Non Indicative Name / Western Animation

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• Adventure Time: Doctor Princess is neither a doctor nor a princess. Doctor is her first name, Princess is her surname. She does work as a doctor, but that's more because the hospital she went to get an X-Ray mistook her for one.
• Angel Wars: There are two angels who outrank the main characters who fall into this trope so neatly, you'd think someone on the production staff made a mistake about who is who, and then they just ran with it: one is named Swift and the other is named Paladin. One is a Large and in Charge Bald Black Leader Guy with the ability to cast Deflector Shields and weilds a large hammer. The other drives one of the fastest vehicles available, and was already the fastest angel in his whole fleet, even before he earned his wings. ...Respectively.
• In the Animaniacs episode "Plane Pals", the Warners are taking their first plane flight, and they sit next to an insufferable businessman named Ivan Bloski, who was forced to fly coach instead of first class due to a database error. Naturally, they provoke and tease him, notably during an airline safety video, where this trope comes into play.
  Safety video: Please note the air discomfort bags in your seat front.
  Wakko: (holding up a vomit bag) Hey, mister. What's this?
  Bloski: A vomit bag.
  Wakko: (looks into the vomit bag) Oh, poo! I got gypped; there's none in here!
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Meatwad describes his favorite game, "Clam Digger". It's about finding parking at the beach after making a bet with your friend that you can dig more clams than him.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Bloodbending involves all the water in a person's body, not just blood. Then again, humorbending doesn't exactly have the same ring to it. Similarly, Metalbending doesn't control metal directly, but instead the impurities of earth left behind in it (which is why bending doesn't work on more purified metals like platinum in The Legend of Korra).
  • In the episode "Jet" we are introduced to Pipsqueak and The Duke, a small, short boy and a muscly man who easily stands a few feet above most of the human population. Pipsqueak turns out to be the man and The Duke is the boy.
• BoJack Horseman is set in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist, and part of the gag is that real-life celebrities are turned into animals, punning on their names and surnames (e.g. Cameron Crowe, Cindy Crawfish, Quentin Tarantulino...). Some times however the gag is inverted or subverted. For example, Vanessa Gecko is a human, not a gecko. Oxnard (Mister Peanutbutter's accountant) is a meerkat, not an ox.
• Played with concerning the titular protagonist of Courage the Cowardly Dog. On the one hand, it seems to be Played Straight considering that a dog named "Courage" is afraid of pretty much everything. On the other hand, the things that terrorize Courage (monsters, aliens, psychopaths, etc.) are things that would frighten any rational person. Also, no matter how terrified Courage is, he'll face any danger to save his family, which is the exact definition of "courage". The truth is that the word "Cowardly" is the non-indicative part.
• Danger Mouse: One character is named Prof. Squawkencluck despite being a mole. Averted in the 2015 reboot, where he's now a chicken. The original Squawkencluck's name only made sense in his first appearance, where he did experiments on chickens.
• Doug: Doug Funnie isn't.
• The Dragon Prince:
  • Subverted For Laughs:
    Callum: The only catch is, the healer lives up there...the Cursed Caldera.
    Rayla: Please tell me it's named that because it was discovered by the great explorer, Sir Phineas Cursed.
    Callum: Well, actually, it's because it's infested with horrible monsters who—
    Rayla: Yeah, I know, I know.
    • Double Subverted because the Caldera is not, in fact, cursed, and the monsters are all illusions.
  • Villads is a pretty nice guy, considering that he named his ship The Ruthless. He explains that it's because his wife, Ruth, doesn't like sailing with him.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Christmas Every Day!", The April Fool gives us this line regarding Greenland:
  "Greenland. It's not green, and there's no land. What's up with that?"
• Futurama:
  • The team reads the grave of Fry's brother, who seemingly stole Fry's identity after he was frozen and became the first man on Mars. The person in question was actually Fry's nephew, Phillip Fry II.
    Leela: "Phillip Fry, the Original Martian."
    Fry: It's all lies, every word of it! He wasn't original, he wasn't a Martian, he wasn't Philip Fry, and since when is he a "The?"
    Bender: You're twice the "The" he ever was!
    • Even less correct when you consider that the Native Martians were there first.
  • Also:
    Professor: ...in the darkest depths of the Forbidden Zone
    Leela: Professor, are we even allowed in the Forbidden Zone?
