Lucky Charms Title

Oh yeah, MasteriskAasteriskSasteriskH is like, my favorite show.

"The first challenge one confronts with Face/Off is the curious, I might even say misplaced, 'forward slash' in the title. Are 'Face' and 'Off' separate talents on the title's resume?"

— Mike Nelson, Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese

There are many ways to name something, but if you're looking to add a bit of variety, why not throw some symbols into it in place of letters? This comes in two varieties.

The first kind, extremely present in anime and the songs within it, is adding meaningless symbols into the title. These symbols can give the show its own identity, but since you can't exactly pronounce a symbol, they just end up being there for decoration. Hearts and stars are especially common, much like the marshmallows in a bowl of Lucky Charms. These usually end up being removed when the title is brought over to the West. One is tempted to count in tildes (~), which are ridiculously common in Japanese titles, but these actually serve a function - the same function that a dash or colon would serve in a Western title (and as such tildes are often simply changed to colons for the Western release).
The first variety, unless you're the sort that compulsively downloads character sets, may end up looking very, very strange when it pops up in a Web browser that doesn't fully support Unicode. Extreme examples can render the title impossible to search for online.

The second variety is common in the West. Instead of writing actual letters, replace them with numbers or symbols. Of course, this practice is just as common as part of "1337-speak" on the Internet, so the implications of it may vary, from looking cool to just looking silly. It can sometimes be used to make a political point, especially by using $ in place of S; examples of this are best left as an exer¢i$e for the reader.

May include a Heart Symbol. Apply this to speech, and you get Say It with Hearts. Letters 2 Numbers, The Backwards Я, and Pictorial Letter Substitution are sister tropes. Compare to Xtreme Kool Letterz. Also see Censored Title and Questioning Title?.

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Examples:

