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Title by Number - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Feb 18 2008

Title by Number (trope)

Looking for a good name for your work of fiction? Look no further, just find a number tangentially related to the premise and use that as the title. Supposedly, this makes it sound "mysterious," especially if the number is also used as an Arc Number.

Compare Running Time in the Title. A Super-Trope to Advanced Tech 2000 (the number indicates this is a more technologically advanced version than v1), Annual Title (the number indicates approximate year of release), and Title 1 (the number indicates it is first in a series).

Titles with years go on Sub-Trope: Title by Year. Other subtropes are, Numbered Sequels, N+1 Sequel Title, and "Number of Objects" Title, Time Title. You Are Number 6 is a sister trope, for when it's a character rather than a work that's named after a number.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

Comic Books 

  • The eighteenth and final issue of the first volume of Runaways is unimaginatively titled "Eighteen".
  • DC comics series 52.
  • Hex 11

Fan Works 

Films — Live-Action 

  • 13 is a Foreign Remake of 13 Tzameti. The protagonist is forced to take part in a Deadly Game of Russian Roulette. The players are only known by a number, his being 13.
  • 300, referring to the 300 Spartans defending Thermopylae from the Persians.
  • The Russian film 12, a remake of 12 Angry Men.
  • 1408.
  • π (3.1415...)
  • Se7en, referring to the pervasive theme of the Seven Deadly Sins.
  • Thr3e, based off the book by Ted Dekker.
  • 8½, so called by director Federico Fellini because he had previously directed six features, two shorts, and one film with a co-director—counting the shorts and the collaborative works as half-pictures, that made this one number eight and a half.
  • District 9
  • The Number 23
  • 3, slightly justified as the title of a biopic of Dale Earnhardt, who used the number for most of his career.
  • 61* attached to Roger Maris; nothing to do with his own number (for most of his career, 9), but it's the number most associated with him (for his breaking of Babe Ruth's 60-homers-a-season record, the asterisk being added because seasons were shorter in Ruth's day).
  • An upcoming film called 3993.
  • The movie 21, which is about blackjack.
  • The 1979 movie Seven about a Magnificent Seven group of hitmen hired to kill a group of seven gangsters planning to take over Hawaii.
  • The movie 187, which is named after the Los Angeles penal code for homicide.
  • Horror film 976-EVIL, directed by Robert Englund.
  • 9 to 5, referring to 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., a normal working day in the U.S.
  • 10 (1979)
  • Thirteen (2003), which refers to the ages of the two lead characters.
  • The shot-on-video slasher film 555.
  • 42, named after Jackie Robinson's jersey number with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
  • R100, a riff on Japanese movie ratings. A movie rated "R100" would be unsuitable for viewers under 100 years old.
  • Survivor Style 5+
  • 22, the number being the date of any month when another woman gets killed.
  • 54: Named after a club with that number in its name.
  • 65, as in how many millions of years in the past the film is set.

Literature 

  • As for times, add the short story 12:01.