    Professor: Why, of course! It's just a name, like the Death Zone or the Zone of No Return. All the zones have names like that in the Galaxy of Terror!
  • "Bender's Game" has the Cave of Hopelessness. Named after Reginald Hopelessness, of course. (Who was the first man to be eaten alive by the Tunneling Horror.)
  • The episode "Fun on a Bun" is actually a depressing drama.
  • One-time character Prof. Fisherprice Shpeekenshpell is actually based on another toy, a Mattel See 'n Say (also, the Speak & Spell was actually manufactured by Texas Instruments, not Fisher-Price).
• On Gargoyles, the race sometimes known as "Oberon's Children" are not actually his offspring (well, except for two who are); he's just their ruler. The race was known as "Mab's Children" back when his mother was in charge.
• Everyone in Gravity Falls is a tad strange...except, ironically, for Tad Strange, who is a Ridiculously Average Guy. Which kind of makes him strange by comparison.
• Hazbin Hotel has a character named Angel Dust who is addicted to cocaine, and not PCP.
• Hey Arnold!
  • One episode plays with this, when a Drill Sergeant Nasty Sadist Teacher notes that Curly's hair isn't curly and demands to know his real name. The odd thing is, he's right—Curly's real first name is Thaddeus.
  • The episode "Eugene Goes Bad" begins with Eugene watching his favorite show, which stars a vigilante known as the Abdicator. It's discussed when the actor who plays the character in-universe, ashamed of having made Eugene lose his faith in him after seeing him act like a primadonna, admits to his agent that he looked up the word "abdicate" and found that it meant to give up a position of power, so while it doesn't fit the character, it fits the actor because he abdicated his responsibility as a role model to children. Most likely, someone at the studio chose the name for the character because they thought it sounded cool.
• Horrid Henry:
  • Rude Ralph is actually one of the nicest characters on the show.
  • Perfect Peter isn’t “perfect” so much as a smug Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5: The titular team actually has six members when it is formed, as the number actually counts vehicles (the Cortez brothers teaming up inside one vehicle). They later add two more vehicles and drivers, although they usually only have five going into battle at a time. This briefly becomes plot-relevant when the team first encounters one of their new additions; thinking that they are his enemies, he captures most of the team, but assumes that the '5' means five people. This allows Zoom to get the drop on him.
• Inspector Gadget: Doctor Claw doesn't have a claw and probably isn't a doctor. The live-action films rectified this by giving their version of Claw an actual robotic claw in place of his left hand, which was crushed by a bowling ball. The first film also omitted the "Doctor" part from his name, but it was brought back for Inspector Gadget 2.
• Stumpy from Kaeloo has hands and feet. The original concept had him have stumps instead of hands, but this was changed before the actual show was made. It's even more obvious in the original French version, where his name is Moignon, the French word for "stump" (of a limb).
• The leader of the council of the Immortals in Rankin and Bass's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus was known as the Great Ak. He doesn't look much like an extinct bird...
• The titular character of Little Bill owns a pet hamster named "Elephant".
• Looney Tunes: The opening theme for the Buddy, Beans Gang, and early Porky Pig shorts is titled "Beauty and the Beast", but its first use, in the 1933 short "Buddy's Show Boat", predates the Merrie Melodies short of the same name(its actual title song is completely different), which itself has little if any connection to the classic fairy tale.
• Milo Murphy's Law:
  • This from the first episode:
    Milo: Actually, [Coyote Woods] were named after actor Peter Coyote.
    Zack: Really?
    Milo: Yeah, he donated all this land to the city. As a wolf preserve.
    (Howling in distance)
    Zack: You get how that's not better, right?
    (Smash Cut to them being chased by wolves)
  • In the later episode "Smooth Opera-tor", the opera that they're seeing focuses on two mob families named the Baritones and the Mezzo-Sopranos. However, as Milo points out, the Mezzo-Soprano parts are actually being performed by baritones.
  • In "Wilder West", they go to a dude ranch and Milo rides a horse named Psycho who, naturally, goes wild and tries to throw him off. When Zack asks if they can get him a calmer horse, the owner replies that Psycho is their calmest horse. "That's why we named him Psycho—on account of the irony."
  • "Party of Peril" features a character named One-Armed Willie, who notes that it's just a nickname, since he has both arms. And a peg-leg.
