Lousy Alternate Titles - TV Tropes

Sometimes titles just don't work. They're too short, too long, too vague, or just plain wrong. So we are glad those aren't the titles for certain tropes.

But What If?...

Dun dun dadaldadalduun!

...they were?

This is where we think of the worst possible titles for existing tropes.

Compare Laconic Wiki, Renamed Tropes, I Thought It Meant (lousy definitions for trope titles).

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Examples are alphabetized by trope name:

To begin...

• This page is called Lousy Alternate Titles because Goofing Around by Spelling Out the Meanings of the Tropes With Profanity and Bold Inflation is too long.
  • And it's still shorter than What If Encyclopedia Dramatica Wrote Our Trope Titles?.
  • Also, Really, Really Lousy Alternate Titles That Are Way Too Long And Usually Complain About Tropes, Tropers, And Pretty Much Everything is too hypocritical, and Self Demonstrating Trope Titles doesn't actually apply to all of them.
  • Trope Names That We WOULD Have, If Some Tropers Weren't Too Chicken to Request a Rename — Yeah You in the Folding Chair, I'm Talking About You isn't even true.^note 

A

• Abduction Is Love: So we were sitting unsuspecting in the Trope Renaming Bureau when this guy walks in.

Guy: I want to rename a trope.
We: Which?
Guy: Abduction Is Love.
We: Why?
Guy: Too ambiguous. Does "Is Love" refer to the abductor or the abductee?
We: Hmmm...You have somewhat of a point...well, you could always use Stockholm Syndrome instead...what is your lousy suggestion?

And then he suggested Uncle Fucker.

So, last we heard of the guy is that he's Cerberus' favorite Butt-Monkey now. We hope you learnt to go the official way to rename a trope. Now if we can only get this dumb South Park tune out of our heads…

• Accidental Misnaming isn’t called SpringBoob SquirePin because of Fan Myopia and being an opaque character name. Even It Would Seem I Have Made an Error in Pronunciation from the same scene is overly long and could be confused for something else.
• Accidental Nightmare Fuel is not called What Do You Mean, It's Not Horrifying? because it's an unnecessary snowclone.
• We already tried "Han Shot First" for Adaptational Self-Defense, and it caused some problems then. If we called it Greedo Shot First, there would be an Angry Mob of Star Wars fanboys at our doorstep.
• Adored by the Network is not Teen Titans Go! Syndrome, because it's too much of a Take That!, is completely meaningless unless you watch Cartoon Network, violates Trope Namer Syndrome, and we had this trope long before Teen Titans Go! was even a thing.
  • It's not named SpongeBob SquarePants Publicity for similar reasons.
• Age-Gap Algebra is not as judgemental as Good Grief, Folks. Just Date Somebody Your Own Age.
• We picked A God Is You instead of You Shall Be As Gods because the game that phrase comes from unfortunately isn't an example.
• And then there was this guy who suggested for All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles Munihausen by Proxy. We forcefully dressed him up as a Japanese schoolgirl and still wait for a short-sighted tentacle monster passing by.
• All-Blue Entry isn't called Linking Park because we want to keep the inane puns at least out of the administrivia.
• Allegedly Optimistic Ending is not named HAPPY END!! because it is too obscure a reference and does not illustrate the concept at all.^note 
• All Men Are Perverts is shorter and less presumptuous than What Happens when the Creator of a Work Assumes that All Men are Exactly Identical to Him in Attitude and Desire. It's also not a snowclone like No Asexuals. Not to mention none of these actually explain the trope.
• Calling it All Planets Are Earthlike explains the idea better than Like Humanity Unless Noted, and not everyone's familiar with certain Tropes of Legend.
• All Your Colors Combined isn't called Taste the Rainbow, Motherfucker! since even without the swearing, it's still an ambiguous meme-based title.
• All Deaths Final isn't called People Die if They Are Killed, since that's a Captain Obvious meme and not really an example.
• Alternate Character Interpretation isn't called Chara Protection Squad since it makes no sense to those outside the Undertale fandom and is named after a Walking Spoiler.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song is not Sorry, America, We At 4kids/Saban/Whatever Don't Think The Japanese OP Appeals To Kids, So We Replaced It With This Song That Will Become a Meme because that's too bashy. Nor is it called Awesome Music.Italian Cartoon And Anime Themes.
• It's called America Saves the Day instead of America! Fuck Yeah! because we try to avoid swearing in titles unless it's absolutely necessary.
• One day we might call Amoral Attorney He's a Lawyer! Aaah! Aaah!...but not before "Weird Al" Yankovic sung that.
• Anachronism Stew is a shorter and snappier title than Clone Troopers Don't Appear In The Phantom Menace.
• We originally had TJWNDHZKFVLPIQTLY. However, none of us could pronouce it, so we had to change it to Angrish.
• Animesque is shorter and snappier than I Can't Believe It's Not Anime. It's also not a snowclone, unlike What Do You Mean, It's Not Anime?
• Anthropomorphic Food is self-explanatory and not a stupid pun on another trope, unlike The Cake is Alive.
• The Renegade is actually a pretty good alternate title for Anti-Hero. The only reason it can't be called that is because the trope has existed years before Mass Effect. And when we say years we mean years.
• Answers to the Name of God is not God... frey Williams because not everyone has seen that episode of The Simpsons and it wouldn’t be an example anyway.
• Apologises a Lot is nowhere as ambiguous as The Neverending Sorry.
• An Arm and a Leg is not called Skywalker Syndrome because the Skywalker family is best known for losing hands, specifically.
• It's called Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking because Furries, Loli-Porn, and Dubs is too much of a gratuitous Take That! to the anime fandom. And furries, of course.
• Artifact Title is much snappier than The Title Used to Make Sense, and Then the Series Changed in a Way That Doesn't Fit With the Title, But We're Sticking With That Name Anyway for the Sake of Familiarity.
  • TV Tropes Syndrome also doesn't work because we are far from the most notable example of this trope and it'd probably confuse people anyways.
• Artistic License is really a much nicer way of saying YOU FAIL A SUBJECT FOREVER!!!.
• We chose Elements Do Not Work That Way as a redirect to Artistic License – Chemistry. Heisenberg Will So Kill You For That seemed unnecessarily threatening.
• It's Artistic License – Physics because We Forgot The Newton Laws! is too specific, and also sounds like an in-universe character's failure to take Newton's Laws into account, rather than a creator's misunderstanding of physics.
• Artistic License – Paleontology was chosen because Somewhere A Paleontologist Is Standing On A Chair, Giving The Middle Finger, And Screaming "FUCK YOU!" was deemed a little too manly.
• Artistic License – Sports is less confrontational than If You're Going To Write About Sports, Do The Fucking Research Or All The Nitpicky Sports Fans Will Complain About All This Stuff You Got Wrong.
• It's called Ascended Glitch because We Didn't Mean To Do This, But The Fans Liked It So We Kept It In is a little too honest.
• Ashcan Copy gets the definition across much better than Fantastic Four Syndrome.
• We call it Aside Glance instead of *Stares Into the Camera Like They're on The Office* because it's too long and we generally try to avoid making tropes that sound like Cue Cards.
• It's called Ass Kicks You because Butt Butt would have been too much of a pun, even for this site.
• It's called Ass Pull because it describes more payloads than Deus Excreta, which in turn would be confused with "Deus ex Creta", which literally translates to "god from Crete".
• A-Team Firing relies on a far less obscure reference than This Is Why You Research Ballistics^*.
• It's called Atomic F-Bomb and not Big Fuck because, again, we try to avoid swearing in titles, and because that sounds like an orgy, like the person who's behind all the sex in the work, or sex with or between large characters.
• Audience-Alienating Premise sounds much less threatening than Whoever Greenlit This Deserves To Die.
• Author Filibuster sounded a little better than For Some Reason, The Writer Thinks You Give Two Shits What His Opinion On Anything Is.
• Award Snub is a shorter, more explanatory title than Kendrick Lamar Syndrome.
  • Same goes for Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!
• Awesome Music could've been called Headbanging Moments, but people would've had it confused with Headdesk.
• We chose A Winner Is You because YOU'RE WINNER! looks not nearly as professional.

B

• We called it Back from the Dead instead of Dead But Not Out because... no-one thought of that.
• Thanks to Trope Namer Syndrome, Bald of Evil won't be called Lex Luthor Syndrome.
• Becoming the Costume is pretty self-explanatory, while calling it Fabric Conditioning is clever but also a lot harder to understand.
• Being Watched could be called Somebody’s Watching Me, but then it could be confused as a subtrope for Paranoia Fuel.
• It's called Belief Makes You Stupid because it's very self-explanatory. Mormon Tapirs is way too obscure a reference and would distract from what the trope is actually about.
• Best Known for the Fanservice is more subtle than saying Screw The Plot, There's A Hot Topless Chick!
  • And Plot With Porn is way too harsh (in most cases). And already used as a redirect for Explicit Content (which naturally overlaps with this trope).
• Beta Test Baddie wasn't called Incomplete Monster because, let's face it, someone would find a way to start a Flame War over it.
• Better Than It Sounds is called that because Making Good Fiction Seem Like Crap And Making You Guess Which Fiction It Is is a lot to type.
  • And also because Adventure Ho is too specific to one show.
• Beware the Nice Ones is a lot more self-explanatory than GET ON THE TRIKE!
• We don't have enough German speaking tropers for getting the pun in Heavy Mädel to use it as an alternate for Big Beautiful Woman or any other trope about fat women.
• Big-Breast Pride (or related tropes) should in no case be named 1 Girl 2 D-Cups. The fact that it's misleading would be only the slightest problem.
• Big Brother Bully isn't called The Rodrick because not everyone's read (or watched) Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
  • Nor is it Eddy's Big Brother, because that's a spoiler.
• They call it Big "NO!" because nobody can remember just how many letters are in NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Ditto with tropes such as:
  • Big "YES!" (YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!),
  • Big "NEVER!" (NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!),
  • Big "WHAT?!" (WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTT!!!),
  • Big "WHY?!" (WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!),
  • Big "OMG!" (OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!), and
  • Big "SHUT UP!" (Shut UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPP!!!).
  • Big Word Shout (Khaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!)
  • Kiai (Wryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!)
  • Sssssnake Talk...oops.
  • Berserk Button (FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...!!!) actually would be a good idea, as we know it's exactly 23F, 17U.
  • Another possible name for Big "NO!" would have been Vader No, but it existed long before Revenge of the Sith came out and isn't even what Darth Vader is most known for.
• Bizarre Instrument has a better ring than You'd Have To Be High To Think That Could Actually Make Music.
• Play it As It Lies isn't a terrible alternative to Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game, but it only accurately describes half the trope (the other being an unlikely chain of events involving the golf ball).
• Black-and-Grey Morality isn't Warhammer 40k School of Ethics for two reasons. Firstly, Warhammer 40k fans often disagree about who is and isn't moral. Secondly, and this may be surprising to long-time fans, not everyone has heard of Warhammer 40k.
• It's called Black Sheep Hit because it's shorter than If We'd Known This Was Going To Be The Only Song You Remember Us For, We Never Would Have Done It.
• Bold Inflation requires less knowledge of our wiki than That Way We Format The Titles On That One Just For Fun Title Page.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick wasn't called Arson, Murder, and Genocide because... God knows why.
• Breakout Character, because Everybody Loves Elsa is a character named trope, and it might be confused for being about some form of Crossover.
• Breast Attack is short and not a dumb pun, unlike What's The Breast Spot To Strike On A Woman?.
• Buccaneer Broadcaster isn’t named Mexican Radio because it’s too Americentric of a name for a much more universal trope of “unlicensed radio stations operating outside the law”.
• We made a blood pact to never rename Butt-Monkey Megward the Wizard because the trope was around waaaaaaay before Meg Griffin, Squidward Tentacles, Kyle Bloodworth-Thomason, and Mr. Enter came to be.
• Buxom Beauty Standard isn't exactly the most subtle trope title, but it's significantly less blatant than Busty Makes Me Feel Good.

