like a sequel, which it isn't. It's been speculated that this was done as a marketing gimmick; horror franchises were big at the time, so audiences might be more inclined to buy tickets if they were fooled into thinking it was the latest installment in some long-running franchise they'd somehow been missing. There is at least an antagonist named Eric who is motivated by revenge, though it's debatable whether he successfully gets it.
• The Pink Panther movies are not about a feline. The "Pink Panther" is a diamond that plays a major role in some, but not all, of the films. The cartoon panther that originally appeared in the first film's credits, also called The Pink Panther, took on a life of its own as a film and TV cartoon character and advertising mascot.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean
  • The titular curse in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl isn't actually on the Black Pearl, it's on the crew of the Black Pearl; their connection to the Black Pearl had nothing to do with them winding up cursed. And though there is indeed a cursed treasure in the movie, it's a chest of golden coins.
  • The Flying Dutchman, which, unlike in the original legend, does not move through the air, and is not Dutch. Its captain is a Welshman with a Scots accent.
  • The Nine Pieces of Eight from At World's End are not coins, but random pieces of junk. This is both lampshaded and justified in-universe: they used junk because the founding pirates were flat broke, and called them "Pieces of Eight" because they thought it sounded more pirate-y than "Pieces of Whatever We Happened to Have in our Pockets At The Time."
• For MST3K fans, Pod People. As Dr. Forrester says, "It has nothing to do with pods... it has nothing to do with people... it has EVERYTHING to do with hurting."
  • To be fair, this title was foisted on a re-release of the English dub^note It was originally titled Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, "The New Extraterrestrials," about which the best that can be said is that it isn't non-indicative per se. by Film Ventures International, which also gave us the almost equally non-indicative title Cave Dwellers for The Blademaster (which has cave dwellers in all of two scenes that could be cut without significantly changing the plot).
• The Pope Must Die was forced to be retitled "The Pope Must Diet" in some areas due to controversy, even though no dieting occurs in the film.
• In the Predator movies, the eponymous aliens aren't actually predators since they don't hunt people for sustenance. They are actually trophy hunters. Tellingly, in the original film the characters call it a "hunter" as opposed to a "predator". This is finally fully addressed in The Predator by the biologist character. The government agents stick with "Predator" because it sounds cooler. She is very appreciative when she meets people who agree that "predator" isn't the right term.
• The Princess and the Warrior is about a modern-day nurse and a former soldier turned thief.
• There are no mentions of any prophecies in Prophecy.
• The titular vengeance demon of the Pumpkinhead series does not actually have a pumpkin for a head.
• Subverted by the film Raazi. Raazi is based on an espionage novel called Calling Sehmat, where Sehmat is the name of the female protagonist. When the film came out, a lot of viewers questioned whether the title "Raazi" had any connection with the plot. Turns out, the word "raazi" and the name of the female protagonist, "Sehmat", both mean "willing" in Hindi and Urdu.
• Rain Man is not about a man who is associated in any way with rain. "Rain Man" was what Charlie called Raymond when he was a little kid; as an adult, he misremembered Raymond as an imaginary friend called the Rain Man.
• Reservoir Dogs is not about dogs in reservoirs. While working at a video rental store, Quentin Tarantino thought the made up title sounded cool during a conversation.
• In Return of the Killer Tomatoes, the giant killer tomatoes from the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes don't actually return; this time, the threat comes from tomatoes who've been mutated into living super soldiers indistinguishable from humans.
• In the movie Revolver (2005), none of the guns are revolvers, and nothing rotates. It's, like, a deep metaphor, ya know?
• The Room is not about a room. It does have a great many scenes taking place in Johnny's apartment, but it is not the focus of the film at all. If you take director/writer/star Tommy Wiseau's word for it, it's about Johnny's Happy Place, but even that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. According to his friend/co-star/line producer Greg Sestero, The Room is an Artifact Title from when the story had been written as a stage play, which took place all in one room, and was never changed.
• Safety Patrol: Scout's friend Lefty is right-handed.
