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Misplaced-Names Poster - TV Tropes

️Wed Jan 05 2011

You're looking at a movie poster. There's the lineup of the cast, or their floating heads, or their mirrored profiles. You look up at the names of the actors, and much to the annoyance of your inner neat freak, the names listed don't match up with the actors. Why does this happen? Well, there could be a number of reasons. Maybe the text was laid out at a different time than the graphic. Maybe the actor's contracts stipulate whose name goes in which order (and the actor whose name comes first also has to be prominently in the middle of the poster). Maybe it was meant as some sort of joke. It could be that as is the convention for Hollywood posters, the highest paid or top-billed actor is displayed on the poster as the central figure in the image, and all lower-billed actors placed outward; whereas the names of the same actors are arranged in order of prominence from left to right.

There's also a rarer opening titles version, involving the credits not being aligned with the clips being shown, resulting in one actor's name appearing on top of footage of a completely different actor—often to the audience's confusion, if the cast members in question are not familiar names.

See also Diagonal Billing, which can be a cause of this trope if it's employed on the poster as well as in the credits.

Examples:

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Films — Animation

Imagine how neat and organized the Shrek poster would be if the names of the voice actors lined up in accordance to how each character is positioned below. Farquaad is the only character who lines up with the name of his respective actor.

Films — Live-Action

If you look across the posters for Morning Glory you can observe that they are more likely to get Harrison Ford's name misplaced. For example, this poster◊ puts him under Rachel McAdams' name and vice versa.
Wild Hogs: The poster◊ swaps Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence (while correctly labeling John Travolta and William H. Macy).
Bad Boys II: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence◊ get swapped. Same for Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
Smart People: Four names◊, none in the correct position (or even labeling an actor of the right gender).
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965): The DVD cover◊ appears to label Hardy Kruger as James Stewart and James Stewart as Richard Attenborough (who isn't on the cover).
Bon Cop, Bad Cop manages to switch the names of Colm Feore and Patrick Huard, even though they're the only two people on the poster.◊
The Blind Side (the HBO made-for-tv movie starring Ron Silver, not the Sandra Bullock film) has this◊ DVD cover, in which Silver and Rebecca de Mornay get swapped.
Sherlock Holmes (2009): This poster◊ confuses Robert Downey Jr. with Jude Law.
Steel Magnolias: Six names, none of which are over the person to which they belong.◊
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, starring Johnny Depp as Elizabeth Swann, Geoffrey Rush as Will Turner, Orlando Bloom as Jack Sparrow, and Keira Knightley as Captain Barbossa◊.
Cowboys & Aliens: Three people rotated.◊
Big Game (2014): As you can see on the film's page, Onni Tommila and Samuel L. Jackson exchanged names.
Saved!: Not only misplaced names but only lists four of the five actors shown. [1]◊
Men in Black 3's French poster put's Will Smith's name over Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones' name over Will Smith, and Josh Brolin's name over Tommy Lee Jones. While Brolin does play the younger version of Jones's character Agent K, it's still this trope.
The poster for Gigli had Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's names reversed.
Con Air, starring◊ Nicolas Cage as John Malkovich, John Malkovich as John Cusack and John Cusack as Nic Cage.
Undercover Brother. Eddie Griffin had a sex change, Chris Kattan woke up as a black man with a huge Afro, and Denise Richards applied some Blackface.
The DVD cover◊ of Edison features Morgan Freeman as Justin Timberlake, LL Cool J as Morgan Freeman, Justin Timberlake as LL Cool J, and Kevin Spacey badly photoshopped in.
The poster/DVD cover of Gangs of New York features Cameron Diaz as Bill the Butcher.
A quite serious offender is the main poster◊ for Batman Returns, which switches the places of Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito. Not like it's hard to distinguish them in spite of this, but, taken at face value, DeVito got quite attractive all of a sudden, while Pfeiffer really let herself go.
The cover◊ for the special edition DVD of Goodfellas has this. The posters, thankfully, got it right.
The poster◊ for Locked Down. Apparently, Vinnie Jones has turned into a large, Scary Black Man. So has Bai Ling.
According to The Rock's poster, Nicolas Cage Is About To Shoot You.
Played with in the poster◊ for Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde. The color of the stars' names should tip you off.
Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston on the poster for Just Go with It.
The page image for Rat Race: eight actors, none of which have the correct name beneath them.
This poster◊ for The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling.
The poster◊ for The Avengers as seen on its page. The only correct one is Scarlett Johansson. But Mark Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston are nowhere to be found, at least in the flesh!
Olympus Has Fallen: I thought Freeman was the black one◊. The sequel London Has Fallen exaggerates this as not only are the names still displaced◊, they're no longer matching from the first poster either!
The first Charlie's Angels (2000) film did this too.
Joyful Noise: Keke Palmer is not Queen Latifah.◊.
Played With in the poster for Seven Psychopaths. The actors playing each psychopath are listed at the top, and are depicted standing in a different order — but each name is conveniently numbered. Maybe all posters should do this!
The UK posters for Red 2, as analysed by Dave Gorman here.
Double Take◊, starring Eddie Griffin and Orlando Jones. There is at least one review of Undercover Brother that referred to Eddie Griffin as Orlando Jones likely due to this trope.
The French poster for The World's End has Nick Frost and Simon Pegg listed as Simon Pegg and Nick frost.
The Grease poster shows John Travolta's name above Olivia Newton-John, and Olivia Newton-John's name above John Travolta.
Justified with the Freaky Friday (2003) and Freakier Friday posters, which show Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan below each other's names, in reference to their characters spending most of the first movie trapped in each other's bodies.