Live-Action TV 

  • 24; and for that matter, The DCU series 52 and the Doctor Who episode "42", as each of these titles is a Shout-Out to 24 due to using Real Time format. "42" was also a Shout-Out to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  • The Heroes episode ".07%". This was a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story "The Seven Percent Solution."
  • The 4400 science fiction series.
  • 90210.
  • The Star Trek: Voyager episodes "The 37's" and "11:59".
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "11001001".
  • An enormous number of episodes on The West Wing include numbers and don't fit in subtropes, some named for bills or code names used in the episodes, such as "H. Con-172" and "7A WF 83429". The best example of this trope, however, would probably be the fourth season episode "Twenty Five".
  • The Lost episode "316".
  • The X-Files has episodes called "3" (as it features an "Unholy Trinity") and "731" (after a war crime story).
  • An infamous 1950s game show (along with two revivals) 21.
  • Three games with "three": Three on a Match, 3 For The Money (a short-lived NBC show from 1975), and 3's A Crowd (a Newlywed Game clone with the husband's secretary thrown in).
  • Others with game shows with numerical titles: Seven Keys, 1 vs. 100, Two For The Money, 50 Grand Slam, It Takes Two and One In A Million.
  • Northern Exposure: Grosse Pointe, 48230 and Three Doctors.
  • NUMB3RS:
    • Nine Wives.
    • One Hour.
    • Thirteen.
    • Atomic No. 33.
    • Thirty-Six Hours.
    • The Fifth Man.
    • 7 Men Out.
  • Person of Interest episodes "2-Pi-R" (which involves Finch undercover as a math teacher) and "6,741" (the number's relevance is only revealed at the end of the episode: it's how many times Shaw has gone through Samaritan's Lotus-Eater Machine).
  • The 100, which initially referred to the 100 young people sent down to Earth.
  • The Dallas episode "90265", which parodied Beverly Hills, 90210.
  • The Stargate SG-1 episode "200".
  • Walker, Texas Ranger:
    • Season 5's "99th Ranger", which details Brookdale, Texas, police officer Bobbie Hunt applying to become a Texas Ranger and shadowing Walker during his workdays after one Ranger is killed in the line of duty, all the while dealing with her abusive ex-husband, Russell Stafford, trying to discourage her from her dream. She ultimately gets the job.
    • Season 9's "6 Hours", where Walker and his companions Race Against the Clock (the title says it all) to rescue a billionaire's daughter from her traitorous bodyguard before she is murdered on live TV.