• Santa does not in fact, conquer any Martians, at least not in the traditional sense in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
• Shanghai Affairs, a 90s kung-fu film starring Donnie Yen, isn't set in the titular city. The entire film takes place in a rural farming town.
• The Market-Based Title of Skyfall for Latin America is "Operation: Skyfall". The Title Drop is actually The Namesake (it's the Bond family manor, important to James' backstory and the location of the climactic battle).
• Sorcerer isn't about a wizard. It's about truck drivers transporting nitroglycerin in a truck named Sorcerer.
• Bobby Fischer never appears in Searching for Bobby Fischer. In fact, nobody really searches for him in the film. Searching for the Next Bobby Fischer would have been a more accurate title.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events features the Incredibly Deadly Viper—not so incredibly deadly. Justified because it was intentional by Uncle Monty in order to scare the rest of his colleagues as revenge for all their mocking of his name.
• Shaun of the Dead: Protagonist Shaun remains alive throughout the movie.
• Singapore Sling doesn't take place in Singapore. The title refers to a certain brand of cocktail, which a character is named after, but the beverage itself doesn't appear at any point in the film.
• Snatch.: The man known as Boris the Blade, Boris the Bullet-dodger and Boris the Sneaky Fucking Russian is an Uzbekistani who prefers to fight with guns and doesn't so much dodge bullets as absorb them.
• Common among the original cast Star Trek films:
  • What is often called "the trilogy", without qualification, refers to films II, III, and IV, which more or less tell one very long story split across three films. All other Trek films are self-contained.
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is not about the crew finding Spock after he has gone missing. They know all along where Spock is. The movie is actually about retrieving Spock from that location and the perils they go through to do so. However the Added Alliterative Appeal won out over a more accurate title. And of course, it wouldn't have ended with Admiral Kirk turning to the viewers and saying, "Sorry folks, we didn't find him." As William Shatner put it, if they had done so, "people would have thrown rocks at the screen." ^note  The title is also a reference to the Leonard Nimoy series, In Search of....
  • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has a title that is vague to the point of irrelevance, in addition to being inaccurate - the Enterprise had been to the galactic core before (albeit only on TAS, which didn't "count" under canon policy at the time) and her crew had certainly encountered many godlike aliens before.
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: The term "undiscovered country" is a reference to Hamlet, in which it is used to refer to death. This was a Working Title for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where it would have been a more fitting reference (since death is an important theme of that film). However, director Nicholas Meyer was overruled, and one of his conditions for returning to direct VI was that he would get to use the title for this film. In this film, the "undiscovered country" is peace - between the Klingons and the Federation.
• Star Wars: Many weapons use terminology that is not specifically correct. For example, lightsabers aren't shaped like sabers, and are made of plasma not light. There are also blaster rifles, which don't have any rifling. Turbolasers do not fire true lasers. Ignoring the inherent pseudoscience of the futuristic weaponry, new weapons often sport names that are based on older technology, such as "howitzer" being based after the Czech word for sling.
• The titular "faceless giants" in the Italian sci-fi superhero film Superargo and the Faceless Giants do have faces and are of normal human size.
• Surveillance doesn't feature surveillance.
• Swing Parade of 1946. At no point does a "Swing Parade" actually occur, much to the consternation of the RiffTrax crew. In fact, very little, if any, of the music in the film is swing to begin with, most of it being more general big-band standards or light musical ballads. The only swing actually in the movie is provided by Louis Jordan and his band, and if you were watching the film in 1946 in the South or other places where laws or customs dictated the excising of blacks from films unless they were servants or Pullman porters, you were pretty much out of luck.
• Tarzan's animal friend Cheetah isn't a cheetah, he's a chimp.
• A Teenage Opera, a late-1960s movie which spent a few years in Development Hell before finally being scrapped, wasn't an opera (though it was a musical) and had few if any teenage characters.
• Teenage Zombies doesn't feature any zombies, and has a cast of "teenagers" that look to be days away from a midlife crisis.
• In 13 Frightened Girls, there are, in fact, fifteen girls. They aren't especially frightened, either.