C

• Someone suggested that Canis Major be named I Like Big Mutts And I Cannot Lie . We suggested they seek help.
• Canon Character All Along is more transparent and less punny than Canon Fauxreigner, and avoids being a snowclone.
• We don't call Can't Take Criticism Screw All You Fucking Doubters! because our title is more concise and doesn't contain swearing.
  • And even if the trope was made later on, the idea of naming it Do You Guys Not Have Phones? is dead in the water.
• Capcom Sequel Stagnation is better than Super Ultra Ultimate Hyper [Insert Game Title Here] Turbo HD Remix Arcade Edition because it's less confusing to remember.
• It’s The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires instead of The Capital of Turkey is Istanbul because Istanbul, though not the capital, is at least in Turkey.
• Cast from Money isn't called Cast From Currency because... that's just not what we went with.
• When someone suggested Bustline Combat for Cat Fight, a bit of googling turned up that the pun a) has been taken and b) to make it worse, for a very NSFW work. No. Way.
• We at TV Tropes love our obscure words used in the proper context. But nonetheless we chose not to name Caustic Critic Floccinaucinihilipilificator, because it would have led to so, so many typos.
  • Alternatively, we could have called it Asshole Critic if the Wiki didn't treat them as gods at the time of the page's creation, along with it begging to turn each example into a potential Edit War.
• Chart Displacement is short and easy to remember. Did You Know That Band Had Other Songs That Charted Even Higher Than The One You Remember Them For? isn't. And that's without naming specific artists and songs.
• One guy came up with the suggestion to replace Chaste Hero with Wouldn't Hit On A Girl. We sent him to the Department of Ill Conceived and Overly Ambiguous Snowclones, room 239A. Hopefully, he still searches.
• It's called Chekhov's Gun because Look At Me I'm A Plot Device! is just a tad snarky.
  • And calling it Sulu's Sword would be confusing.
• Why leave The Chessmaster with such a boring name when we can give it the clear and definitely-not-confusing name of The Xanatos?
• Cherry Tapping may be slightly confusing, but communicates the weak choice of attack with the "tapping". Disrespectful KO or Most humiliating defeat are far too vague to the point that it could refer to its opposite.
• It's called the Chewbacca Defense because Total Bullshit Argument would just be rude, and would most likely turn into a Pothole Magnet for complaining.
• Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs could have been aptly named Sugar Porn...the problem is less the porn (we have a lot) but specifically the trope Food Porn which could lead to confusion.
• Calling Christmas Miracle Santa Fu being a Pun is not the problem. Rather it's the fact that probably only a citizen of Hamburg will find it funny. ^note 
• Someone suggested Chute To Kill as a name for Chute Sabotage, but the idea went down the chute.
• We went with City Mouse rather than The Dude because not everyone is familiar with that word's meaning as "inexperienced cowboy".
• Cluster F-Bomb is generally easier to remember than Fucking Fuckheaded Show That Fucking Likes To Fucking Use The Fucking Word "Fuck" All The Fucking Time, and you couldn't use it in polite company. Also, it's punnier.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Like is a long title, but Presenting Subjective Opinions Of Things You Don't Like As Objective Fact In A Way That Will Just Start An Argument is even longer.
• Complete Monster is a concise way of saying Worse Than Satan, Stalin, Hitler, Nero, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, And Bin Laden Combined.
  • And please, for the love of all that is holy, don't rename it to The Ghetsis.^note  Don't ever rename it to The Jack Horner, either.^note 
• Complete-the-Quote Title isn't anywhere as snarky as Hey, We're So Clever, Why Don't We Name The Work After The Least Relevant Part Of The Quote Relevant To The Subject At Hand?
• Conspicuous Consumption is shorter and more accurate than Imma Be Brilliant With My Millions.
• Constantly Changing Name is more straightforward than Sam Sinister Syndrome.
• Conveniently Empty Building is less reliant on a somewhat obscure meme than Too Bad It's Sunday.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive is a better title than The Modern HRV Media Group due to unnecessary Take That! in the latter.
  • For similar reasons we can't call it The Walt Disney Corporation, Apple, or The College Board.
• Crack Fic sounds much better and nicer than Oh my god what the actual frick is this why would anyone write this oh god my eyes! That and it's really long.
• We call it Crack is Cheaper because Hasbro Owns Your Soul hit a bit too close to home for some people.
• It's Crack Pairing because Shipping Of Two Or More People That Rarely If Ever Interact With Each Other Or People That Hate Each Other And Would Never Think Of Loving Each Other In A Million Years...Or Just Mind Screw Pairings is way too long.
  • And because That Ship Pairing Is No, Just... No. What The Hell Is Wrong With You?! was a little too mean-spirited.
  • And Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight is meme-based, ambiguous, and too much of a Take That!
  • And Bullship was rejected because nobody wanted to risk someone adding ships involving actual bulls.
• Critical Backlash is so called because Flak Lash was way too lame of a pun.
  • We also can't call it And Please, Don’t Call Them My Movies because it's long and, more importantly, requires you to have read a difficult to find blog post.
• Calling The Cuckoolander Was Right Listen to the Voice of Butters is already bad as Butters is not the best example of a cloudcuckoolander, so the fact that no one gets The Human League reference is rather irrelevant.
• We call it Cultural Translation since 4Kids Hates Riceballs is too much of a Take That!, and Brock's Jelly-Filled Donuts and Eat Your Hamburgers, Apollo make no sense to most people.
• Cut a Slice, Take the Rest is a lot shorter than Cutting Out A Small Piece Of Something Implying That You Are Going To Take The Small Piece But Actually Taking The Whole Rest.
  • And it's nicer than Hey, If You Cut A Small Slice, Take The Small Slice, You Dickhead!.
• Cuteness Overload is more specific than He's So Fluffy, I'm Gonna Die!.

D

• Damsel Scrappy is the name, since Useless Chick Who Does Nothing But Get Kidnapped And Scream proved to be a tad long-winded, and it's more polite than Dumbass In Distress.
• Darker and Edgier just works. Ow The Edge is far too negative and Meme-based names are frowned upon.
• Dark Fic works a lot better than and is less mean than Adult themed canon-violating Fan Fiction.
• Dark World is a better title than The Veil since not everyone has played Wolfenstein and it's far from being a good example.
• It's called Darth Wiki because on the one hand, someone would have objected to This Is Where We Put Our Answer to /b/tards, and on the other hand, B is too short.
• Because the term Death of the Author existed for years before this wiki existed, let alone a certain meme, it will not be changed to Hatsune Miku Wrote Harry Potter.
• This Idea Is Bogus And You Should Hang Yourself For It does not even remotely begin to describe what Deconstruction is about, even if many think it does, and as a description is closer to Audience-Alienating Premise.
• It's called Demonization because Lying About Shows You Don't Like is only part of it.
• It's called Demonic Spiders because Fuck This Fucking Piece of Fucking Bull Fucking Shit Fucking Asshole is too full of swears, too long, and is prone to being confused with Cluster F-Bomb.
• Developer's Foresight is more explanatory than Whoa! Technology!.
• Dethroning Moment of Suck is a lot shorter (and more polite) than Jumping the Shark, Coming Back, Shooting It In The Balls, Raping It, Eating Its Flesh, Consuming Its Soul, Mounting Its Head on The Wall, And Then Doing the Same Thing to Twelve More Fucking Sharks Just to be Safe.
• We kept the snowclone Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?, as for Is She R'Lyeh Going Out With Him?, Joe Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft don't mix well.
• It's called Dinner with the Boss because Well, Seymour, I Made It, Despite Your Directions is too vague.
• Directionally Solid Platforms is definitely a better title than The Contra Effect since Contra is known for other things too.
• Remember that funny phrase Son I Am Disappoint? ...Yeah, that's why we simply went with Disappointed in You.
• We were tempted to name Discredited Meme Trope of Cancer, but who still reads Henry Miller today?
• Discredited Trope is nicer than Stop Using This Bullshit Trope, You Dumbfucks!
• Remember That Scene In That Disney Movie Where The Chick Sings And Animals Come Out To Join Her? Well Look We're Parodying That! Aren't We Clever? is a little too cheeky for its own good. Disney Creatures of the Farce works a lot better.
• Disowned Adaptation is much shorter, less aggressive, and more self explanatory than Alan Moore Hates You and Everything You Stand For.
• We went with Dissimile because it's shorter, catchier, and more punny than "And By 'Metaphorically', I Mean 'Get Your Coat.'"
• OK, we admit it. Distaff Counterpart was chosen because we like the sound of tropers running to their dictionaries. On the other hand, if we called it Recycled... With Tits!, not only would it be crude, but we'd have to make it even more vulgar by also renaming Spear Counterpart to Recycled... With a Dick!.
• It's called The Dog Was the Mastermind because The Dog That You Saw On The Way To The Crime Scene And Was The Least Likely Being To Do It Got You Into This Mess can cause breathlessness by itself.
• We would have gotten away with calling Doing It for the Art Amateur Writing if not for the language drift making "amateur" sound excessively negative.
• Draco in Leather Pants is admittedly rather confusing but it's still better than Thanos Was Right or Thanos Did Nothing Wrong.
• Some guy suggested No Hero To His Valet Parking for Drives Like Crazy, and was very lucky that we played enough Grand Theft Auto to never use the rocket launcher in closed rooms.
  • Another guy suggested How Everybody Drives in Real Life. We put him in a car with somebody who really does Drive Like Crazy. He survived but he won't be suggesting anything that stupid again.
• OK, everybody get their KISS album and a stopwatch out. "I got to laugh 'cause I know I'm gonna die...Why (CLICK)" Get up - Everybody's gonna move their feet - Get down - Everybody's gonna leave their seat "...guitar...big kaboom...(CLACK) Yep, the guy had about ten seconds to hit the brakes or swerve if he weren't a case of Drives Like Crazy, driving loaded with a speed of 95 mph...But since this event was Ripped from the Headlines, we paid some respect and didn't rename.
  • Well, the rockin' alternative would have been Accident Prone.
• Speaking of Distaff Counterpart, we found it unnecessary to genderize Dropped a Bridge on Him, mainly because Dropped A Fridge on Her is unprecise in several aspects (fridges are dropped only by 3 Mustaphas 3; the bedropped damsel is only a side character).
• Dude, Not Funny! isn't called Fuck You Unlimited, Whoever Posted This! for two reasons: It's not clear at all what the trope is about, and we like to avoid swearing as much as possible in our trope titles.
• We went with The Dulcinea Effect rather than Thinking With The Wrong Head because even if you get through the ambiguity, it would still be cynical and immature to claim love is driven exclusively by libido.
• We almost went with I Know Flung Poo before we realized that Dung Fu was a more concise form of basically the same pun.