• Molly of Denali: In "New Nivagi," Molly explains on her vlog that she's making nivagi and calls it Alaska Native ice cream—and then goes on to explain that nivagi is neither iced nor made with cream. It is instead made out of chilled moose fat and fruit.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: In a similar vein to the Power Rangers Zeo example mentioned in the live-action TV page, one of the main villains is Queen Vexus, leader of the Cluster Empire.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • There is a place known as the Crystal Empire. It's actually a city-state within the kingdom of Equestria, whose head of state is a princess (albeit one implicitly lower ranked than the reigning Equestrian diarchy), rather than an empress. Back when it was actually independent, it was ruled by kings and queens rather than an emperor or empress. ^note It is made of crystals, though.
  • Equestria itself is ruled by a pair of princesses, rather than the queens that being called a "kingdom" (instead of a "principality") would indicate. Fans have come up with many explanations for this situation, though the Doylean reason is Good Princess, Evil Queen.
  • Countess Coloratura, Lena Hall's character from The Mane Attraction, is a mezzo soprano, and definitely not a countess either.^note The "countess" title is not literal, it was chosen for her by her agent, to "spice up" her real name to increase her popularity (for his benefit, of course).
• In Over the Garden Wall, the Beast is a Horned Humanoid, but other than that doesn't seem very "beastly", being Faux Affably Evil and relying mostly on manipulation. He also has an excellent singing voice, being played by a professional opera singer. ^note However, it becomes much more accurate if you subscribe to the theory that he's not a beast, he's the Beast.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Parodied in "The Wizard of Odd":
    Phineas: (After Candace and various others start falling from a plane) Wow, dumb luck. And over the Sea of Razor Sharp Rock Spires too!
    The Others: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
    Phineas: Good thing it was so inappropriately named!
    (Candace and the others land on ground made of pillows.)
  • Another episode has an over-caffeinated Dr. Doofenshmirtz naming his latest invention the "Luffaplux-Dil-Pickle-Inator". It makes things float.
• The Quack Pack version of Duckburg, unlike the one seen in DuckTales (1987) and in the comics, is actually not populated by ducks (or any anthropomorphic animal), with the sole exceptions being Donald, Daisy, Professor von Drake, and the nephews.
  • Also, Duckworth (Scrooge McDuck's butler), despite his name, is actually a dog.
• Regular Show:
  • Muscle Man is actually just a Fat Idiot. However, he is quite strong and in "Power Tower" it's revealed that he used to be extremely muscular.
  • Played with in the case of Skips, whose real name is revealed to be Walks in "Skips Strikes" — he changed it because people kept asking him why he skipped instead of walked.
• Rick and Morty:
  • In "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", Summer accidentally turns herself into a giant when using Rick's growth ray to increase her breast size. Against Morty's advice, Beth attempts to fix the problem herself, but makes things worse because the machine's settings are a case of this; when she sets it to "normal", Summer expands through the garage. When she sets it to "reverse", it turns Summer inside out.
  • There is the TV show "Ball Fondlers", which is similar to The A-Team and features no balls or fondling thereof.
• On Rocko's Modern Life, Heffer Wolfe is neither a heifer nor a wolf. Played with, however: he is a steer, and his last name comes from his adopted family, who are wolves.
• The cast of Shape Island became this due to the shift in medium. The books were in 2D while the show is 3D, meaning Square is a cube, Circle is a sphere, and Triangle is a pyramid.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The "Rebellion" is actually an alliance made up of the various kingdoms fighting the Horde, meaning they are the legitimate government resisting an invading force. Sure, the Horde insists that the entire world is theirs by right, but the princesses also call themselves the Rebellion when they should really know better.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Lisa On Ice", during Lisa's Imagine Spot about failing gym:
    Judge: I sentence you to a lifetime of horror on Monster Island! (aside) Don't worry, it's just a name.
    [Cut to Monster Island; Lisa and others are chased by lookalikes of Mothra, Rodan and Gamera]
    Lisa: He said it was just a name!
    Man Running Beside Her: What he meant is that Monster Island is actually a peninsula!
  • The same joke appears in "Simple Simpson", with a reality TV Show Within a Show called Promiscuous Idiots Island. The contestants are both shocked and betrayed to learn that the island is actually a peninsula, one of them wanting to get on the boat and go home. Naturally, the host points out that she can just walk there.
