Annual Title

When a show's title incorporates the year it was released — more or less. Forward-dating shows by using next year is somewhat common, especially if the release is late in the year. Back-dating is less heard of, since it implies the show is falling behind the times; usually annual titles get incremented in case production slips behind schedule.

Affixing a contemporary year to the title of a familiar story often implies a Setting Update, though not necessarily.

Fans will often do this with Similarly Named Works and Recycled Titles. Since those are Retronyms rather than official, they may or may not have their place here. This wiki uses this practice a lot, so be careful of annual wikiwords: Make sure to check on the actual page, where the title will usually be customized to add parentheses around the year.

Subtrope to Title by Year and Work Info Title, being a number that's also the year the work was released. It can overlap with Advanced Tech 2000 when a work is made/released just before a new millennium.

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Examples:

Asian Animation

• The second season of GG Bond, Martial Arts 2008, is a bit of a variation in that the season actually premiered in 2007.

Comic Books

• DC Comics' L.E.G.I.O.N. '89-'94.
• DC also brought back its Silver Age Anthology Comic Showcase back in The '90s as a series of 12-issue miniseries titled "Showcase '94", "Showcase '95", etc.

Film

• Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla 2000.
• Hammer Horror Dracula A.D. 1972.
• Dracula 2000 (Released in Europe as Dracula 2001).
• Amityville 1992, the alternative title for Amityville: It's About Time.
• Movie studios in The '30s used Annual Titles more often for formula musical comedies:
  • Gold Diggers of 1933, Gold Diggers of 1935, Gold Diggers of 1937 (Warner Bros.) Released in 1932, 1934 & 1936, respectively. Spoofed by the title of the Tex Avery short Gold Diggers Of '49.
  • Broadway Melody of 1936, Broadway Melody of 1938, Broadway Melody of 1940 (MGM)
  • The Big Broadcast of 1936, The Big Broadcast of 1937, The Big Broadcast of 1938 (Paramount)
• Where the Boys Are '84
• Airport 1975, Airport 1977 and The Concorde—Airport '79
• Fantasia 2000 is a somewhat unusual example of this trope; the film's world premier at Carnegie Hall in December 1999 just barely misses the year listed in the title, but its IMAX release and wide release both took place in 2000.
• Fictional example: In Sullivan's Travels, Ants in Your Plants of 1939 is one of a string of successful comedy pictures directed by Sullivan. Sullivan now wants to film something more serious and artistic, though the studio would rather have him make Ants in Your Plants of 1941.
• The Hollywood Revue of 1929, whose would-be follow-up The Hollywood Revue of 1933 suffered from a Troubled Production and after Schedule Slipping and Retooling was finally released in 1934 as Hollywood Party.

Live-Action TV

• The 1960's revival of Dragnet: Dragnet 1967, Dragnet 1968, Dragnet 1969 and Dragnet 1970. However, the Made-for-TV Movie Dragnet 1966 was not broadcast until 1969.
• The infamous Galactica 1980
• When CBS revived Goodson-Todman's Match Game in 1973, it was suffixed with "'73," as opposed to calling it "The New Match Game" (which some TV listings actually had). The year in the title changed accordingly each December 31st until the end of the CBS run in 1979. Averted with the concurrent nighttime syndicated run, which was called "Match Game PM" without any year suffix.
• Wheel 2000, which debuted on CBS in 1997, was a children's version of Wheel of Fortune.
• Password Plus was originally to be named Password '79.
• MotorWeek did this for a while in the late '80s/early '90s.
• The BBC's Film [Year] programme, which has changed its name every year since 1972.
• NBC Sports had this for its NFL studio coverage (pregame, halftime and postgame) when they had the AFC broadcasting rights; it started in 1977 as NFL '77 with Bryant Gumbel, and continued with him as NFL '78, NFL '79, NFL '80 and NFL '81. When Bryant left in 1982 to become a host of Today alongside Jane Pauley, Len Berman assumed the host job for NFL '82 and NFL '83. In 1984, Len gave way to Bob Costas for the last three seasons of this format, as NFL '84, NFL '85 and NFL '86 (the last one had the 6-feathered NBC peacock we know today and that has been around for over 3.5 decades). Finally, in 1987, this titling was dropped, and NBC's NFL studio coverage became NFL Live! until 1995; the last three seasons of NBC's AFC rights (1995, 1996 and 1997) had the pregame show (and all of a Sunday gameday) simply called The NFL on NBC.
• American Bandstand on ABC w/the late, great Dick Clark had this for a time in the 60s, with such titles as AB '68 and AB '69 (the AB in those titles was also in the ABC network logo font, a reference to that fact that American Bandstand was on ABC).