E

• Eagleland is not called 'Murica because it's a meme-based title that leans too hard to the boorish variant of the trope.
• Early-Installment Weirdness isn't called Oh My God What Was the Writer Thinking When They Wrote That! because that would indicate that all Early Installment Weirdness is bad, which is not true. It's also too long and isn't all that indicitive of the actual trope.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe is more or less self-explanatory, Most Writers Are Terrans, however, sounds too vague.
• Eat the Rich isn't called Voregeoisie because that would just be too messed up, even for us.
• Electronic Eyes speaks for itself. My Vision Is Augmented probably too but, you know, phrase-based title and meme-shoehorning, and those are no-no.
• Eleventy Zillion is not called Imaginary Numbers because it could easily be mistaken for the existing mathematical concept of imaginary numbers, such as the square root of a negative number.
• Ending Fatigue is called that because The Point Where It Becomes Obvious That Someone Was Paying The Writers By The Word may not always be accurate. It also sounded better than You've Already Killed The Bad Guy, Just End The Fucking Thing Already!.
• Enemy Chatter isn't called Talkative Goon not because a similarly named trope already exists, but because it doesn't encompass the variety of enemies that could be having a conversation; aside from traditional goons, they could be police, military, knights, Nazis, Soviets, and so on.
• Ensemble Dark Horse isn't going to be called Everybody Loves Raymond because the current title is much more easily understandable, a trope name punning directly on an actual series is a recipe for confusion, and we've already done a more distinct pun on that.
• Entry Pimp sounds cheerful while Tropers Trying to Shove What They Like and/or Make Down Our Throats No Matter What is a bit mean, and we don't want to discourage Entry Pimping.
• We settled on Even the Girls Want Her because Women Love Jessica Rabbit, while a wonderful thought, made people, shall we say, overly excited by the prospect.
• Even the Guys Want Him isn't called Everyone is Gay for Big Boss because we don't like meme-based trope names.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics is a lot more to-the-point than For the Last Fucking Time, Nobody Said There'd be Math!, and again, we try to avoid swearing in titles.
• Evil All Along is shorter and fits better in description than The Real Villains Were The Friends We Made Along The Way.
• We call it Evil Laugh instead of BWAHAHAHAHA or something similar because there are so many different types of evil laughs, and people would forget how many "HA"s to use.
• Evil vs. Evil perfectly describes the Trope and is uncontroversial. The 2016 US Presidential Election is neither.
• Extra Eyes...well, More Eyes Than In A Sanjiyan Orgy has two problems. a) it's a bad snowclone of More Teeth than the Osmond Family, b) is left for the reader.
• The Extremist Was Right used to be called "And It Worked" (in reference to Baron Wulfenbach from Girl Genius) - which, while leaning a little bit on the Trope Namer Syndrome side, isn't too bad. Both the old and new names are much more clear and descriptive than just calling it The Baron would have been.
• Extreme Omnivore is less obscure than Zoidberg Fuel.

F

• Fair for Its Day is much shorter than This Old Piece Of Media Is Racist, But Everything Else At The Time Was Even More Racist, And This Was Controversial For Being Progressive By Those Standards.
  • It's also shorter and not as judgmental than Did You Know This Racist/Misogynist/Homophobic/Ethnocentric Work Was Actually Criticized In Its Day For Not Being Racist/Misogynist/Homophobic/Ethnocentric Enough?
• We call it Fandom-Enraging Misconception because Things Fans Get Unnecessarily Butt-hurt About is too aggresive and likely to start a flame war and A Quick and Easy Guide on How to Avoid Getting Flayed Alive by Fans, while funny, is too long.
• Fan Dumb isn't known as Speer Hoodie Moment, because TV Tropes has decided to contain the brainrot rather than spread it.
• Fan Hater is a fairly precise, short and to the point name. It serves the purpose much better than I Can't Believe Anyone Actually Likes This Heap Of Shit. It's The Worst Thing In The World, And If You Like It, You're An Absolute Tool Who Has No Taste And You're Not Worth Any Time, Effort, Love, Pity Or Emotion, So Why Don't You Just Go Away And Die?
• Fantastic Aesop is shorter and easier to understand than Do Not Do This Impossible Thing.
• Fear of Thunder is much easier to remember than the actual name of the phobia, Tonitrophobia, and shorter than Thunderbolt and Lightning, Very Very Frightening Me.
• Fetish Retardant is more understandable than But Nobody Came, which would be a hard-to-understand innuendo that has nothing to do with the quote. We had the trope before Undertale came out, anyway.
• Fetus Terrible...what can we say, A Fetus Worse Than Death would be YET another snowclone of A Fate Worse Than Death.
• It's named Filling the Silence because Holy Shit, It's Way Too Quiet And The Audience Might Lose Interest, So Quick, Add Some Talking is a little harsh on the imaginations of dubbers.
• Finger Gun could've been called Finger Bang, until it became a repetitious chorus in a South Park song.
• If we called Fluffy the Terrible The Fizzlepop, we'd get attacked for spoiling My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), not to mention the trope already existed before the movie was released.
• It's called Flying Brick because Harder Better Faster Stronger doesn't mention the flying part.
  • Harder Better Faster Stronger Flyer is a better alternate title, but a bit long.
• It's called Franchise Zombie because I Hate All Of You For Liking This But I Have To Make More Of It! sounds downright insulting.
  • And Oh God, I'm So Tired Of Working On This Show, I Really Want To Move On To Something Else, But I've Still Got Two Years On My Contract, And I Can't Afford To Break It. is simply too long.
  • Only Deserved One Season might seem like a good title, but it might get confused for Second Season Downfall.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum might be unclear to those unfamiliar with the latter half of the name, but Item nobody remembers that it exists or ever existed until the writers say so is far too descriptive.
• Formerly Fit isn't called Took a Level in Fatass because it doesn't blend in with similarly named tropes and it's also just a really stupid joke.
• That Trope People Keep Potholing In Nightmare Fuel is a bit too snarky a name for Fridge Horror.
• Funbag Airbag makes a Sublime Rhyme, unlike Clash On The Big Breasts, which would make anyone familiar with Final Fantasy V groan and everyone else say "I don't get it".
• Funny Moments is easy to pronounce and it works on everyone's browser. Neither are true of 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂. And those emojis are crying of laughter, but some might think they're crying of sadness.
• Fur Bikini is short and clear, unlike This'll Put Hair On Your Chest.

G

• Gainax Ending is more straightforward than Is This How You End a Series? or You Ran Outta Ink Too, Didn't You, Ya Bastards?, the latter of which which could also refer to Cut Short or Cosmic Deadline.
• Game-Breaker is a lot nicer of a name than Things In Games That You Can Use To Make The Game Much Easier If You're A Little Bitch, doesn't it?
• Geo Effects is a lot more consise and grammatically correct than The Geography That I Stands Compares You Superior.
• Germanic Depressives is nice and punny. Sour Krauts is equally punny, but pretty offensive. And we really don't want to offend those guys. On account of them being so grim.
• We call it "Get Known" because This Is A Hell Of A Lot Simpler Than Registering just doesn't have that nice ring to it.
• We call it Getting Crap Past the Radar because Goodnight, Everybody! would be lost on younger (and non-American) tropers.
• We choose Giant Space Flea from Nowhere because What The Heck Is That Boss Doing Here!? would be too hard to use as a noun.
• Giant Spider existed as an idea longer than FTL: Faster Than Light, so calling it Send The Crew To Help Immediately! is right out.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot is a lot shorter than Lesbians, And Bisexual Ladies, Is A Really Common Fetish Guys Have.
  • It's also shorter less of a call out than This Trope Will Be Potholed Everywhere on this Site Because a Disproportionate Amount of our Userbase is 20-Somethings who are Into That.
• It's Giver of Lame Names because Leonard of Quirm Naming is too obscure for some.
  • And while Self Demonstration is always fun, That Guy Who Always Names Things With Stupidly Long And Overly Detailed Descriptions Of Their Function is just a bit unwieldy.
  • And The Asgore is a vague character name from a relatively-recent video game.
• Going Fur a Swim is concise. Wearing A Fur Coat Over A Swimsuit As A Common Method To Combine Conspicuous Consumption With Fanservice is not.
• The perpetrator calling Goo-Goo-Godlike Deus Ex Vagina was unbirthed.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings is better than Good Wings, Bad Wings since the latter would be confused about wings on mythological creatures being impractical.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence was deemed better than Everything's Funkier with Disco because it's yet another snowclone; and besides, when not related to music, "funky" can also means "stinky".
• Gratuitous Foreign Language (plus its numerous subtropes) is shorter and more straightforward than Everything's Cooler And More Exotic When A Work Utilizes Words Or Phrases From A Certain Language That Is Not Its Own, which also doubles as a needless snowclone.
• The Great Character Alignment Debate is shorter and not rude, unlike Stop Treating All Fiction Like A Dungeons & Dragons Game Dammit It Doesn't Work That Way.
• It's called Groin Attack because You Just Don't Shoot A Guy In The Dick! is too specific to properly describe the trope.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop actually could be called "Endless Eight" Loop on a Japanese version of TV Tropes, but in the English-speaking world the current trope namer is much more well-known.
• Growing the Beard isn't called Star Wars Rebels Syndrome because we named it long before that show existed. Plus, we don't want to start another Flame War between the Star Wars and Star Trek fans, not to mention all the in-fighting the Star Wars fans would have among themselves.
• Guy on Guy Is Hot is much shorter than It Turns Out a Lot of Women Get Turned On by Guys Being Intimate With Each Other.
  • It's also shorter than What Do You Mean There Is a Portion Of The Star Trek Fanbase That Likes to Have Kirk and Spock Making Out?.