Anime*and*Manga

• Black★Rock Shooter
• Lucky☆Star
• Kujibiki♥Unbalance. The remake series does this to distinguish itself from the original. It's given as "Kujibiki Heart Unbalance" by the Genshiken characters.
• UG☆Ultimate Girls
• Excel♡Saga
• Fushigiboshi no☆Futagohime
• This is a recurring feature in Pretty Cure titles.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star
  • Suite Pretty Cure ♪
  • KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode
  • Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure
  • Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure
  • Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure
• Penguin Musume♥Heart
• ×××HOLiC. The "×××" is silent, being replaced by whatever addiction the current episode is about. Whether you pronounce it correctly as "Holic" or more clearly as "Triple X-holic" or "Ex-Ex-Ex-Holic" is your choice.
• Hunter × Hunter. As in ×××HOLiC, the "×" is silent; it's just "Hunter Hunter".
• .hack, which is pronounced "dot-hack", invoking "dot-com". Most media has the word dot written inside it to make it clear this is how it's pronounced. Reinforced by the party in the first set of games being called "The Dot Hackers" in the meta-series. The // applied to each title are never pronounced.
• Blue Dragon RalΩGrad
• Gintama's anime spoofs this by having it be increasingly confusing to seperate, the original run was called "Gintama", followed by Gintama', then Gintama°, then Gintama. including the period. The characters often complained about not knowing how to pronounce the new season's title.
• GUN×SWORD, as in ×××HOLiC, has a silent "×".
• Lovely★Complex, which is the full name of the official title, Love★Com.
• Uta∽Kata
• Candy☆Boy
• Rosario + Vampire: In the original Japanese, the "+" is pronounced as "to (and)".
• ∀ Gundam (pronounced "Turn A Gundam"). The symbol, which is normally called a turned A, is a mathematical symbol meaning "Applies to all", referring to the series Canon Welding multiple continuities into a single backstory. So people won't be confused, the logo has "Called Turn "A" Gundam" written in English and an announcer booms out "Turn A... Gundam" during the opening.
• s-CRY-ed. There does not seem to be any reason why the dashes are there. You might think it's supposed to be pronounced "ess-cry-ed", but the title in Japanese is just the transliteration of "scryed" ("Sukuraido")
• Maria†Holic
• Parodied by Renkin 3-kyuu Magical?Pokaan, where the question mark is supposed to be a symbol that failed to render properly.
• Princess Princess +, which is pronounced "Princess Princess Plus".
• One Piece: Usopp's first Image Song is titled "Usopp☆Drop".
• Ojamajo Doremi # is generally pronounced "Ojamajo Doremi Sharp"
• Hidamari Sketch has reached a new level. Its third season is titled Hidamari Sketch x☆☆☆, pronounced "Hoshimittsu" or "Three Stars".
• +Anima is actually pronounced Plus-Anima.
• Black☆Star from Soul Eater always has his name with a star in it. It doesn't help that his seiyuu is the first of the Excel♥Girls (mentioned below). The title of the show also has Soul's logo between "Soul" and "Eater."
• Blood+ is just Blood Plus. However, when it was first airing, one person wrote in asking how to pronounce it, and [adult swim] suggested it's actually pronounced "Bleud Pleux".
• Romeo × Juliet. The "X" is silent.
• The titular idol group in Marginal #4 is pronounced "Marginal Number Four", but when they announce their debut to their classmates, people don't know how to pronounce it. They think the # symbol is pronounced "sharp", or that it's the kanji 井, pronounced "i".
• Onegai☆Teacher and Onegai☆Twins. The English versions lost the stars but picked up exclamation points, becoming Please Teacher! and Please Twins! respectively.
• Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica
• Tokimeki ☆ Mononoke Jogakkou
• In Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, the Public Media Guys consider making a Show Within a Show called πrates of the Caribbean.
• The iDOLM@STER has an "@" instead of an "a" and is written in all caps except for the "i". It's pronounced normally, though. The iDOLM@STER 2: The World Is All One!! manga adds not one, but two exclamation points to the end just for the heck of it.
• φBrain—Phi Brain
• Di[e]ce
• The second season of the YuruYuri anime is YuruYuri ♪♪.
• The Japanese title for The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. is romanized as "Saiki Kusuo no Ψ nan" (Ψ pronounced as "sai" from "PSI"). The English title loses the sai/Ψ pun, but uses the "Psychic" pronunciation pun from "SaikiK", instead.
• Naruto: Naruto writes his family name Uzumaki as a spiral, since that's what it means.
• In Samurai Champloo, when Mugen learns how to read, he signs his name as an infinity sign.
• Chibi☆Devi!
• Space☆Dandy
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA
• The Japanese title of Laid-Back Camp is Yurucamp△, using the upper-case delta to represent a tent. This is somehow retained in the English translation, as the covers always replace the "a" in "Camp" with the same delta, as Laid-Back C△mp.
• The title for YuYu Hakusho is actually Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho It has not one but 2 "Stars" in it.
• Kimagure Orange Road has a "Star" in the title of its anime = Kimagure Orange☆Road.
• High☆Speed! (2013), the Light Novel series that Free! is a sequel to.
• A recurring feature in the Uta No Prince Sama Anime Titles.Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ features many symbols. Including a "Star", "Music Note", as well as the occasional "Percent" symbol.
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 1000%
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 2000%
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love 2000%: Shining Star Xmas
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love Revolutions
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love Legend Star
  • Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji Love Kingdom Movie
• The Wallflower anime Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge♥ has a "Heart" at the end of the title.
• Rebuild of Evangelion's English titles use the format You VERB (Not) X. Yes, "not" is in parentheses.
• Headmasters, whose full title is Transformers: The★Headmasters (or, rather, トランスフォーマー ザ★ヘッドマスターズ)
• Scoop Musou "Scoop Hadouhou!"( `・ω・´)♂〓〓〓〓★(゜Д ゜ ;;;).:∴Dogooo — in case you're wondering, that's the main character firing a beam from his shovel. According to the official website the middle bit is pronounced "doshuooooouuuuzugoooon".
• The logo◊ for Ayakashi Triangle renders the Japanese text in a bizarre, incredibly angular font that draws part of the first character (あ) and the dakuten as equilateral triangles. The English translation in the same logo is written in all-caps with all the As drawn to emphasizes their triangular shape, sometimes filling them in with red. The English release eventually uses a slight variation of the latter where the A in "TRIANGLE" is replaced with a triangle (or perhaps the Greek letter delta).
• SPY×FAMILY: Like Hunter x Hunter, the "×" is silent. The author in fact said that HxH was the inspiration for adding a "x" to his manga's title.
• The Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real has silent stars.
• The☆Ultraman has a star in reference to the star on Joneus's head that serves as a Transformation Trinket.