Music

• The song "Freedom '90" by George Michael, named this way to differentiate it from the (otherwise completely unrelated) song "Freedom" which he made in 1984.
• Similarly to the George Michael example, the 1990 remix of David Bowie's 1975 song "Fame" was titled "Fame '90" to differentiate it from the original.
• Beatles '65 was Capitol Records' U.S. release culled mainly from the Parlorphone album Beatles for Sale.
• Rob Thomas has Real World 09 to seperate it from his MB20 song with the same name.
• Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions (1969) has a track called "Cambridge 1969", which was indeed recorded at Cambridge University in 1969.
• The song "1969" from The Stooges' Self-Titled Album The Stooges (1969) and "1970" from the same band's follow-up album Fun House (1970).
• The Daniel Johnston album 1990 was released in that very year.
• Talking Heads' debut album, released in 1977, was appropriately titled Talking Heads: 77.
• The Ventures' 1964 update of their 1960 breakthrough hit "Walk, Don't Run" was titled "Walk, Don't Run '64". One of their live albums titled their cover of "Apache" as "Apache '65" like the Davie Allan cover (see below) despite the fact that it was more-or-less the same arrangement they recorded in 1963.
• Davie Allan and the Arrows released two instrumental covers in 1965: "Apache '65" and "Moon Dawg '65". The former had a later update in 1973 as "Apache '73".
• Genesis' final single, a 1999 re-recording of "Carpet Crawlers" from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, was appropriately titled "The Carpet Crawlers 1999".
• New Order released a new version of "Blue Monday" remixed by Quincy Jones in 1988, appropriately titled "Blue Monday 1988". For the Greatest Hits Album (the best of) NewOrder and the Remix Album (the rest of) NewOrder in the mid-'90s, several more remixes were put out with the suffixes "-94" and "-95" (including another remix of "Blue Monday"). One of these remixes, "1963-95", later backed away from this trope when it was retitled "Nineteen63" for its single release.
• The Police's final single, a re-recording of the Zenyattà Mondatta opener "Don't Stand So Close to Me" for the 1986 Greatest Hits Album Every Breath You Take: The Singles, was released with the title "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86". Likewise, a re-recording of "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" from the same sessions was given the "'86" suffix when it belatedly saw a release on the DTS and SACD versions of Every Breath You Take: The Classics, the 1995 updated version of The Singles.

Print Media

• In the UK, The Christmas Annual usually does this, forward-dated to the new year, as in Doctor Who Annual 1985 (which was released for Christmas 1984).

Professional Wrestling

• When The Legion of Doom made their WWE comeback in 1998, they were renamed "Legion Of Doom 2000". In reality, the only things that had been updated for the new millennium were their trademark shoulder pads, which now had new and improved Spikes of Villainy, and their manager, having swapped Precious Paul Ellering for Sunny.
• In WCW in 1999, Raven and Vampiro teamed up with The Insane Clown Posse to form Deadpool. Later, Raven got back with the clowns and joined Balls Mahoney to form Deadpool 2000 in ICP's Juggalo Championshxt Wrestling.
• WrestleMania 2000 actually did take place in 2000, but it was a significant departure from the usual naming scheme; if it had been named like previous and future events, it would have been WrestleMania XVI.
• Ring of Honor's Jay and Mark at one time teamed as The Briscoes 2000 in reference to the year they debuted in, in order to distinguish themselves from the unrelated Briscos, a more established brother Tag Team.
• The Spoiler 2000 was probably not the 2000th wrestler to wear the mask, but he did take it up in the year 2000.
• The last iteration of the nWo in WCW was referred to as nWo 2000.

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering core sets are all named after their year (forward-dated), a trend that began with 2009's Magic: The Gathering 2010 Core Set, or Magic 2010 for short.

Theatre

• The Trope Maker in musical theatre was the Ziegfeld Follies, whose first edition was titled Follies of 1907. It set the standard for titling musical revues to the extent that many revues which never would become a series would carry the current year in title, and most series of revues were referred to with annual titles whether they actually used them or not. Ziegfeld produced a new edition of the Follies each year until 1924, but it and all of its imitators stopped coming out yearly by the late 1920s.
• The George White's Scandals series of revues averted this for a long time, using headings along the lines of "Nth Annual Edition" even after it started skipping years, but its final stage outing used the subheading "1939-40 Edition." There was also a now-lost movie titled George White's 1935 Scandals.