H

• Half the Man He Used to Be isn't called Mauled in Half because the lyric from The Beatles song "Yesterday" was more recognizable and the pun would have gotten a Lame Pun Reaction.
• Hannibal Lecture gets its name from its Trope Namer. This is fortuitous, because calling it Psycho Analyzes You would have required several apologies to Yakov Smirnoff.
• Harmless Freezing is shorter and more self-explanatory than Christ! I Was Frozen Today!, and we already have an index named after that line.
• Hate Sink is a decent pun and gets the point across. Complete Asshole is just rude sounding and a bad snowclone of Complete Monster.
• Heavy Mithril is a nice pun, and a lot nicer and shorter than Playing Fantasy-Themed Metal Is The Best Way To Tell People You Like Dungeons & Dragons, If You Still Want To Get Laid Afterwards.
  • Also Rocker's Saving Throw would be confusing enough even if it wasn't a snowclone.
• We went with Hellish Copter rather than Hellish Chopper because "chopper" can also refer to motorcycles (among other things), and we wanted it to be obvious that we meant helicopters.
• It's Hellish L.A. and not Hell A because we use a letter based system to catalog our hells and we didn't want people getting confused.
• Heroic Suicide isn't called (Become) an Hero since that just seems like a non-indicative misspelled phrase to people not aware of a certain meme, and said meme isn't an accurate synonym for the trope, and is rather offensive.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners is much better than "No Homo" Sexual since it doesn't always need to have sexual undercurrents (intended or not), plus it could invoke The Problem with Pen Island and be confused for some other tropes.
• He Who Fights Monsters is more concise than Never Forget, Anyone Can Become a King of Demons, which also spoils an obscure work, not to mention could be confused with And Then John Was a Zombie.
• High-Tier Scrappy won’t be called The Meta Knight because it would interfere with its more recognizable The Scrappy implication and suggest a different trope to anyone unfamiliar.
• Hitbox Dissonance is concise. How on earth did that hit?! is not and could be mistaken for Improbable Aiming Skills.
• Hoist by His Own Petard could probably be called Wile E. Coyote Syndrome, if not for Trope Namer Syndrome.
• Hollywood Tactics isn't named Just [a] Bunch of Droids because not everyone knows what JBOD is and can get the Double Entendre. And besides, while Star Wars is major offender, it's not just about how the droids fight.
• Hollywood Tourette's was used instead of Tourettes Motherfucking Cunt Bullshit On My Asshole Syndrome, Tourette's Shitcock Syndrome or Tourettes Isn't Just About Swearing, You Idiots.
• Honest John's Dealership more obviously refers to selling cars than It's Our Belief That You're Such a Stupid Motherfucker, You'll Fall for This Bullshit! (Guaranteed!). Additionally, Fuck You, Baltimore is very misleading for those unfamiliar with the source.
• Hostile Show Takeover isn't called Too Bad, Waluigi Time! because a. Not everyone's familiar with Brawl in the Family and b. We don't want to invite Waluigi back onto the page after exiling him to Self Demonstrating.
• Hot Witch is a pretty intuitive name. Hex Bomb would be hilarious, but it would better be reserved for actual magical explosives. Hex Appeal or Hex Kitten might work, but those still favor punnyness over clarity.
• Ho Yay is a much shorter and snappier name than I dunno man, seems kinda gay to me.
• We called it Human Popsicle because Frozen Assets could have been misused super-easily.
• Humans Are Special sounds somewhat more neutral than Fuck Yeah, Humanity!.
• Hurl It into the Sun isn't called Corona Death because it would be in poor taste, probably even decades in the future. Too bad we can't apply this trope to the virus...
• It's called Hype Aversion because You Should Avoid This Like A Plague Or Else You'll Turn Into A Mindless, Drooling Dipshit Like The Masses Who Watch This Shallow, Piece-Of-Shit Show For A Fad With Its Over-Inflated Hype Clogging Up The Networks Like The Hardened Fat In The Arteries Of The Pathetic, Lifeless Losers Who Watch It, aside from just being plain cruel, would make you run out of breath saying it.
• Hypnotize the Captive is shorter and more clear than The Second Most Common Thing to Do To The Damsel in Distress, Topped Only By Being Bound and Gagged.

I

• It's called I Am Not Shazam because that's a somewhat less confrontational title than That's The Name Of The Work, Not The Name Of The Character, You Stupid Idiot.
• Identical Stranger may be more concise, but it does mean that we lose out on the snowclone potential of Dude Looks Like A Different Dude.
• Idiot Ball has a ring to it. Characters Acting Like Idiots Because The Writers Could Not Think Of A Plausible Reason To Have The Plot Happen Otherwise doesn't.
  • Same thing with Idiot Plot. Neither can we call it Beavis and Butt-Head Plot because it would come off as a Take That!.
• It's called Innocent Fanservice Girl because That Naked Girl Is Naked Because of Some Vague Excuse In Her Backstory That Technically Justifies It was too long.
  • And accurate as Things Which Don't Ultimately Matter Or Warrant Anger But Which Nerds Get Way Too Hostile About Anyway is, it is potentially offensive or alienating to TV Tropes' readership, an audience consisting largely of said nerds.
• It's called Incest Subtext because Bro Yay just sounds wrong.
• Calling it Index of Film Westerns avoids the ambiguity innate to Western Films. A lot of films are made in Hollywood, aren’t they?
• I'll Be in My Bunk is short and subtle. That Was So Hot That I'm Going Somewhere Private To Jerk Off is more clear, but way too long, and a bit Not Safe for Work.
• Imaginary Friend is how they are commonly called. Cerebral Pals would leave people either very confused or very offended.
• Index on the Moon could be called Albedo Girl...if anyone understood so much mythology, physics AND the popcultural shout out. A bit much even for TV Tropes. Still would make a nice Joe Hill title.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain won't ever be called The Doofenshmirtz because anybody who doesn't recognize would be very confused about what the trope means. And shortening this to The Doof makes it sound like a punch sound effect.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals can't be called Orphan Black Effect because, while it's about people who look just about the same, it has nothing to do with cloning.
• Insufferable Genius is significantly more clear than So Good It's Bad. Or Smart Ass.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny is shorter than It Funny To On Purpose Make English As Though Translated In Badly Way From Other Language.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure is not called My Source is that I Made it the Fuck Up because we were too busy laughing to change the title.
• I Surrender, Suckers! isn't called Geeettttttt Dunked On!! because the trope existed before Undertale and because it's an ambiguous meme that's hard to explain without spoiling one of the game's endings.
• It's called It Was His Sled because Everyone Knows That Twist, You Don't Need To Mark It As Spoiler Anymore, Dumbass is too mean, too long and too exact. And we still encourage putting It Was His Sled examples in spoiler tags, so there's that. And while Everyone And Their Grandmother Knows That Darth Vader Is Luke Skywalker's Father isn't quite as mean, it's still too long of a title.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey! is shorter than Exploiting The Fact That Men Tend To Think With Their Dicks.

J

• Jerkass Has a Point is more straightforward and explanatory than “He’s Got a Point, You Know”.
• Jossed isn't the most obvious trope title, but neither is I Fought The Lore And The Lore Won.
• Jumping the Shark is called that because Oh Shit, The Ruined FOREVER Crowd Was Right is too long, not to mention jumping the shark as a term existed longer than crying ruined FOREVER.
• Just for Fun is simple and short, unlike Yes, The Site Isn't Meant To Be Serious Business, But This Is Just The Section Where We Cut Loose In Describing Trope And Media In Sillier Ways Than Normal.

K

• Karma Houdini is the simpler name. It was originally Fuckers Who Still Get All The Chicks After Doing Horrible, Horrible Things.
• Kill All Humans is definitely much better title than Dalek Gambit for obvious reasons.
• Kill the Host Body was going to be called The Tom Berenson Treatment, but Jake threatened to sue us for emotional damage.
• Kill the Poor is less needlessly unclear than Beggars Can't Be.
• Kick the Dog is a much better title than Moment That Makes You Realize The Character Is Unsympathetic, If Not Pure Evil, and less obtuse than Burn The Face, Nuke The Landmarks, and Kill The Man For Using a Radio.
• Killer Rabbit isn't as good a pun as Homo Homine Lepus, but the trope is about more than just rabbits.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere is more well-known and self-explanatory than The Shedinja Effect.

L

• It's called Laconic Wiki because Describe This Trope or Work in as Few Words as You Can Without Making It Sound Either Really Stupid or Just Like Some Other Trope. Oh, You Should Try to Make It Only One Sentence, Too. Thanks. would have been a long title and namespace, and therefore counterproductive.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre could have been called ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), but the special characters were too hard to type and the meme reference was too unclear.
• Calling Lampshade Hanging TV Tropes most favorite trope, even if factually probably correct, would be rather nondescript. Calling it If Someone Complains About A Plot Development, Just Say "Ain't It Ridiculous!?" Until They Go Away might have prevented its rampant misuse but would be hard to search. Calling it Troper Bait would be excessively condescending.
• Laser-Guided Karma could as well have been called Instant Karma. The latter was just so...so...so The '60s.
• It's called Least Rhymable Word and not Locksmith because not everyone would get the reference.
  • We don't call it By the Way, Do You Know a Good Word That Rhymes With "Castrati?" for the same reason. Also, because it's not a straight example of the trope.
• Lethal Chef isn't called Scone of Stone because that would make people think it's only about baked goods.
• Lie Back and Think of England at least hints that it's talking about sex, unlike Our Duty to the Party, which is way too vague.
• It's called Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition because Limited Deluxe Green Super Special Awesome Ultra Extended Combat Commando Alien Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Vin Diesel Widescreen Collector's Unrated Uncut Kane Ultimate Game of The Year Editor's Choice Edition: Director's Extended Cut: The Lost Scenes: Gold Platinum Diamond Chaotic Lawful Evil Good Saga Battle Chest Megapak Galactic Edition Orange Box Omega Limited With More Dakka: Final Cut Champion Edition Ultimate Match Reload Accent Core Heartburn International Final Mix Fucking Legendary Spoony Bard New N' Tasty Edition X is way too long and would be very difficult to remember.
• We might just have got away with Lip Lock being called Rendered Speechless if it was purely a video game trope. As it stands, the pun-work is too ambiguous to make it with the effort.
• For Literal Maneater, not only would Breakfast in Bed be really ambiguous, but people who would understand it... would be VERY upset.
• There is no way we are choosing "No." over Little "No". That's asking for Trope Decay to take over.
• Live but Delayed is not named Live But Retarded as less commonly used meanings for "retarded" aren't as well known, and the title would probably be taken to mean a mentally disabled baby was born alive.
• Loads and Loads of Loading is a bit long, but not as long as For the Love of God, I've Been Spinning Around the Skyrim Logo For Five Minutes! I Just Want to Turn All These Moonstone Ingots Into Elven Armor Already!!!.
  • It's also way less Take That!-y as Sonic 06 Syndrome and Enter the Dragonfly Syndrome.
• Low-Tier Letdown is the name chosen for the trope as Stop Using Ledian was considered a tad mean-spirited.
• It's called Love Freak, not The Flonne, as not many people know who she is.
• Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle assumes less about the viewer than Short Title: Subtitle So Freaking Long and Elaborate That Sometimes You Go an Entire Night without Sleep While You Attempt to Comprehend It in Its Entirety — These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, My Friend.
• It's called Lovecraft Lite instead of Diet Lovecraft, because the trope is about being more hopeful, not less fattening.
• Lying Creator is much shorter than This Podcast is a Series of Lies, Built Upon a House of Lies, on a Foundation of Lies, in Lietopia, on the Continent of Lies and makes sense to more than five people on this site.
• It's called Lying to Protect Your Feelings because it's less ambiguous than He's Fine I Promise.
• Lyrical Dissonance sounds quite a bit better than Yeah, I Know The Song Sounds Really Happy, But It's Got Some Really Disturbing Lyrics Which Will Most Likely Screw With Your Head.
  • And using that title would mean we'd need a redirect to it from Yeah, I Know the Song Sounds Like a Dirge, But If You Listen to the Lyrics, You'll Realize That It's About Something Quite Nice because the trope works both ways.
  • And They Might Be Giants Songwriting is a tad obscure.