Comic~Books

• The title for Booster Gold was written as "Boo$ter Gold" early on. Post-52, the comic title became "B∞ster Gold" (using the infinity symbol), but it's always been pronounced "Booster".
• $crooge McDuck comics.
• And then there's Ri¢hie Ri¢h.
• The Flash once fought a computer intelligence called "Killg%re." Although the writer intended it to be pronounced "Killgore," a fan wrote a letter (published in a subsequent issue) that argued the "%" carried no sound and, thus, the name was properly pronounced "Kill-gree."
• All books of the comic Achille Talon are actually titled "Ach!lle Talon". The titular character comments once, when asked to check the page he's appearing on, that "the I is on its dot, as it should be".
• The horror noir graphic novel Dracula, Motherf**ker!, written by Alex de Campi and illustrated by Erica Henderson. The title includes both asterisks and an exclamation point.

☆Fanfic☆

• Anchor Foal: The second chapter, Ponyville: ↓, which is also a play on One-Word Title, because it only has one actual word.
• Good Luck <3 is written with a "<3" at the end.
• Star Trek: Series ? is a fanfic series that throws characters from all over the Star Trek timeline(s) together on a time-traveling ship. According to the author, the ? is meant to be read as <the sound of the 'X' ('wrong answer') buzzer on a game show.>

××Film××

• Slash in the title:
  • The slash in Face/Off was added to make sure moviegoers didn't think the movie was about hockey.
  • Self/Less is a thriller about body-swapping – hence the slash.
  • Crazy/Beautiful
  • Outlaw King: The title of the film is displayed as "Outlaw/King" in the film itself, emphasizing that the main character could be considered solely one or the other.
• Period at the end:
  • Adaptation.
  • Blood Simple
  • Clerks
  • Emma. (2020)
  • Good Night, and Good Luck.
  • Ladies in Lavender.
  • missing.
  • Snatch.
• Ellipsis at the end:
  • About Last Night...
  • And God Said to Cain...
  • The Earrings of Madame de...
  • For a Good Time, Call...
  • I Was Born, But...
  • Pour cent briques, t'as plus rien...
  • Say Anything...
  • There Was a Crooked Man...
  • When Time Ran Out...
• The "$" sign for an "S":
  • $ (1971) is a film starring Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. It is popularly pronounced "Dollars," and in the UK is called The Heist.
  • The Secret of My Success is sometimes stylized as The Secret of My Succe$s.
  • $la$her$ is about contestants surviving Ax-Crazy serial killers for fabulous cash and prizes! Appropriate, since in-universe the game show is Japanese.
  • The Marty Feldman vehicle In God We Tru$t
  • How to Beat the High Co$t of Living
  • Ca$h is a 2010 Sean Bean movie, appropriately revolving about a suitcase full of cash dollars.
• The Godzilla series originally used the Japanese term "tai" (meaning "against" or "versus") in its titles. While pronounced the same way, the later Heisei films would swap out "tai" for the English letters "VS". Even later, the Millennium-era films would again change this to the English "X". As an example, there are three films in the entire Godzilla series which share the same spoken title, distinguished only by their written title:
  • 1974's Gojira tai Mekagojira (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla)
  • 1993's Gojira vs. Mekagojira (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II)
  • 2002's Gojira X Mekagojira (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla)
• The first theatrical release from The Asylum is titled #Holdyourbreath. So is it Hold Your Breath or Hashtag Hold Your Breath? But then again, what did you expect from The Asylum?
• M3GAN: While the title is M3GAN, the 3 is further stylized in the official title as a stack of three red horizontal bars. In the trailer, they light up in succession, like a status light on M3GAN.
• Jim Henson's Muppet★Vision 3D. The Walt Disney World Explorer program from The '90s used the name Jim Henson's Muppet★Vision 3D 4D with 3D struckout with a red slant ^note  Which can't be typed here for several reasons . This is because the film has 4D effects.
• [●REC]
• The movie I ♥ Huckabees. Public consensus quickly settled on pronouncing it "I Heart Huckabees".
• The movie William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.
• Posters and other promotional material for The Ωmega Man rendered the title as The Ωmega Man, which would sort of make it "The Omegamega Man".
• π.
• The first two entries of the Jönssonligan film series both use this:
  • Varning för Jönssonligan's title has the first word spelled as "Varn!ng" in the film itself and on IMDB, although most other sources spell it normally. While most of the fans go with "Varning" as well, there is an English fansub that tried replicating this stylistic choice by rendering the title as "Beware Øf the Jönsson Gang" - with silly results for anyone familiar with how the Ø symbol is usually pronounced.^note The sign is also sometimes referred to as the "Danish ö", and the film is a Swedish remake of a Danish film, although it's unknown whether the translator had this in mind when making this choice.
  • The titlecard of ''Jönssonligan och Dynamit-Harry" also features the word "Dynamit" in white, but with a drawing of a red stick of dynamite in place of the letter i. For various reasons this doesn't get replicated anywhere else.
• WALL•E is officially spelled with a dot in it, but people tend to just use a hyphen.
• I Am Here....Now. That's a four-period ellipsis in there, which would normally indicate that it's the end of a sentence, and that "Now" is the first word of a new sentence.
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding replaces each E with Σ (sigma), which in Greek stands for the sound of S.
• What the #$*! Do We Know!? is stylized as What tнē #$*! D̄ө ωΣ (k)πow!? on its promotional poster and DVD cover.
• Alien³, though almost nobody pronounces it as "Alien Cubed".