The movie poster for Galaxy Quest does it.
The movie poster for House of Games has the names of the two leads swapped around.
Some DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Death Race 2000 have Frankenstein's (David Carradine) and Machine Gun Joe's (Sylvester Stallone) heads on the cover (in that order), while the text above reads "Stallone vs. Carradine".
The poster for 2014's Ride Along has Ice Cube's name above Kevin Hart's body and vice-versa.
Based on the poster for American Hustle, the five stars have (except for Christian Bale) had sex changes in addition to extremely drastic plastic surgery.
A particular ridiculous example is this X-Men: Days of Future Past poster where Hugh Jackman is the only one credited yet isn't even on the poster.
Some Like It Hot has a few home video covers that give Marilyn Monroe top billing, and place her in the front and center. However, since Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are also Billed Above the Title, these covers end up having Marilyn pose underneath Tony Curtis' name, with him underneath hers. (Jack Lemmon ended up in the proper spot, though.)
A slight variation occurred in one poster promoting Tropic Thunder: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. all had their names prominently listed on the top of the poster, but only Ben Stiller and Robert Downey, Jr were in the actual image. This actually lead to some controversy: The film was already becoming a bit controversial for Downey, Jr. spending most of his screen-time in black face; The placement of the names and the fact that the actors were listed by surname also made it look as though he was being billed as "Black Downey Jr".
Look at the poster of The Muppets (2011): apparently Amy Adams is playing Walter (the little Muppet) and Chris Cooper is playing a chick.
Not technically a poster, but check out this gem from an early trailer of The Expendables 3.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) trades the girl with the guy next to her◊.
The ultimate collector's edition slipcover◊ of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has Paul Newman and Robert Redford's names swapped. However, the cover of the case itself◊ uses the same text with a different pictures where the actors match their names.
On the poster for Grudge Match exactly zero out of the six actors' names line up with the proper actor's face.
The poster for Georgia Rule has a picture of the three stars, their names, and the tagline "Mother. Daughter. Grandaughter."—none of which properly line up.
This poster◊ for Beautiful Creatures may be the crowning example: seven cast members are listed, and only one of them matches up with their picture!
Friends with Money: The only person on the poster that matches up with their name is Frances McDormand. Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Jennifer Aniston all do a bodyswap.
The Inspector Gadget (1999) poster◊ has Matthew Broderick and Rupert Everett's names swapped around not matching the respective actors.
Revolutionary Road. Please note that the man with the beard is not Kate Winslet.
Margin Call. Pictures of eight actors, above their names (plus one). The only name in the right place is that of Simon Baker.
The poster◊ for College Road Trip indicates that Raven Symone is taking a young woman named Martin Lawrence on the aforementioned trip.
This poster◊ for Triple Frontier gets all the names and photos matched up correctly. This one◊ only manages two out of five.
Zig-zagged with Stay Tuned. While the film's original theatrical poster◊ had John Ritter and Pam Dawber's names not match up with their corresponding actors, all home video releases, such as this 2019 Blu-Ray release◊, have the cover art literally reversed, completely averting the trope.
Saving Silverman: The DVD cover has none of the four stars' names above their pictures.
48 Hrs.: This DVD cover◊ manages to get the two leads' names each placed over the other's picture.
Knives Out has many people, with Daniel Craig front and center... and his name all the way to the left.
Tomorrow Is Forever is a great example, with the faces of Orson Welles, George Brent, and Claudette Colbert dominating the poster, while underneath are billed Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and George Brent. The likely reaction is, "Hm... Claudette is looking a bit puffy there.◊"
Red Planet stars Val Kilmer, whose head is centered but whose name is on the left. Most jarringly, this leaves Carrie-Anne Moss with Tom Sizemore's name.
Bill & Ted Face the Music has a good excuse. Since the first two films came out, Keanu Reeves has become a major star, while Alex Winter quit acting to work behind the camera. Consequently, Keanu receives top billing, with his name on the left of the poster. However, the franchise has a longstanding tradition of placing Bill, played by Winter, on the left of the screen, while Ted, played by Reeves, is on the right. Consequently, the actors appear on the opposite side as their names.
You Again has five names◊, and only Odette Youstman is under her own. Not even the pictures they're tearing match the names above!
Any fan of The Inbetweeners will see that its film's poster suffers from terminal transposition.
They Came Together. Possibly a play on the trope, it's almost as if they did it deliberately.
Airheads stars Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler, however, the poster shows the trio standing in a police line-up with Sandler, Fraser, and Buscemi from left-to-right.
One◊ of the posters for House of Gucci matches all the names with the right pictures. The second◊ gets only two out of five correctly paired up, and the third◊ has all five of them mismatched. (Notably, the actors' names are listed in the same order on all three; only the arrangement of the pictures varies.)
Thanks to Diagonal Billing, the poster for Nothing to Lose identifies Tim Robbins as Martin Lawrence and vice versa.
Ticket to Paradise, starring Julia Roberts as a woman named George Clooney and George Clooney as her ex-husband Julia Roberts.
Bandidas: Most of the posters feature the two main stars being Back-to-Back Badasses, but often mix up their names. The one featured at the top of the work page is an exception.
Red One: One poster has Dwayne Johnson in the correct position, while J. K. Simmons is front and center and yet his name is placed to the right. Another picture has Simmons now sitting under the title and names, while Johnson, Chris Evans and Lucy Liu got rotated.
A Minecraft Movie: Five names, of which Jack Black is under his own and the others having exchanged names (and genders).