M

• It has to be Made of Bologna specifically, and not Made of Sausage, because bologna is the only sausage completely smooth and indistinguishable inside.
• "Magic A" Is "Magic A" could have been called That's Not How The Force Works if it hadn't existed before The Force Awakens came out.
  • It's also shorter than Just Because Fantasy, and Other Speculative Fiction, Is About Impossible Things, Doesn't Mean We Don't Expect Some Fucking Consistency With The Rules The Writer Set Up.
• Magical Girl is both more appropriate and less punny than Puts the 'Ki' Into Bikini, which would also suggest a focus on fanservice.
• While Charasmaniac is actually a really great alternate title for Magnificent Bastard, it's not quite as straightforward and Red's Trope Talk on Magnificent Bastards came out way after we named the Trope anyways.
• The original proposed name for Male Gaze was A Trope Linked Literally Everywhere Because Tropers can't Keep Their Horny Thoughts to Themselves but people got really defensive whenever it was brought up. Also it was kind of long.
• Marathon Running is better than Teen Titans Go! and SpongeBob SquarePants .
• Market-Based Title is much less judgmental than Americans Are Too Dumb to Know What the Philosopher's Stone Is. For similar reasons, It's Called The Alethiometer, Not The Golden Compass, You Idiots is also right out.
• Marry Them All is probably a better name than Threesomes Solve Everything.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros." isn't called Marth and Roy Debuted in "Smash Bros." because Roy actually did debut in Super Smash Bros. Melee, even in Japan.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover is a shorter name than Pooh, Thomas, Twilight Sparkle, Brian & the Eeveelution Family's Adventures of…. It's also less prone to misuse than At The Olympic Games.
• The reason Massive Numbered Siblings isn’t It’s a Vagina, Not a Clown Car is because that would be vulgar.
• It was hard to resist to name Mate or Die For Want of a Nailing, but look, we succeeded (and it's less ambiguous anyway).
• Mauve Shirt is a play on Red Shirt, making it more indicative than The Biggs.
• May–December Romance is a good, short title. Its alternate title, Wait, He's How Old? And She's Only a Fucking Teenager? That. Is. Just. WRONG! isn't, and is judgmental as hell, to boot. (Not to mention we'd need redirects for all the various possible gender permutations.)
• Mayfly–December Romance is a clever pun and is short, unlike A Relationship Where One Person Ages Like A Prune And Dies Long Before The Other.
• Mega Neko isn't called The Meowthra because it's too much of a spoiler for its respective film (unless you've seen its second trailer) and it's not as gigantic in real life.
• If Memetic Badass was called The Chuck, then that would be way too vague, not to mention that character named tropes are frowned upon.
• Memetic Loser is clearer than The Hawkeye.
• Oh, and for the last time, it's Memetic Mutation, not I Can Haz Over Nine Thousand Barrel Rolls In SPARTA With An Awesome Face On My Dakka Gun That My Pretty Cool Heavy Carries Till Hell Freezes Over And Gets Chuck Norris And Harambe To Use The Boost To Get Through The Game Which I Lost So I Have To Burn The Rope Until Stupid Sexy Flanders And Rickroll Make Steamed Hams to BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! Look Like the Love Child of Flonne and Candle Jack Who Secretly Set Up Us The Bo—
• Men Are Uncultured is called that because Two Long, Boobless Hours implies it's about the work, not the attitude of male viewers.
• Mercy Mode isn't called There is Now a Level Zero since that's a movie quote as the name of a video game-specific trope. It could also be misinterpreted as an unlockable bonus level that happens at the start of a game's story.
• Me's a Crowd isn't called Attack of the Clones due to that being the title of a movie, thus causing confusion.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales could have been titled Lesbians Love Jennifer's Body, but that trope name would be a one-way ticket to It's Not Porn, It's an Index.
• Mind Screw is probably a less vulgar name than Oh My Fucking God What The Hell Just Fucking Happened!!??
  • It's also less vulgar (and less obscure) than That's a Nice Airplane Coming Out of Your Ass.
• It's called Misaimed Merchandising because Complaining About Toys You Don't Like really only accounts for a third of the page.
• Missing Trailer Scene is less accusatory than Contains All the Good Parts Edited to Con You out of Your $15, Sucker.
• Mission Control isn't called The Guy in the Chair because the trope predates Spider-Man: Homecoming by multiple Metal Gear games and the entirety of modern military history.
• We call it Mistaken for Profound because There's a Platypus Controlling Me relies on the reader knowing a specific Phineas and Ferb song.
• Mistaken for Quake ...because Not Anyone's Fault would see even more misuse than Easily Amused.
• Moe Anthropomorphism isn't called Womanifying Objects because it's not always objects depicted as women, and because it's a really silly pun.
• Mondegreen Gag was chosen over Do You Need A Fucking Hearing Aid? Those Are The Wrong Lyrics!
  • 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy is also only one potential mishearing of a lyric, the title of a somewhat obscure book about Mondegreens, and probably too easily mistaken for something else.
  • And Oh My God! They Killed Lady Mondegreen! You bastards!! still requires an explanation on the trope page.
• It's called Money, Dear Boy because it's more to the point than How On Earth Did They Get That Actor to Agree to Be In That Piece of Shit? (not to mention many examples are considered quality works anyway, and pay isn't the only reason good actors are in bad works).
• We choose Monster Clown because not everyone is familiar with The Kefka.
  • Kefklone wouldn't work for the same reason, and because it implies that every example is an Expy of Kefka, which isn't true.
  • And This Is What I Saw Clowns as In My Childhood is simply too presumptuous about the writers' lives.
• Mooks could have been called Those Nameless Guys That Are There For The Heroes To Beat Easily.
• It's called More Popular Spin-Off because Did You Know That This Show Is Actually A Spinoff? is too long a title.
  • And nobody thought of just using Actually A Spinoff.
• Most Annoying Sound could have been called Need A Dispenser Here were it not for the fact that many an Engineer player would suffer from PTSD.
• It's called Most Common Superpower instead of Superheroines Prefer Silicone because saline is a more common material for those now.
  • Also some are villainesses, so Boobs Of Justice isn't quite accurate.
  • And it is probably safer than the snowclone of With Great Power Comes Great Tits.
• Most Definitely Not a Musical isn't called S Clubbed, as not only would it be a case of Trope Namer Syndrome, but would also make it nothing more than a very contentious real life form of Musical Number Annoyance—that is, complaining about movies and TV shows that turn out to be a musical in disguise (think practically everything Disney Channel has made since the mid-2000s)
• Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls is called that because nobody had the foresight to call it Oh, Christ, Why Did We Even Start This Page? And naming it Complaining About Fandoms You Don't Like because Yucky Girl Cooties has Ruined Them Forever would just start the mother of all flame wars. It's also very long.
• Moral Event Horizon is self-explanatory, Horrible Things is not, and neither is Kick the Dog, Come Back, Shoot It...
• Morality-Guided Attack is much clearer than the alternate Karma Guided Lasers, but is still capable of dealing Laser-Guided Karma.
• Most Tropers Are Young Nerds looks better than If You Post On TV Tropes, You Are A Complete Loser.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong could just as easily have been named Real SOVIET Damage!, but not everyone's familiar with the Fighting Game Community and its memes.
• It's called Mukokuseki because The Sort Of Art Style That Makes People from Predominantly White Countries Think All Asian Anime Characters Look White Because They're Used To White Being "Default" and Racial Minorities Being Drawn in a Way that Emphasizes How They Aren't White is a paragraph in itself.
  • And Cauc Asian relies on a space that could be circumvented by typing "{{Caucasian}}", thus nullifying the joke.
• The Münchausen lets only Germans cringe (Münchhausen! With Umlaut! The Baron is so metal!). Usotsukidoji doesn't improve as it would do the same to the Japanese...and nobody else gets the joke. The other one. ^note 

N

• It's called Narm because Totally Fucking Up A Dramatic Moment is a bit much to type. You're Breaking My Heart wouldn't be clear what the trope is about even for those who have seen Revenge of the Sith.
• Narm Charm isn't as long to type as I Don't Like Sand. It's Coarse And Rough And Irritating, And It Gets Everywhere.
• It's called Network Decay because Remember When Cartoon Network Used To Air Cartoons? has become rather dated.
  • And while Ancient Aliens Isn't History is accurate, it doesn't really make sense to people who haven't watched History Channel, nor does it get the point across quite so concisely.
• Never Trust a Title isn't called Not Remotely What It Says On The Tin because even if people got the "Exactly What It Says On The Tin" reference, nobody would ever remember the exact form of negation we used.
• New Media Are Evil, when applied to rap, naturally implies that Rap is a Special Kind of Evil.
• We called it New Powers as the Plot Demands because Clark Kent's Third Law was a bit too much of a Take That!. And too punny.
• Nightmare Face isn't called HI, GIRLS! because that wouldn't make sense to anyone outside of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom.
• Nightmare Fuel has a better ring than How Bad Does Horror Have To Be That We Need A Page For When It Actually Works.
  • It's also better than Crowning Moment of Pantsoiling.
• Nightmare Retardant sounds better than You Call This Shit Frightening?
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot is not called Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot Cowboy Hobos With Chainsaw Laser Black OddlyShaped Katanas And Several automatic Sawed-Off Shotgun Revolvers And The Power of Friendship Fighting Vampire Commie-Nazis With Black Magic Riding Cyborg Dinosaurs With Head Mounted Wave Motion Guns Attacked by Snakes On A Motherfrakkin' Submarine Jet Tank With Misplaced Bears Crashing Into An Ancient Zeppelin With Xenomorph Anacondas, feauring Lipstick Lesbian Time Travelling Bikini Werewolf Cat Girls Dual Wielding Febreze: Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Episode Zero: The Beginning: Revenge of the Sequel: This Time, It's Personal: The Last Jedi: Judgement Day: The Movie: Title: The Adaptation: Recycled: The Series: Super Title 64 Advance Advanced Tech 2000 New Super Ultra Turbo Alpha Omega Leaf Fire Brilliant Shining Golden Silver Bronze Platium Collector's edition Director's Cut Remix Deluxe Redux EX HH VR 4D +: 97: ETERNAL: RISING: REVENGEANCE because that would be far too much to type.
  • Even A Football-Playing King in Space (with a moustache) is a little too long, and since in context no such character actually appeared, would be too easily confused with Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs.
• It's called Nintendo Hard instead of Atlus Hard, because the former is more well known.
  • We Get Off On Your Tears could mean other things.
  • Controller Throwing Fuel hits too close to home for many.
  • And it's shorter than When Video Game Consoles Started Out, They Used The Arcade Paradigm, Which Involved Quarter Munching Through High Difficulty.
• Nipple and Dimed could have been called The Sight of Nipples is a Forbidden Fruit in Some Cultures, if it wasn't a bit too long.
  • And Warts and All rather implies the opposite of the trope, and is already used for another trope anyway.
• No Endor Holocaust could be named Jossified Killing if that wouldn't be a snowclone.
• We call it No Indoor Voice instead of THE TRADITIONAL ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, because we don't want to scare off Fluttershy again.
• No Pregger Sex is a lot shorter than Dangerops prangent sex? Will it hurt baby top of its head?, and it'd be a pain for everyone to remember the misspellings.
• Not the Intended Use could be called No, This Isn't How You're Supposed to Play the Game but, as per usual, we try to avoid meme-based titles and the phrase isn't an actually example of the trope.
• While No Woman's Land could be mistaken for a place that literally has no females, it's still a lot better than Women No Right to Celebrate in Republic of People.
• Not a Deconstruction is a better title than Heavens to Betsy, Why Did We Even Mention an Academic Concept on a Website Frequented by Monomaniacal High-School Rejects With Delusions of Grandeur? because insulting your userbase is not productive, to put it mildly.
• Not Using the "Z" Word could have quite well been A Zombie By Any Other Name, if that wouldn't be unfair to the trope using authors that didn't jump the Z wagon. All both of them.
• Nubile Savage is shorter than Primitive Woman Who Looks Like A Swimsuit Model.
• We called it N-Word Privileges because many of us don't have the privileges to write N***er Is A Four Letter Word, Especially If You Are Part of a Race That Used That Term to Demonize and Belittle Others properly, even if it wasn't long as heck.