[e-mail]

• ☆dventure, a forum adventure at the MSPA forums (found here).
• In Ruby Quest, one character was always referred to as "♠" in the facility's various Apocalyptic Logs. It took a lot of time before the story revealed it was actually pronounced "Ace".

$Literature

• In Snow Crash, the hacker named Da5id.
• In The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, several characters spell their names with symbols. Examples: Dr. Wyg& (pronounced Wygand), @kins.
  • Randall Garrett's The Demolished Man: A Review in Verse replicates this and carries it much further, replacing many words and phonemes with numbers and symbols, in some cases as phrases or partial phrases ("Mr. Hassop has gone in2 th@ mor* his hide!")
• The seminal Cyberpunk novel Neuromancer gave us Lady 3Jane, a clone daughter of the founding fathers of the artificial satellite that the story takes place on.
• Gahan Wilson's short story in the Again, Dangerous Visions anthology has no title - it's identified by a black blob. (It's about a black blob, illustrated in the story itself, that grows and grows until...)
• The novel Vampire$ by John Steakley. The film adaptation, John Carpenter's Vampires, eliminates the dollar sign and therefore misses the entire point. Recent editions of the book itself have followed suit, dropping the $ to tie in better with the movie, even thought the company the book is named after is still unchanged.
• My Name Is Sus5an Smith. The 5 Is Silent is a Young Adult novel by Louise Plummer about a young artist desperate to be different.
• In Slimy Underbelly, young supervillain-wannabee Jody is very insistent that people refer to his villainous alter-ego as "Dr. Darkness!!!", even using the triple-exclamation marks as his Chest Insignia.
• The German version of The Twilight Saga is called "Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen"; "Bis" means "until" and "Biss" means "bite". Thus it's "Until Dawn" or ""Bite till dawn". But note the latter of the two translations in German is very bad grammar and actually a very botched translation.
• Card Force Infection has an in-universe example in the musician "Hazuki/Zer0", pronounced "Hazuki over zero".
• Dungeon Engineer: Multiple chapters:
  • Chapter 29: A N T S 🐜🐜🐜
  • With Music Is Eighth Notes: Chapter 30: ♫ I've Experiments to Run, There is Research to be Done ♫, a Shout-Out to the "Still Alive" song from Portal.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The U in Hard Luck is a horseshoe.
• While presumably pronounced "slant", the science fiction novel / is somewhat disorientingly titled, particularly since it's uncertain that is the title unless you look at the copyright page (which for clarity's sake describes the situation rather than simply putting a / on the page.)
• Level Up Hero: The cover reads Level Up HΣ℞Θ. H - Sigma - Prescription - Theta.

Live.Action::TV()