Live-Action TV

Music

The album covers for Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey switch the names of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Crosby, Stills & Nash: their first album, the photo used for the cover has from left to right: Nash, Stills, and Crosby. Somewhat Justified, apparently: According to The Other Wiki, the photo was taken at an abandoned house, and at the time, the three had not yet decided on a name. By the time they settled on "Crosby, Stills and Nash", the house had been torn down.
The official soundtrack for Shrek is similar to the poster in the Films section, as shown here.◊
The American supergroup Eyes Adrift had to use a Market-Based Title in Australia due to there already being an Australian group using the name - they went with Bud, Curt And Krist, that being the members' first names in alphabetical order. However, the original album cover depicted the faces of Bud Gough, Krist Novoselic and Curt Kirkwood in that order - in order to avert this trope, they also altered the cover art of the Australian edition so that Curt was in the middle and everyone's name would match up with their faces.

Video Games

In Left 4 Dead 2, loading screens for joining a server show a movie poster with the four player characters standing side-to-side, with a list of each player below the poster, their names listed in the same order as their characters. However, some creators of custom campaigns forget to set the order correctly for their campaign's poster, leading to, for example, Nick being on the right-hand side of the poster while the person playing him is listed first (by default from left to right it goes Nick, Rochelle, Coach, Ellis). The first Left 4 Dead averted this by having the names listed right above their characters' heads (and requiring X and Y coordinates for those names), but also made it much more apparent (not to mention funny) when a campaign's creator got lazy about it.

Web Video

Gregory Austin McConnell: Discussed in Why Don't Movie Poster Names EVER Line Up?! where he explains that it's caused by actors wanting their names to be as close to the top left as possible.

Western Animation

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The front of the Mayor Mare & Time Turner trading card does this with the names of the two characters on the card.

Other

The VCR game Clue II: Murder in Disguise shows the caption "billiard room" over the introduction of the character Inspector Pride.
Inspector Pride: My name is Inspector Pride.
Ben Minnotte: No, it's not! I-it's Billiard Room, I could see it right there on the screen.
This is the premise of Botchamania's "That's Not My Name" section where the name display doesn't match the wrestler appears on-screen.