O

• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife sounds a lot better than The Karen (or The Becky or Miss Ann). Not only is it clearer, we do not want to give those who actually have those names the wrong idea.
• Obvious Beta is short and concise in contrast to Didn't They Test This Game Before They Released It?
• One for the Money; One for the Art could be called The Wayforward Method and be accurate but, obviously, Trope Namer Syndrome.
• One-Letter Title is less vague than e.
• Only You Can Repopulate My Race isn't a snowclone, unlike I Cannot Self-Pollinate. Also people might think we're talking about bees in particular when this trope covers all sorts of creatures.
• Opinion Myopia is shorter than How Could Anyone Like That Piece of Crap? and How Could Anyone Not Like This Masterpiece?.
• Orifice Invasion is much shorter than It Turns Out the Phrase 'I Want You Inside Me' is Pretty Disturbing When Taken Literally.
  • Speaking of too long, it's why we rejected Reminding Readers of the Most Disturbing Scenes From Works Like The Wrath of Khan and Tales From the Darkside the Movie is Just One of Many Ways That TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.
• While not everyone may understand the title of Original Position Fallacy, Leopards Ate My Face is even more esoteric.
• The Other Darrin avoids the argument present in Dick York Versus Dick Sargent.
  • It's also shorter than We've Secretly Replaced Your Favorite Actor With Folgers Crystals; Let's See What Happens.
  • It's also less obscure than New Art Dubbers, which requires the knowledge of Mexican dubbing studios (New Art Dub, which only went by that name after 2007, and is now now simply as New Art) and the Latin American Spanish dub of The Simpsons.
• When we tried to name Our Elves Are Different Our Elves are Pointyeareder there came an unholy sound from the grave of Tolkien, probably because of the botched grammar. We quickly abandoned the idea.
• Our Wights Are Different could have been called Shades Of Wight, but some people say there's such a thing as too many puns.
• Out of Focus would have been called Applejack Syndrome if not for Trope Namer Syndrome telling us no.
• It's a shame (pun-wise, that is) Out with a Bang didn't get called Sexitus. On the other hand, English is sometimes too punny and you could confuse the latter with death of a sex or even death of the act of sex. Also, Death by Snoo Snoo is only clear to those who seen "Amazon Women in the Mood".
• Overshadowed by Controversy is self explanatory. Pulling a Channel Awesome is completely meaningless to non-fans. You've Just Been Weinsteined implies it's only about sex scandals. And finally, You Screw One Goat just implies a different trope.

P

• Padding is a well known term. Rock Climbing is completely uninformative unless you watched Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Partially-Concealed-Label Gag isn't called Accidental Top Gear because that only makes sense if you've seen a specific sub-reddit.
• Pedophilia Is a Special Kind of Evil isn't called DON'T TOUCH DA CHILD! since the trope predated the quote, and the quote's not really about this trope anyway. And That's No Good! is too vague.
• Percussive Maintenance is more fancy than Smack the Thing Until It Works Properly. and a little less ambiguous than Wait SpongeBob! We Aren't Cavemen while being just a little more apt.
• Periphery Demographic is a much clearer and indicative name than "The Brony Effect" (after one of the more (in)famous cases of this phenomenon) because some people won't know what bronies are, and some who do might associate the name with other tropes.
• Perverse Sexual Lust is just slightly catchier and less judgmental than What Kind Of Pervert Am I, Getting Turned On By a Fucking Cartoon Character?.
• Petite Pride is less ambiguous than the meme-based title Flat is Justice.
• Phrase Salad Lyrics is more apparent and keys into the relevant tropes better than Red Hot Chili Peppers Songwriting.
• We went with Planet Eater because World Hunger is an actual real-life problem that has nothing to do with the trope and is actually kind of serious.
• Plot Hole is much better title than Voodoo Plot since the latter made no sense and the trope has nothing to do with voodoo.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure isn't called Better Off Without Friends Like You! because spoilers are no fun at all.
• Poke in the Third Eye is punchy and amusing, whereas Scryer's Remorse might take a second for people to work out what we're talking about.
• Polar Penguins is much more succinct and polite than Penguins Don't Just Live in Antarctica, You Plebians.
• Poor Communication Kills is much better title than That's What I Heard due to latter being extremely easily potholed, and easily confused with That's What She Said.
  • And You Should Have Read Between The Lines is a pretty obtuse reference even by the standards of this page, let alone the wiki as a whole.
• The Power of Friendship sounds nowhere near as cynical as Screw The Rules, I Have Friends!.
• The Power of Love could have been called Eros Ex Machina, but then we'd have endless arguments about how that name implies little foreshadowing, while this trope often explicitly states itself beforehand.
• Power-Up Food could be called Floor Ice Cream Gives You Health if you didn’t have to be a Kid Icarus fan to understand the reference. Also the trope covers more than just healing items.
• The Prankster is clearer and more indicative than The Bart because being mischievous isn't the only thing that the character's known for, and there's always a chance that someone somewhere won't know who that character is.
• Calling Priceless Ming Vase Vase-Ectomy is too gruesome a pun even by TVT standards.
  • And calling it Vase Breaking Character is even worse, not to mention being a snowclone of a completely unrelated trope.
• It's called Primal Scene because it isn't as loaded as Oh My God I Walked Into A Room Where My Parents Were Fucking. It doesn't necessarily involve parents, for that matter.
• Princess Classic is much shorter than Princesses For The Last Couple Centuries Have Been Portrayed As Purity Personified Girly Girls To Appeal To Societal Norms, And Make All Fairy Tale Deconstructions Think This Is The Only Trait Of A Disney Princess, And Mistakenly Assume This Applies Even To The Renaissance-Era Princesses.
• Man, if Product Placement was made in 2021, we could've had the name Hello, I'm Spons!, but that sadly isn't the case.
• Protection from Editors isn't called George Lucas Syndrome since it's too much of a Take That! and too ambiguous.
• Public Domain Soundtrack is a better title than Legal Copybait Soundtrack since there are songs that don't belong to public domain but still can be distributed freely.
• Pungeon Master won't be called The Yang due to several characters being named Yang making it hard to tell which Yang the trope would be reffering to for those outside the RWBY fandom. Calling it The Sans is less likely to run into confusion of who it’s referring to, but would instead run into confusion of which aspect about him that it’s specifically referring to.
• The Purge is shorter and less reliant on a meme than The Time Has Come. Execute Order 66.^note 
• We could call Purple Prose What Happens When a Writer is Payed by the Letter but that would be a bit of a Take That! and might be confused for the alternate title for Ending Fatigue.
  • We could also call it That Thing Fanfic Writers Use to Sound Smart but alienating our own user base is usually an awful idea.

Q

• Quieter Than Silence is shorter than True Silence Is Indistinguishable From The Speakers Not Working.
• Quicksand Box is shorter than Just Because Players Hate Railroading Doesn't Mean The Opposite Is Any Better. Besides, it's not always a bad thing.
• Quicksand Sucks is shorter than What If What Was Essentially Muddy Sand Was Like A Man-Eating Monster? That'd Be Pretty Scary, Right?.

R

• Race Fetish is more broad than I Just Love Latinas.
• Race Lift and Marathon Elevator do not mean the same thing and the latter is not "more formal".
• Rage Breaking Point could have been called Good, Let The Hate Flow Through You, but that isn't very indicative of what the trope is about and would seem too similar to The Power of Hate.
• We ended up going with Rambling Old Man Monologue because its a little bit more concise than the title we wanted to use, which was Stories Old Men Tell To Youngsters Which Don't Really Go Anywhere But For Some Reason Nobody Interrupts. Why I Remember One Of These Stories... Boy It Was A Doozy... It Started When My Uncle Sammy, Or Sambo As We Used To Call Him, But You Can't Call Him That Anymore Because Of Those Damn PC Police... Anyway Sambo Was Riding A Chicken Down To The General Store Because Our Horse Was Laid Up With The Flu...
• Randomly Generated Levels is much more neutral in tone than Would You Believe Some Level Designers Are So Lazy They Outsource Their Job To Computers?, which is completely untrue (programming a random map generator that outputs a playable and satisfying level is a challenge all by itself).
• "Rashomon"-Style could be called You and I Remember Budapest Very Differentlyand actually still get the point across pretty well. The only problem is that the quote isn't actually an example of the trope.
• Readings Blew Up the Scale is just as funny and much more clear than Think Of The Sensors.
• It’s called Read the Freaking Manual because The Game’s Called “Home Improvement”, Not “Jungle Improvement” is too esoteric a joke. ^note 
• Real Song Theme Tune isn't called How They Got People to Watch Guardians of the Galaxy because the movie had plenty of other selling points aside from the 70s soundtrack.
• Refrain from Assuming is much better, shorter, punnier, and more polite than I Know They Repeat That Phrase A Thousand Times In The Chorus, But For The Last Time, It's Not The Name Of The Fucking Song!
• Renamed Tropes gets the point across better than What The Hell Were The Tropers Smoking When Naming These Tropes!?. Besides, we don't want to wantonly accuse people of smoking.
• Most Writers Are Herpetophobes is another unnecessary snowclone whose job is better done by Reptiles Are Abhorrent.
• While using a snowclone might make it obvious which index Reviews Are the Gospel belongs in, it would ultimately be a bad idea because calling it He Panned It, Now It Sucks! would lead to too much confusion with its diametric opposite.
• It's called Rhyming with Itself because honestly, Instead Of Using A Word That Rhymes, They Just Repeated The Original Word takes way too much time to type out.
  • And not everyone would get I Used Underpantski Three Times.
• Ridiculously Human Robots is less judgemental than Stupid Scientists Who Make Robots Impractical In The Name Of Humanlikeness.
• Ring of Power was chosen because One Ring To Rule Them All wasn't really accurate, and quoting that entire passage would have been just too long.
• OK, OK. Rock Me, Asmodeus! is not optimal - who still knows an Austrian singer named Falco? But Dance With The Devil is kinda the wrong music genre. Send your suggestions to TV Tropes, The Internet, general delivery.
• Let us be completely clear - we could've called it Milkshake Duck instead of Role-Ending Misdemeanor, but these kinds of incidents have been around long before the meme ever took off.
• Rule 34 is a shorter and more recognised name than Are You Kidding Me? People Actually Draw Dirty Pictures Of My Little Pony And Care Bears? Really?
• I Ran So Far Away honestly could work for The Runaway, if not for being a bit longer and the inevitably baffling question of Why did they go with that reference?
• Running the Asylum is less rude than Who The Fuck Hired These Fanboys?.