  • Subverted in "'Scuse Me While I Miss The Sky", with the Deadly Meteor Shower; Kent Brockman is apprehensive about this name, until Lisa explains that it was named after its discoverer, Professor Artemis Deadly — who, in a similar gag to the Futurama one above, was killed in the shower of 1853.
  • And in "The Color Yellow", Bart learns that the Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, and wonders why they didn't call it "the Above-Ground Normal Road".
  • The "Legitimate Businessmens Social Club" is actually a Mafia front.
  • This exchange from the "Treehouse of Horror III" story "King Homer":
    Carl: Hey, I hear we're going to Ape Island.
    Lenny: Yeah, to capture a giant ape. I wish we were going to Candy Apple Island.
    Charlie: Candy Apple Island? What do they got there?
    Carl: Apes, but they're not so big.
  • In "Bart On The Road", after watching Naked Lunch, Nelson remarks that there are at least two things wrong with that name.
  • In "Homer And Apu", Homer and Apu make a pilgrimage to the first convenience store, which (of course) is located on a desolate mountain peak.
    Homer: That's not very convenient!
  • In "A Milhouse Divided", Otto is disappointed that Stoner's Pot Palace is actually a kitchenware and home furnishing store instead of a cannabis dispensary.
    Otto: Man, that is flagrant false advertising!
• The Sonic Boom episode "The Sidekick" features Sonic going up against one of Eggman's robots, entitled "Burnbot". Said robot does not have any fire or chemical weapons, but claws instead. Sonic suggests using a name that isn't so misleading. Later in the episode, it is revealed that Eggman did take Sonic's advice by adding flamethrowers to Burnbot. Within the same episode, there's also the "incredibly dangerous, but inaccurately named" Mount Safety.
• South Park has the song "Kyle's Mom Is A Stupid Bitch In D-Minor", which actually begins on a D-minor chord, but then immediately switches to a major key—nothing sung by Cartman is in a minor key. This might be a reference to "Singin' in the Rain in A-Flat" — which is actually in E-flat.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • Neither the eponymous SpongeBob, nor his pants, are actually square. He and his pants are rectangular prisms composed entirely of rectangular faces. In earlier episodes, the faces that make up SpongeBob's front and back are closer to trapezoids.
  • Squidward is an octopus, not a squid. The name was chosen because the creators thought "Octoward" would sound clunky.
  • "Solitude in E Minor" is actually in F major.
  • The original track "Happy Sponge Chase Vibes" has never been used for a chase scene.
• Squidbillies: Played with on an episode where Early and the Sheriff go to visit a therapist. Turns out it wasn't a therapist, just a misreading on "The Rapist".
• Squiddly Diddly is an octopus, in spite of his name.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Terminal Provocations", Mariner complains that the isolinear core is referred to in the singular in the work order, even though the actual unit consists of a couple dozen cores that all have to be replaced.
• Steven Universe: Major spoiler example. Steven's middle name is "Quartz" after his mom Rose Quartz's Race-Name Basis culture... except that Rose was actually Pink Diamond, not a Quartz at all, and making Steven a Diamond too. By Steven Universe: Future he's cottoned on to this, and gives his full name as Steven Quartz Cutie Pie DeMayo Diamond Universe.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), Alopex is not an arctic fox (original scientific name: Alopex lagopus). This is because she's a Composite Character of several vulpine females from the franchise; her comics namesake is one.
• From Teen Titans (2003) the H.I.V.E. Five actually had six members in their third appearance, as Kid Flash quickly noticed.
• Transformers-related examples:
  • Transformers: Shattered Glass is a mirror universe story, where very few characters have changed names but nearly all have flipped personalities. This results in, among others, the dapper, cultured Abominus, the dashing, heroic Colonel Deathsaurus, Astrotrain, who doesn't turn into a train, Space Cowboy Bludgeon, and Whisper's No Indoor Voice. Sometimes, this gets a Hand Wave; Abominus named himself after a poem, and Whisper's name is apparently an Ironic Nickname.
  • Optimus Primal in Beast Wars is actually a reasonably cultured and disciplined character, not "primal" at all — except in one episode, where he's afflicted with a Hate Plague.