• Several characters were deleted from the final version of Thirteen Women, including those played by Leon Ames, Phyllis Fraser, and Betty Furness (in what would have been Furness's film debut at the age of 16). As a result, the film portrays only eleven women, not thirteen, with Fraser and Furness playing the two characters edited out of the film.
• 300: Rise of an Empire only features one of the original 300.
• Guess what doesn't happen in Toga Party.
• At no point during Trainspotting do the characters watch trains. The title has more relevance in the original novel, however. It's alluded to in one of the trailers as well, but in a way that has nothing to do with either the book or the film.
• Triassic Attack is a Syfy Channel Original Movie about revived dinosaur skeletons going on a rampage. All the dinosaurs in question (three total) are from the Cretaceous.
• Troll 2 is about goblins, not trolls, and is not a sequel to Troll. Furthermore, there are two different films that go by the title Troll 3; neither of them are about trolls and neither of them are sequels to either Troll or Troll 2.
• This exchange in True Lies:
  Faisil: They call him the "Sand Spider".
  Trilby: Why?
  Faisil: Probably because it sounds scary.
• Twice-Told Tales: Only one of the three stories ( "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment") in this Anthology Film actually appeared in the collection Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• Tyrannosaur: Despite the title and the poster having the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus buried underground, this dramatic film about domestic violence, rape, revenge, and suffering has absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs. Turns out, the movie's title is actually a metaphor for the whole story.
• Hanuman vs. 7 Ultraman: Hanuman and the Ultras are on the same side. At no point did they fight each other.
• Ultraman Gaia: The Battle In Hyperspace doesn't have any battles in Hyperspace. The closest audiences get is Ultraman Dyna fighting the flying monster Bajiris in the Earth's atmosphere.
• The Viking Queen does not have any vikings, nor does it take place during the time of the Vikings. It takes place during the Roman occupation of Britain, and the titular Viking Queen is actually the leader of a tribe of British Celts. The title uses Viking in its more literal sense^note e.g. raider, plunderer instead of the more specific appellation that people associate with the term.
• Viral: The infection that the movie follows isn't viral, it's caused by a parasite.
• Volcano has no volcano in it. Rather, it has a lava vent issuing magma, and... that's it.
• The film version of Watchmen does include a superhero team called "The Watchmen" (unlike the graphic novel) but they aren't the protagonists of the film—they were a proposed team that was never actually formed. All of the main characters are independent vigilantes with no allegiance to any team, and (apart from Rorschach and Nite Owl) none of them ever fought crime together.
• Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory. The werewolf never actually gets into the dormitory. He mostly just wanders around the grounds.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant learns that the Title Character has a wife named Jessica Rabbit—not knowing anything else about her, Eddie (quite logically) assumes that Jessica's a rabbit like her husband is. But when she comes out for her performance at the Ink & Paint Club, it turns out that Jessica (though a Toon just like her husband) is technically a human and that "Rabbit" is just her married name.
• Witchfinder General was also released as The Conqueror Worm despite having little to do with the Edgar Allan Poe poem, although a portion of it is recited toward the movie's end. Vincent Price was in it, so presumably it was titled that way to attract fans of all the Roger Corman-directed Poe adaptations he'd starred in.
• Zombi 2 (known in America as Zombie, known in some other places as Zombie Flesh Eaters) is not the second "Zombi" film, it's the first in its series. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released in Europe under the title Zombi, and the Italian producers decided to capitalize on its success by claiming that their film was actually a sequel or prequel (which it wasn't), much to the director's Lucio Fulci chagrin.
• Zombie Holocaust was released in some places under the title Zombi 3, trying to do to Fulci what Fulci did to Romero. In other places, including America, it was released under the title Dr. Butcher M.D., Medical Deviate. There isn't a character named Dr. Butcher in the film, and the evil Doctor character only shows up in the finale of the film. Even the titles Zombi 3D and Zombie Holocaust are rather inaccurate- the film is predominantly about LIVING cannibals, while zombies only show up for small portions of the tale.
• There are no zombies in Zombie Island Massacre or Zombies Of The Stratosphere.

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