Music 

  • John Cage's "composition" 4:33, which consists of that exact amount (in minutes and seconds) of complete silence.
    • Cage has maintained that the point behind 4:33 is not complete silence, which is unattainable, but rather for the audience to attune itself to the ambient noise of the performance venue itself. This, of course, makes each performance of 4:33 unique.
    • He also wrote a series of "number pieces" which are named after the number of performers and the order in which it was written. For example, the fourth piece for one performer is called One4.
  • The Yes album 90125, which incidentally enough was named after its catalogue number.
  • In the same vein, Spliff's hit album 85555 was named after its CBS catalog number.
  • Iron Maiden song "2 AM".
  • Emilie Autumn's "306".
  • Ken Laszlo's "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" (as in counting from 1 to 8, serving both as an Epic Riff and part of the song's chorus)
  • The Catalogue by Kraftwerk was originally planned to be titled 12345678, too, both hinting at containing Kraftwerk's eight albums from Autobahn on and quoting "Numbers".
  • Van Halen's album 5150, named after the police code for an escaped mental patient (which Eddie then decided to employ baptizing his home studio).
    • A later instrumental is "316", after the March 16 birthday of Eddie's son Wolfgang (now the band's bassist).
  • Toto's albums Toto IV and The Seventh One.
  • Anthrax's short instrumental "9" from State of Euphoria.
  • "3's and 7's" by Queens of the Stone Age
  • Almost all of the songs in the CD "Revés" from the album Revés/Yosoy by Café Tacvba
  • Sugar Ray's third album, 14:59, an ironic response to critics who believed the band's 15 Minutes of Fame were almost up. (Given the response to their fourth and fifth albums, this title would later prove surprisingly accurate.) If read as a 24 hour time, it also says "1 to 3".
  • Coldplay's song "42".
  • Likewise, Level 42 named themselves after the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
  • The Weezer outtake "367": Rivers Cuomo actually organizes every song he writes into a "catalog of riffs" that goes all the way back to when he was 14, and under this system "367" was his 367th composition.
  • The Chicago song "25 or 6 to 4".
  • The Harry Nilsson song "One", better known for its cover by Three Dog Night.
  • "808", a 1999 top-10 hit song by the girl group Blaque (co-written by a group member and R. Kelly).
  • All of Russian nu-metal band The Slot's albums - numbered in order of their release - with the exceptions of their English-language compilation, "Break The Code" and their recent anniversary compilation, "#SLOT15".
    • One - "Slot1"
    • Three - "Тринити" ("Trinity")
    • Four - "4ever" ("Forever")
    • Five - "F5"
    • Six - "Шестой" ("Sixth")
    • Seven - Septima
  • Black Sabbath's 13, as well as the instrumental "E5150". The latter is sort of a pun in roman numerals - "5 1 50" would be "V I L", so the title means "EVIL".
  • The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (from Beatles for Sale), Revolution #1, Revolution #9 (The White Album), One After 909. (from Let It Be). The band even released a compilation album named One, collecting all their number one hit singles.
  • Led Zeppelin II and III. The fourth album, which is technically untitled, is commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV.
  • The Jethro Tull B-Side "17".
  • Biffy Clyro's "27" and "57", as well as the more recent "9/15ths".
  • 20/20 by The Beach Boys partially gets its name due to being the 20th overall album the band had released for Capitol at that point, as well as being the final album the band would release for them before their departure for Reprise Records.
  • Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno: All tracks have a title that describes which part of the record they can be found on: "1/1", for instance, means the first track of the first side.
  • Jean-Michel Jarre:
    • On Oxygène, Équinoxe, Magnetic Fields and Chronologie, the tracks all have the same title as the album with a "part number" attached to it, for example "Oxygène (Part IV)", later also simply called "Oxygène 4".
    • Zoolook has "Ethnicolor (Part II)" as a follow-up to the opener, "Ethnicolor".
    • Rendez-vous has "First Rendez-vous" through "Fifth Rendez-vous" and "Last Rendez-vous". "Second Rendez-vous" is sub-divided into four numbered parts, "Fifth Rendez-vous" into three; the parts have always been separate tracks on CD.
    • "Industrial Revolution" on Revolutions is sub-divided into an "Overture" and three numbered parts.
    • Oxygène 7-13 itself, a variant on the Numbered Sequel. Also, as the album title indicates, the track numbers continue Oxygène's numbering. "Oxygène 7" is sub-divided into three parts again.
    • Sessions 2000 has dates for titles. The album title itself fits more into Advanced Tech 2000 territory, though. It's also an Annual Title in the sense that it was recorded in 2000; it was released in 2002, however.
    • Oxygène 3, not to mention that the track numbering continues from "Oxygène 14" to "Oxygène 20".
    • Unofficially, "Oxygène 5", "Equinoxe 8" and "Magnetic Fields 1" are sub-divided into two, two and three parts respectively. "Equinoxe 8 Part 1" is more commonly known as "Band In The Rain".
  • Excuse 17: Excuse 17 were named by vocalist and guitarist Becca Albee's habit of arranging ideas and thoughts into chronological order.
  • Death Cab for Cutie's "405", named after I-405, a stretch of freeway in Seattle, Washington.
  • Butthole Surfers' "1408", after a home address the band once shared.
  • Aphrodite's Child's New Sound Album 666 combines this trope with The Number Of The Beast.
  • "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis is actually a physical property of Earth.
  • "Genesis Ch.1 v.32" by the Alan Parsons Project looks like a reference to a Bible verse, but Genesis chapter 1 has only 31 verses.
  • "19th Nervous Breakdown" by The Rolling Stones.
  • Slipknot's Self-Titled Album starts with Album Intro Track "742617000027", named after the album's catalog number.
  • The 2018 Sting/Shaggy collaboration 44/876 (which opens with a Title Track) takes its name from the international calling code for Sting's native UK and the NANP area code for Shaggy's native Jamaica.
  • Julio Iglesias' 1984 album 1100 Bel Air Place, which marked his breakthrough in the English-speaking world, was his then-current Los Angeles address.
  • Taylor Swift:
    • Fearless has a track named "Fifteen," dedicated to her best friend whom she met in high school.
    • One of the singles from her fourth album Red is named "22," her age at the time of the album's release.
    • Her fifth album is titled 1989 after her birth year.
    • Crossing over with Self-Referential Track Placement, the first, seventh, and, eighth tracks from her eighth album folklore are "the 1", "seven", and "august" respectively.
  • Rick Astley's seventh album "50" was released in 2016, the year Rick celebrated his fiftieth birthday.

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Visual Novels 

Western Animation 

Webcomics 

Web Videos