• Parodied in the Austin & Ally episode "Bloggers & Butterflies", where the blog mocking Austin is called "Miami H8ter Girl" ("H8ter" pronounced as "Hater"; the correct spelling should be "H8r").
• M*A*S*H (but not the After Show, AfterMASH).
• Friends has the logo of F·R·I·E·N·D·S
• Numbers Never Lie.
• Neither do NUMB3RS.
• In Japan, The Big Bang Theory is called ビッグバン★セオリー, or "Big Bang★Theory". Market-Based Title much? They even add a subtitle that basically means "The romance laws of our geekiness".
• The Japanese version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is titled "Quiz $ Millionaire" (クイズ$ミリオネア)
• Greek is rendered as GRΣΣK, despite the fact that that really transliterates to "GrSSk", not "Greek".
• The "A"s in Stargate are always rendered in the show's titles as the Ancient symbol "At" (A symbol resembling the Greek letter Λ; crowned by a small circle). Until the first one changes back to a plain ol' A.
• Commercials for the TV show Dirt render the title as D!rt.
• The $treet
• The 1970s series Vega$
• Arli$$ is sometimes stylized Arli$$
• $#!+ My Dad Says
• Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23
• Kevin Can F**k Himself
• The Golden Girls episode "Ro$e Love$ Mile$"
• Game $how title$ ar€ gold mine$ for thi$ trop£:
  • * $The Price Is Right (the $ is silent) has pricing games named "Lucky $even", "Pocket ¢hange", and "$uper $aver" (the latter one is now retired).
  • Super Password had a special round called the Ca$hword.
  • The short-lived game shows Amne$ia, $how Me the Money, and $et For Life
  • The Sci Fi Channel Game Show Cha$e.
  • Ca$h Cab. Though only in the American version.
  • The multi-national Game Show $ale of the Century did this everywhere except the United Kingdom after Reg Grundy acquired the format. The original NBC daytime series, with Jack Kelly and later Joe Garagiola, rendered its title $ale of the ¢entury.
  • The British version of Greed was called Gr££d. Oh, and the Finnish and Italian versions were Gr€€d. Which was especially strange as neither version had their amounts in €uro at first.^note (Finland switched for the final s€ri€s)
    • Oh, not to forget the lifeline, the Fr££bi£.
    • The German one was called Ca$h - Das eine Million-Mark Quiz.
    • The trailers for the British version called it Gr€€d. Strange, as the UK never adopted the Euro anyway.
• Parodied in The Middleman with the super-addictive !!!!. Yes the drink is called !!!!. It is pronounced by stamping your foot and doing jazz hands.
• There's a Lost episode called "?" This refers to something specific in the plot, but was also so named in tribute to the episode's intended director, Darren Aronofsky, who directed the movie π. Aronofsky had to bow out of the episode, but the title remained.
• The Doctor Who logo used from 2010 to 2014 featured the monogram DW in the shape of a TARDIS.
• The Comedy Central Panel Game @Midnight
• Kamen Rider AgitΩ. The Omega is pronounced like an "O".
• Awkward. The period is part of the title.
• The ESPN "30 for 30" installment on Southern Methodist University's recruiting scandal that led to the NCAA slapping their football program with the "death penalty" was titled "Pony Exce$$" with the dollar signs replacing the two "s"'s.
• Bron|Broen, in its original Danish-Norwegian market, uses a pipe symbol to separate the Swedish and Danish titles. The later seasons used multiple pipes to indicate sequel numbers. The BBC dropped this when they localized it to English as The Bridge (2011).
• The longtime PBS news show Wall $treet Week.
• Oblivious a hidden-camera game show that ran for two seasons on Spike TV, was stylized as Obliviou$.
• Mocked in Mystery Science Theater 3000. At the end of the short What About Juvenile Delinquency?, a question mark zooms in on screen, prompting this exchange:
  Tom Servo: It's Prince's new name, isn't it?
  Crow T. Robot: Naw, more like Frank Gorshin's new name.
• McMillion$, an HBO documentary about a scam involving the McDonald's Monopoly game, is stylized as McMillion$.
• Schitt's Creek is stylized as Schitt^$ Creek.
• Black Narcissus: The logo replaces the I in Narcissus with a cross: BLACK NARC†SSUS.
• Hou$e of Lie$, in which the two "S"s are replaced with dollar signs.
• The Season 4 DVD of How I Met Your Mother lists the episode "I Heart NJ" as "I ♥ NJ".

\Magazines/

• Analog: The magazine was (relatively briefly) officially known as Analog Science Fiction [symbol] Science Fact. The symbol, resembling a right-pointing arrow superimposed on a ⋂ (inverted U), was invented by editor John W. Campbell to represent "Analogous to", because they were changing the name.
• The most popular magazine about computers and tech of the Netherlands was renamed to Computer!Totaal in the 90s, which made many people write in in protest that it was a terrible choice because "You can't use special characters in a title!". Ironically, in recent years the website has become more important than the paper magazine and the URL for the website excludes the ! - even though that is considered a safe character to use in an URL - so the controversial bang was weeded out in the end.