S

• Sadistic Choice could be called The Mass Effect Effect but that series is known for more things than that. Plus it just sounds weird to say out loud.
• Sand In My Eyes is more intuitive than It's a Terrible Day for Rain, which could be misused for a number of situations involving rain (which this trope is unrelated to).
• Sarcasm Mode and Sincerity Mode are better and shorter names than We Must Know If What You Said Is The Exact Opposite Of What You Mean.
• Say My Name isn't called KENOBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! for two reasons, the first being that not everyone is familiar with Star Wars Rebels, and the second being it would be too difficult to remember the number of letters.
• We chose Scam Religion because Fast-Food Faith simply sounds offensive. Not to mention it would be confusable with an actual religion involving fast-food.
• It's called Science Marches On because Little Fluffy Dinosaurs, Destroyers Of Worlds would make tropers preface every example not about Goofy Feathered Dinosaurs with unnecessary Word Cruft.
• Scrappy Mechanic isn't called It's Time for Egg Delivery because that doesn't make sense without context.
• While I Recognize that the Council has Made a Decision. But Given that it's a Stupid-Ass Decision, I have Elected to Ignore it actually gets the point across pretty well, Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! is much shorter and does not require you to be familiar with The Avengers (2012) and/or early 2010s memes.
• Secret-Keeper isn't called The Alfred since there are many characters named Alfred, and it isn't the defining trait of Bruce Wayne's butler.
• Calling Self-Demonstrating Article This Trope would ask for it. Also, if God wanted us to use metasyntactic variables, we would be born speaking LISP.
• If it weren't for Trope Namer Syndrome, we could've easily called Self-Fanservice Why Does Every Fanart of Hex Maniac Have Massive Gazungas.
• Self-Imposed Challenge isn't called Dark Watch vs The Chairman in Rook City because changes made to Dark Watch (particularly Mr. Fixer and Expatriette), the Chairman, and Rook City in Definitive Edition have since rendered that challenge more manageable. Also it only makes sense to a select few people.
• Sentai was almost callled Parody Rangers, but we wanted to be able to go to Japan some day without getting a Dope Slap.
• Sequel Gap isn't called The Kid Icarus Effect because it made all the Kid Icarus fans very sad when we proposed it.
• Shared Universe isn't called Cinematic Universe because it covers more than movies and it would confuse the 5 people who don't know about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Shark Pool is called that because You Could Just Shoot Him, Y'Know is kind of already a trope.
• It might save a lot of time if Shameless Fanservice Girl, Reluctant Fanservice Girl, and Innocent Fanservice Girl (and for that matter, ANY Trope where half-naked women are featured) were renamed Sex Sells in the Media and Everyone Knows It, but it would be too general.
• Shockwave Stomp is a better name than Night Terror's Fury due to Fan Myopia.
• It's called Show Within a Show because Show the characters in the show are watching with you while you watch them watch said show, thus both parties watch the aforementioned show simultaneously is WAY too long and confusing to remember, and it just sounds paradoxical.
• While Shrug of God could be summed up as Idk Lol, it's far too ambiguous, unprofessional, and blunt to ever be the title.
• Shut Up, Hannibal! is named such because With All Due Respect, My Mutual Disacquaintance, I Am Rather Opposed to the Points Which You Are Trying to Make, and Would Strongly Recommend You Refrain from Uttering Further Comments Akin to Those Wherein You Attempted to Express Those Previously Mentioned Points — and, Furthermore, It Would Especially Be Appreciated If You Were to Refrain from Delivering Insults toward My Numerous Sensibilities. ends in an unnecessary full stop.
• It's called Signature Song because What Do You Mean, That Artist Has More Than One Song? is a little too long.
• Silliness Switch isn't called Red Bricks because a lot of Red Bricks are actually pretty useful and not silly in the slightest.
• There's a bit more nuance and clarity to Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! than there is in If You're Happy And You Know It Then You're Wrong.
• Ski-Resort Episode is obvious. Vail Owns This Trope is too esoteric outside ski circles, an unnecessary Take That!, and a pointlessly literal Snowclone.
• We went with Slouch of Villainy because Chillin' Like A Villain wasn't specific enough.
• Small Taxonomy Pools is shorter than What The Heck Is A Fin Whale? Don't Whales All Have Fins? Screw It, I'll Just Show A Humpback Whale.
• We can't rename Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom PION since the short form of mispronunciation of Piston by the protagonist's sidekick isn't familiar to these who have played the Ultimate Platformer 3.
• It's called The Smurfette Principle because we couldn't stop giggling after reading Fella Ratio.
• Snakes Are Sexy is not called Sneksy because it is a convoluted and opaque Tropemanteau of "Snek" and "sexy". Also, "Snek" is shoehorning a meme into the name.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat could have been named Multiple Sarcasm. Unfortunately, so could like another half dozen snark tropes, so we went for less pun, more precision.
• It's called SNK Boss because some would object to Total Bullshit Boss Who Uses Cheap Moves All The Time.
• So Bad, It's Good is a shorter, more familiar and more to-the-point name than It Sucks And I Love It. It is also more precise and timeless than Watching Ironically.
  • So Bad, It's Horrible is the same, but for This Is The Worst Fucking Thing Ever.
  • Same for Stylistic Suck and It Sucks And That's The Point.
• So Last Season is less ambiguous than Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan. Besides, most people call it Super Saiyan Blue, anyways.
• Something Else Also Rises isn't called Symbolic Stiffie because the trope isn't just about erections. It also covers women getting aroused, and orgasms.
• Sour Grapes Tropes is not as mean as If Your Life Quality Is Better Than That Of A Caveman, You Should Be Ashamed Of Yourself.
• Space Is Noisy does not sound like dialogue and is much more general than In Space Everyone Can Hear You Scream.
• We chose Space Is an Ocean because If You're Using Nautical Literature As A Reference For Your Space Opera, At Least Use The Modern One sounds way too specific.
• We love puns on TV Tropes, but we also like clarity. That's why we went with Spare to the Throne, despite the appealing option of If At First You Don't Succeed.
• Spared by the Adaptation not only gets the point across better than Nothing Bad Ever Happened, but is also less confusing to non-fans.
• Spell My Name with a "The" was chosen because The, being too common a word, would be a horrible title for a trope.
  • And The The unfortunately is taken by a band.
• Springtime for Hitler is a little more poetic than You Fail Failing Forever, especially after the big Artistic License rename of that trope class.
• We chose Square Peg, Round Trope because Complaining About Tropers Misusing Tropes Instead of Fixing the Problem Yourself wrongly assumes you can't solve problems AND talk about them. Even just Complaining About Tropers Misusing Tropes is needlessly accusatory.
• Stacy's Mom is not called Peter's Aunt because Aunt May being attractive is a product of the films and television based on Spidey and not in the original comics.
• Staircase Tumble could have been People Trip on Stairs, as a pun off of People Sit on Chairs, but that would be too Accent Depundent - "trip" is not necessarily pronounced like "chrip". Plus, the pun doesn't make much sense to begin with.
• Stock Dinosaurs (Non-Dinosaurian Reptiles) was not called Nonsuchus because only paleontologists would get the pun (aaaand we want to keep them out of the Useful Notes anyway).
• The Stoner is shorter than I Smoke a Fat Pound of Grass and Fall on my Ass Faster Than a Fat Bitch who Sat Down Too Fast.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys is a little less loaded than Stop Acting Like Your Stupid Game Matters And Let Us Play However We Want To.
  • Also, No Items Fox Only Final Destination wouldn't make sense to those unfamiliar with the Super Smash Bros. tournament scene.
• Story-Breaker Power is more straightforward and less derisive than So Strong That the Story Should Have Ended Yesterday With This Power Around.
• For gender equality and suchlike, we once tried Strawwoman Has A Point instead of Strawman Has a Point. Unfortunately, everybody associated this video first.
• Stubborn Mule is not as much of a lame pun as Literal Jerk Ass and much more concise than You Can't Get a Donkey Down From a Minaret.
• The trope is called Summer Blockbuster because it's way shorter than Immensely Budgeted Film That Throws Everything Except Special Effects Out The Window To Attract Mainstream Moviegoers And Big Money.
• Supermodel Strut is shorter than The Harder A Lady Sways Her Hips, The Harder (Straight) Guys Get. It is also shorter than They're Hypnotized By My Way Of Walking. It was also once called Sexy Walk, but that sounded too general, and we're not going back to that.
• Super-Speed needs no explanation. Sonic Speed is overly reliant on knowing who it's referring to and could easily be mixed up with an objective speed measurement (I.E. breaking the sound barrier).
• It's called Suppressed Mammaries and not Binders Full of Women because first, we had the trope before Romney made that comment, and second, not everyone is familiar with the use of "binder" as a costuming item and would think that name meant what was actually implied by the meme (i.e. transparent attempts to hire token women)...or something even worse.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel is less reliant on snowclones and old jokes than It Sucks, So They Changed It.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome is a little more polite and way shorter than They May Use This Trope a Million Times in Fiction, But This is What Would Really Happen in Real Life.
• Surprisingly Similar Characters is a lot shorter and doesn't suffer from Trope Namer Syndrome, unlike Is It Just Me Or Does Yukari Yakumo From Touhou Project Feel so Similar to Lucifer from Monster Strike?
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute is shorter and less defensive-sounding than The Old Actor Left And We Didn't Want To Pull An Other Darrin Cause That Would Be Lame, But At The Same Time, We Already Had All These Scripts Written And We Didn't Want To Have To Rewrite Them.