Video Games

• Time Pilot '84
• Galaga '88, also known as Galaga '90 on its American TurboGrafx-16 release and as Galaga '91 on the Game Gear.
• Bomberman '93 & '94
• Hector '87
• Wrecking Crew '98.
• The Donkey Kong game on the Game Boy went by the Working Title Donkey Kong '94.
• Final Fight was originally meant to be Street Fighter '89, but Capcom settled for the new title because it played nothing like Street Fighter.
• Madden NFL. Every year, it comes out with the next year's year in the title.
  • And the FIFA Soccer/NHL Hockey games. The Madden bit was parodied by one webcomic by having the changes for a sequel consist of updating the number... and that's it.
• The NASCAR games are an interesting case. Pictured above is NASCAR Racing 2002 Season, developed by Papyrus. However, they developed non year-labeled titles for 8 years prior, and their next title, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, would be their last, as after EA got the exclusive license to produce NASCAR games, Papyrus went on to make iRacing.
  • EA themselves released 98, 99, 2000, 2001, Thunder 2002, Thunder 2003, Thunder 2004, 2005: Chase for the Cup, 06: Total Team Control, 07, 08, and 09. (however just like their other games each of EA Sports' NASCAR games is set a year prior to the year in the title. For example NASCAR 98 actually takes place (& was released) during the 1997 season)
  • Their license then expired and was picked up by Eutechnyx, who developed The Game: 2011, Inside Line, The Game: 2013 (as an update to Inside Line), 14, 15, and '15 Victory Edition.
  • This trope was then averted with the next 5 games (Heat Evolution, then Heats 2-5), which were developed by 704 Games. For 2021 onward, however, Motorsport Games received the license, and their first title, NASCAR 21: Ignition, will play it straight once again.
• Colin McRae Rally games play with this trope, with each of the entry indicate its release year. 2.0 for 2000 release, and 3 for 2003 release. 04, despite indicating 2004 release, was actually released in September 2003. Its Sequel Series DiRT stopped doing this trope.
• The King of Fighters did this every year from The King of Fighters '94 to The King of Fighters 2003. Since the next game was not released in 2004, the main series stopped using this, though it didn't stop King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2 from being retitled The King of Fighters 2006 in the U.S.
• Most 2K Sports games, with 2Kn as an abbreviation for (2000 + n). They are usually released in the preceding year, though. This was started by Sega Sports, the company's predecessor.
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon is a variant; the year it was released (2000) was a Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.
• Super Volleyball was followed by Super Volley '91, retitled Power Spikes outside Japan. There was going to be a Super Volley '94 after that for the Neo Geo, but it became Power Spikes II by the time it was released in 1995.
• Just Dance 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
• The first Gran Turismo game to be released on the Playstation 2 was originally to be called Gran Turismo 2000 for its year of release. However, development went on longer than expected and the game was released in 2001 as Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec.
• Formula Racer 2012, released in that same year (the previous game didn't have the year in the title).
• OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, which was indeed released in 2006. It may have been named as such to mark it being the 20th anniversary of the arcade title.

Western Animation

• The Wartime Cartoon The Spirit of '43 starring Donald Duck.
• The 1935 Looney Tunes short "Gold Diggers Of '49" with Porky Pig and Beans the Cat parodies Warner Bros.' annual "Gold Diggers" film series (see above), except instead of figurative gold diggers in the 1930s it features literal gold diggers in the 1840s.
• The first four episodes of South Park's fourth season each have "2000" at the end of its name as the season originally aired that year. In order, they are titled "The Tooth Fairy's Tats 2000", "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", "Timmy 2000", and "Quintuplets 2000". There's also the Halloween Episode "Hell on Earth 2006", aired that year and referring to the massive party of the same name thrown by Satan.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft likes to do this with its software.
  • Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows Me (a bit less on-the-nose than the others, with "Me" being an acronym for "Millennium Edition"), plus all versions of Windows Server.
  • Microsoft Office 95, 97, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 for PC; 98, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2019 for Mac. Some versions don't follow the annual pattern, such as 3.0 (sometimes known as Office 92), 4.0 (1993), 4.2 (1994) and XP (sometimes known as Office 2002) for PC and X (2001) for Mac.
  • Visual Studio 97, .NET 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022. The aversions are 6.0 (1998) and .NET (2002).
• Disney Theme Parks:
  • For a brief period of time in the '90s, EPCOT was officially named "Epcot '94" and "Epcot '95", likely to more directly invoke its "permanent World's Fair" aesthetic.
  • Animal Kingdom opened with an attraction called "The 1998 Dinosaur Jubilee", which lasted through 2000 and was renamed accordingly until being replaced with the more permanent Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama.

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