=Music — Band and Artist Names

• 80s J-pop band TOM☆CAT
• Hello! Project loves this trope to the extremes, although they've toned down with it in recent years:
  • Athena & Robbikerottsu: Honkimekimeki♡Tokimekimeki, Yuugure☆Sherbert.
  • Buono!: Renai♥Rider, Muteki no ∞ Power.
  • Berryz Koubou: Sakura→Nyuugakushiki.
  • ℃-ute: Tsuugaku Vector ☂, ★Akogare My STAR★, Suiiitsu→→→Live.
  • Country: Onna no Ko no Torishirabe Time♥.
  • GAM: Icha♡Icha Summer.
  • Heike Michiyo: L♡M→Baby, Star★Man.
  • Juice=Juice and their 2nd album, #2 -¡Una más!-
  • Kirarin☆Revolution: Happy☆Happy Sunday, Happy☆彡, Hatten×Joy, Love da yo☆Darling, Koi☆ka na, group Kira☆Pika, Kirarin☆Land, ☆☆☆^note read as "Mitsuboshi" (lit. three stars).
  • Matsuura Aya: ♡Momoiro Kataomoi♡, Zettai Tokeru Mondai X = ♡, ○○ -Joshikousei no Shuchou-, ×3
  • Minimoni: Gyutto Dakishimete <FOREVER>.
  • Morning Musume: The☆Peace!, Yuki / Ai x Anata ≥ Suki, Hare Ame Nochi Suki♡, Tomodachi(♀)ga Ki ni Haitteiru Otoko kara no Dengon, "Suki da yo...", "Suggoi Nakama", "Sugoku Suki na no ni.. ne".
  • Odoru♡11, Happy♡7.
  • Satoda Mai to Fujioka Fujimaki: Ojisamatte Daisuki!♪
  • SI☆NA.
  • S/mile♡ge: ○○ Ganbaranakutemo Eenende!!
    • As ANGERME: Uraha=Lover
  • Viyuden: Issai Gassai Anata ni∮A?ge?ru♪, Koisuru♡Angel♡Heart.
  • Producer Tsunku's name is written as つんく♂.
  • And this list is nowhere near complete!
• The OP and ED songs for the Ballad Of A Shinigami anime were provided by a singer called K○Y.
• The band ¡Forward, Russia!. Even stranger is the other way of writing their name, ¡FФЯWДЯD, RUSSIД!, which might be transliterated as "¡FFYAWDYAD, RUSSID!"
• (həd) p.e., is often rendered with a schwa, a letter used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, as (həd) p.e.
  • Which would, according to the IPA, actually be pronounced "hud".
• Also, the artist Ryutaro Nakahara goes by Ryu☆
• The band !!!. Yes, three exclamation points. It can be pronounced by saying any sound three times, though the usual rendering is "chk chk chk".
• The group Hear'Say.
• American indie-rockers stellastarr*
• British boy band 5ive. (pronounced "Five")
• Fictional Example: In K-On!, the two names Mio suggests for their band are "Chocolate ☆ Melody" and "Pure ☆ Pure". (Curiously, she suggested them purely vocally, so one might wonder if she just said "hoshi" or "suta" in a way that made it clear that she intended the symbol rather than the word... or just accept that it's manga, so if it can be printed, you just pretend that they can say it somehow.)
• Sunn O))) — they named themselves after the logo of their preferred brand of amps. (On the logo the O))) looks more like a circle with soundwaves coming from it.) Strictly speaking, they chose their name and amps based off of the favored amps of the band Earth.
• ACϟDC (AC/DC.)
• →↑→, pronounced "Tsk Tsk Tsk" or "Tch Tch Tch" were an Australian Underground group of the late 1970s that used this.
• Irish girl group B* Witched.
• A* Teens
• R* Angels.
• The British progressive rock formation Frost*
• Irish band Therapy? - rumor had it the question mark was simply added to the name to make it span across the cover of a homemade demo after an alignment error. Although this could be inaccurate depending on who you ask.
• The Christian band Delirious?.
• The singer Kesha, who used a dollar sign in place of an S in her name up until March 2014. That's pronounced "Keh-sha", by the way.
• Panic! At The Disco eventually lost the ! on their second album, Pretty. Odd., citing "too much punctuation." They found it again after members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left to form The Young Veins.
• ? and the Mysterians, a band famous for its one-hit "96 Tears". Their lead singer does in fact just go by ? (pronounced "question mark").
• Nearly every band in the genre known most commonly as Witch House. Names include: ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ, Gr†LLGR†LL, †‡†, dir†ypride, 8:*), ///▲▲▲\\\, PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS, ▲, twYlY<ght>ZoNe, ✝NO VIRGIN✝, Δressed Up Like Δogs, μnłıłĿΞΔ, and more. This is often done to make it harder to search for the artist on Google, helping to prevent them from going mainstream.