T

• Take It to the Forums isn't rude, unlike This Is Not A Trope, You Dumbass, And We Have A Fucking Message Board.
• It's only called Take That! because Completely Unwarranted And In Some Cases Extremely Cruel Insult Directed Towards A Specific Piece Of Media (That Is Often Actually Quite Good) That Only Serves To PO Fans And Make The Insulter Look Like Nothing More Than A Petty Jerkass wouldn't fit.
  • While shorter, Fuck You Other Show, Let's Make Fun Of You! is still not so nice.
• Take Over the World isn't character-named, unlike Dr. Wily's Resolution.
• Talking with Signs isn't called Sign Language because we have standards.
• Tautological Templar ties into the associated tropes and isn't a snowclone, unlike Myopia Justifies The Means.
• Teleportation Spam isn't called Sakurai Syndrome because, while Masahiro Sakurai uses this trope quite frequently in his games, there are plenty of other creators who also do this. Also, it avoids Trope Namer Syndrome.
  • It's also not called For the Love of God Please Stand Still for Five Freaking Minutes!!! because that's too long and also doesn't work as a verb or a noun.
• Teens Are Monsters is called what it is because 6teen gang, Destroyers of worlds didn't make much sense as they're really nice guys, in spite of their flaws and often questionable behavior.
• Temporary Bulk Change isn't reliant on knowing a specific meme, unlike Big Chungus Transformation.
• Tennis With Ganondorf is a pretty good alternate title for Tennis Boss, since Ganondorf actually is one of the best known examples. The only problem is that it could easily be mistaken for Go-Karting with Bowser.
• It's called They Changed It, Now It Sucks! because Fuck This Disco Guy, I Want Michael Jackson Back! probably wouldn't be understood by most tropers.
  • It also sounds less mocking than I DON'T LIKE CHANGE.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks! isn't called The Force Awakens Is Just A Copy Of A New Hope because that would be too much of a Take That!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character is less reliant on Trope Namer Syndrome, less of a Take That!, and less of a spoiler to The Last Jedi than Snoke Syndrome.
• We chose This Loser Is You over The Writers And Producers Of This Show Think That You Are [insert slew of various negative qualities here] due to length.
• Title Drop is very intuitive and clear. Not so much TITLE.
• It's called TLP Bump, because Please Don't Forget This, Everybody sounds kind of desperate.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky could be called The Garbage Will Do but we decided to go with a name that wouldn't start a flame war among the notoriously divided Star Wars fan base.
• Too Powerful to Live could be called He's Too Dangerous to be Left Alive and get the point across but we try to avoid meme based titles and the characters — both of them — being referred to aren't actually examples of this trope.
• Although Too Much Information does get the point across, Oh My Fucking God I Did NOT Need To Know That! kinda sounds good, too. Too bad it's a bit long.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions has a better ring to it than Why Should We Care About This Sub-Plot Again?.
• It was felt that referring to it as Trivia was slightly more subtle than This Information Has No Real Importance At All But We Want You To Feel Like You're Contributing To The Article.
• Trivial Tragedy is not called What Do You Mean, It's Not Heartbreaking? because it's an unnecessary snowclone.
• Troll is called that, partly because it's known by that term, and partly because calling it Complete Asswipe Who Likes To Start Needless Arguments On The Web And Should Die Horribly would ironically be trolling itself (although a great self demonstrating title).
• Actually, Joke Doing Creator does link back to Trolling Creator, but we prefer the latter as the former sounds like a Russian Reversal, implying something like Rage Against the Author.
• TV Tropes Wiki Drinking Game is a Just for Fun page, Complaining About Edits You Don't Like wouldn't say so.
• We chose Two-Keyed Lock over Friendship Doors because we this wiki covers more areas of interest than just Warframe.

U

• Sigma Grindset Rule #40: Please don't rename Übermensch to Sigma Male, no matter how tempting it is. The grind lasts forever but all memes do not.
• Un-Cancelled is a lot more clear than There Is No Episode VII, which could easily be mistaken for Fanon Discontinuity.
• Unfortunate Implications is a lot less to type than I Can't Fucking Believe They Didn't Realize This Would Offend People. It's also less rude than Idiots Take Offense to Everything.
  • Or, for that matter, And You Really Thought We Weren't Going To Find The Wrong Way Of Looking At This?
• Undying Loyalty is an alternative to This character will never, ever while they live (and sometimes after they die — ha ha, that's a literal example) stop giving support to this other character.
• Unintentional Period Piece is an alternative to How Do You Find Out When The Work Was Released? Well, First You Take A Good Looong Look At What The Characters Are Wearing. Fashion Is Fleeting After All And Everyone Has Memorised The History Of Fashion, Right? If That Doesn't Work, Take A Look At Technology They Are Using. Everyone Knows Every Computer Has Only 5 Years Before It Starts Looking Ridiculo-Wait, You Can Just Check Out The Copyright Date? How Come Nobody Told Me?! that someone proposed when they complained they couldn't remember how many O's there are in "looong".
• If most of our tropes were German, Perryrhodansystem der Elemente would have lumped together Unobtainium, Applied Phlebotinum, and all the other plot chemicals.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal is way shorter than That's A Guy? Oh, God, It Is A Guy! And I Actually Had A Stiffie! NOOOOOOOOO! My Masculinity Is ruined forever!
  • And Sexual Disorientation would be confused for other tropes.
• Unwanted Assistance isn't called Mansplaining because the inevitable Trope Repair Shop thread would end up being nothing but a-holes Mansplaining what a Trope is.
• Useful Notes is only partly used as Nitpick Fuel. It's also much shorter than Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Real Life (But Were Afraid To Ask).
• The Usual Adversaries used to be Goddamned Orks, in spite of that being an objectively terrible name that made literally every example on the page a Zero-Context Example and Forced Meme. It could have been renamed Esau Hates Jacob, but it wasn’t, as that would be confusing to people who aren’t Orthodox Jews.

V

• If Trope Namer Syndrome didn't exist, Vampire Lolita Archetype would have been named The Remilia.
• Do you really have to ask why Vagina Dentata was not called Kunt Fu?
• Viewers Are Morons was more concise than Most Media Executives Think the Collective IQ of Your Demographic Is Somewhat Lower than That of a Retarded Slug, and They Feel That's Being Mean to the Slug.
• Villain Override isn't called Assuming Direct Control because that's too general and doesn't make sense to people who haven't played Mass Effect 2.
• Vindicated by History didn't get the name The Unova not because of Trope Namer Syndrome, but because Pokémon Black and White fans had us at gunpoint for mocking the Sacred Cow.
• Voodoo Shark is called that because Your Plot Point Sucks, Your Explanation For Your Plot Point Sucks, And Your Face Sucks is just mean.
  • It's also shorter than Trying To Fill In A Plot Hole With Another Plot Hole.

W

• Walking Shirtless Scene could be called The Jacob but we try to avoid using Stock Parodies in our titles. Also, Trope Namer Syndrome.
• The Walls Are Closing In is a lot more plain and straightforward than One Thing's for Sure, We're All Gonna be a Lot Thinner. Besides, it's already the page quote.
• Self-demonstrating trope names that work are rare, but few would be worse suited to it than Wall of Text. For Example: The Giant Block of Text that Goes On For Much Too Long and Does Not Stop For a Very Long Time. It Just Keeps Going on and on and on Like There’s Some Grand Point to Make that Can’t be Made in a Simple Sentence but is Very Mistaken on this Sentiment of Absolutely Ludicrous Arrogance. But it Still Goes on Because the Writer is Very Pretentious and Snobby, Thinking They’re So Smart and Justified in Wasting Your Time With All this Text. OMG, Are You Still Reading This?! Just Stop for Your Own Sanity Before You Forget How to Read Good Things like Actually Well Written Stories that Don’t Need to do This Tripe and Engage in a Monumental Waste of Space, Pixels, or Ink in a Book Presser on Top of the Time and Effort to Write Down All This Insufferable Text that Takes the Shape of Walls that have Historically Been Used By People to Keep Other People Out (Unless You’re East Germany, Where They Built The Berlin Wall to Keep People In). Except That This Doesn’t Wrap Around Like a Wall, So it’s More Like the Biblical Tower of Babel, Which is Kind of Like This Name That Just Babbles on Continuously Without Any Rhyme or Reason. Except For This Sentence, Which Suggests We Charge This Trope Name Writer With Treason. This would risk an Overflow Error to the website and also be plain sadistic to anyone who prefers to type out trope names.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having is shorter than Whining About How Your Long-Sought Goal Wasn't As Awesome As You Thought It Would Be.
• Warrior Therapist is both better descriptive and fitting than Frontier Psychiatrist, since most people will know The Avalanches song more than the Wayne and Shuster sketch, and the song itself is...well...
• Watsonian versus Doylist is both shorter, more neutral and not as specific as You Can Explain That Plot Point As Much As You Like But It's Clear You're Just A Hack.
• Calling The Weird Sisters Nornentities...you really would go Tempting Fates?
• We use Werebeast Tropes instead of Lycan Tropes because the latter isn't inclusive towards non-werewolf werebeasts, despite the fitting pun.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? is more polite and less presumptuous than Grown Adults try to Justify Watching Children's Shows by Talking about How Totally Super Dark They are, You Guys.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? is more universal than I'm Twelve Years Old And What Is This?.
• What Happened to the Mouse? beat Well I Guess I'm The Asshole For Caring About This Plot Point in a runoff.
• We have Wild Mass Guessing because Off-The-Cuff Predictions And Obsessively Detailed Fanwank puts rather too fine a point on it.
• We call it Windmill Crusader instead of Windmills Do Not Work That Way since the latter is highly misleading even for people who recognize it as a Futurama reference.
• It's called Winged Unicorn rather than Horned Pegasus because that could be misread as "Horny Pegasus", and the pony porn is already out of control as is... not to mention there can be other types of horns than a Unicorn one.
• Wizarding School...If I Had A Dime For Each Time Anybody Cries Harry Potter Plagiarism When This Trope Comes Up, I'd Be Richer Than Mark Zuckerberg Now was actually a quite good idea - until the dude donated half of his wealth to charity. We also considered And Harry Potter Itself In Its Time Was Accused Of Plagiarising Earthsea.
• Word Salad Title seemed like a better option than Didactic Protozoon Shoo Continuously Reerupt Blandish or its 9,743,301 variants.
• Would Hurt a Child is more self-explanatory than Master Skywalker, There Are Too Many Of Them. What Are We Going To Do?
• It's called Wolverine Publicity and not Iron Man Publicity because we had it way before Iron Man became popular. Meanwhile, it's not called the equally valid at the time of naming Batman Publicity because we just didn't decide to go with that.
• Writing Around Trademarks is more straightforward than Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price.
• Wrong Time-Travel Savvy could have been called "Back to the Future" Is a Bunch of Bullshit, but the trope page existed long before Avengers: Endgame and singling out Back to the Future wouldn't be fair.

X

• "X" Makes Anything Cool would've been named Everything's Better With X, but we don't need to add to that snowclone family (even though that is a redirect anyway).

Y

• We say YMMV because These Are Just Individual Tropers' Opinions And Your Mileage May Vary, So Don't Go Making An Assload Of Justifying Edits Just Because You Disagree With A Given Entry is not only way longer, but needlessly accusatory.
• Some German suggested C-C-C-Combo Breaker! for Yoko Oh No. When we told him that only in German does Combo means a music band he was inconsolable.
• We considered calling You Fool! The Other F-Word, but decided not to make fools of ourselves. Well, not in that particular instance, at any rate.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters is neither named Our Terrorists Are Your Freedom Fighters nor Your Freedom Fighters Are Our Terrorists, both which won't work. What causes the strange breaking of logical symmetry is still under scientific research.

Z

• The reason Zany Scheme was chosen is that Can't You Think Of Something Easier To Solve Your Problem? is too long, and isn't a noun.

And finally...

• We call this site TV Tropes instead of A Reader-Maintained Database of Frequently-Seen Elements and Patterns In Many Forms of Communication, Particularly Entertainment Media because, dude, we started out by writing about stuff on TV.

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