    • Primal's Japanese name, like Optimus Prime's, is Convoy despite the fact that Primal doesn't turn into a truck.
  • The Decepticon named Bludgeon tends to have a Samurai theme and is usually a Master Swordsman. He generally does not wield the kind of weapon he is literally named after. A figure based on him in Power of the Primes did come with a kanabo (basically a metal-studded club), though.
  • Arcee has never turned into a remote-controlled vehicle, instead typically having Cybertronian car or motorcycle alt-modes.
  • Thundercracker's weapons are incendiary, not electric.
  • The Seacon Nautilator actually turns into a lobster, not a nautilus. His Italian name, Medusa, is also non-indicative, as it means "jellyfish."
  • Similarly, the Maximal Claw Jaw turns into a squid rather than anything with claws. It might be a sidealong reference to a squid's beak.
  • Not all the Autobots turn into cars, trucks, or the like (examples include Jetfire, the Aerialbots, Windblade, Nautica, Blaster, and the Dinobots), and not all the Decepticons are good at or prefer using deceptive tactics, some opting for brute force and head-on attacks.
  • Bluestreak is a complicated case. The name is supposed to come from "talk a blue streak", which is an old-fashioned slang term for talking a lot—a pun that would work considerably better if he was actually blue, as opposed to the silver or black-and-silver he's most often depicted as. There does exist a variant of his mold, only sold in Diaclone, that actually was blue and showed up in promotional materials and on his packaging art, but it was never sold as Bluestreak himself. A handful of Bluestreaks since then have been blue, in reference to the whole messy situation.
  • Hound's alt-mode is typically a jeep or humvee rather than a dog.
  • Nightstick turns into a gun, not a nightstick.
  • Afterburner is a motorcycle and thus doesn't actually have his namesake as part of him.
  • Broadside's alt-modes are an aircraft carrier and a fighter jet, neither of which can actually perform a broadside.
  • Ramhorn's never been a ram in any form, either a rhinoceros or a rhino beetle.
  • Ramulus is closer, but he's an ibex, a type of goat, rather than a ram.
  • Similarly, Bighorn is an American buffalo/bison rather than a bighorn sheep.
  • Technically speaking, Swoop and Paddles can't be Dinobots because pterosaurs and plesiosaurs aren't dinosaurs.
  • The G1 Predacons include Headstrong (a rhinoceros) and Tantrum (a bull/buffalo), neither of which are predators. Some of the Beast Wars and 2001 Robots in Disguise Predacons are also herbivores, such as Bazooka the Ankylosaurus, Drill Bit the boll weevil, Dark Scream the flying squirrel, Hardhead the Pachycephalosaurus, etc.
  • There have been toys based on the Rescue Bots version of Blades (who typically turns into a helicopter, hence the name) that instead turn into jets (though it could be argued that it still fits to a degree because jet engines have blades) and one that turns into a pterosaur.
  • Subverted with some of the Autobot characters in Transformers: Animated: In-universe, Jetfire and Jetstorm were the first Autobots ever to have aircraft-based alt-modes; however, there were several Autobots (mostly in supplemental material) who shared names with aircraft-based Autobots from previous continuities, but came before the Jet Twins and thus couldn't have aircraft-based alt-modes. However, their names were typically explained by saying things like "He's named Powerglide because he's a pilot."
  • Jetstorm's been around since G1, but he only started turning into a jet starting with Beast Machines. His G1 and G2 incarnations turned into cars and his Beast Wars incarnation turned into a dragonfly (though they could all shoot jets of water), with the only incarnation to not turn into a jet since Beast Machines being the 2015 Robots in Disguise version, who's a disc-shaped Mini-Con.
• Tuttle Twins: In the second half of the "When Laws Give You Lemons", we have a town located in the wild west named "Quiet Valley". Cue woman screaming from a distance. Justified, because the town was once peaceful before it had to put up with two bandits whose goals are to steal people's cows.
• The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald has a pirate named One-Eyed Sally serve as the villain of the second video "The Legend of Grimace Island". While she wears an eyepatch, it is shown that both of her eyes are okay, so she apparently only wears it for show.
• Work It Out Wombats!: Lampshaded in "Make It Snow." Zadie is disappointed that the Everything Emporium doesn't sell snow, and says it should be called the Everything But Snow Emporium.

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