• Rick Ro$$, on his album covers.
• Ma$e on his album covers.
• Too $hort.
• The Japanese Boy Band D☆DATE.
• British dance-punk band Hadouken!
• All-female Visual Kei band exist†trace. (The cross is silent.)
• It's sort of a trend in Visual Kei: another band is called †я i ￠к.
• The British indie rock band ∆, whose name is pronounced "Alt-J", due to the keyboard command that produces the symbol on a Mac.
• The singer P!nk. Her breakout album also had it, along with Xtreme Kool Letterz: M!ssundaztood.
• Blue Öyster Cult
• Prince, during his "Artist Formerly Known As Prince" period (1993-2000), had a "stage name" that consisted solely of Love Symbol #2, a modified transgender symbol with a second, stylized bar at the base of the shaft (Prince had previously used iconography based around the vanilla transgender symbol on his 1990 album Graffiti Bridge, though in an implicit context of challenging gender norms). Warner Bros. Records actually had to send out floppy disks with a custom font just so that the symbol could be used in print media.
• Black★Rock Shooter, a character seen in a Vocaloid music video, sung by Hatsune Miku, which spawned a franchise of the same name.
• ?uestlove of The Roots. It's pronounced "Questlove."
• A certain British synth-pop band of the 80s originally was named with an unpronounceable symbol comprised of a spiral leading into an undulating line and ending in a loop. When their label complained about their unpronounceable name, they offered the name Freur. Other than this, they are most famous for including Karl Hyde and Rick Smith, later to become famous in the 90s as Underworld.
• Delirious is stylized as Deliriou5? on their first few albums.
• Excel♥Girls, the seiyuu duo of Yumiko Kobayashi and Mikako Takahashi.
• British Industrial group Zoviet France is usually written as :zoviet*france: (with a crescent moon under the asterisk) or during their first years as :$oviet:france:. Occasionally they would actually use made up symbols to spell out their name[1]◊.
• *NSYNC stylizes their name in all caps with the asterisk (or an apostrophe in their early days), but they're also willing to accept people spelling it without the punctuation. It's the improper location of the asterisk that gets them.
• Swedish music producer Thomas G:son.
• Industrial duo ∆AIMON, which apparently has no official pronunciation but the most accepted is pronounced like "daemon." Sometimes spelled AAIMON where deltas aren't possible.
• The techno artist/band ΔΔ (Delta Delta).
• The doujin singer Kanipan("crab bread") often emoticonizes her name as (V)・∀・(V), representing a head-on view of a crab.
• There exists a rap group by the name of Dujeous?. With the question mark.
• The Czech post-black metal band ██████. Officially, they have no name. For websites that are limited to ASCII, they're known as Nic (Czech for "nothing/null/none") or sometimes Black Strip.
• The band Twenty One Pilots, formerly stylised as twenty | one | pilots, now stylised as TWENTY ØNE PILØTS.
• When the band mclusky partially reunited for some one-off performances, they were billed as 'mclusky' and later mclusky*. In both cases, the punctuation was meant to acknowledge that it wasn't the full original lineup.
• A similar thing happened with A.R.Kane - a version without co-founder Alex Ayuli toured in 2015 as #A.R.Kane, with the intention of dropping the hash symbol if he decided to join them.
• KARD is often referred to as K♠RD.
• Japanese shoegaze idol group (yes, that's a thing) ・・・・・・・・・, pronounced "Dots". On top of that, the members have their eyes hidden, are anonymous and known collectively as "Dots-chan". Originally there were nine members, and thus nine dots in the group's name, now they are just six.
• Sludge metal group Buzzov•en (variously stylized as Buzzoven, Buzzov-en, Buzzov.en, and Buzzov*en). The logo featured on their early albums was pasted together from the separate entries for the words "buzz" and "oven" in the same English dictionary, with the dot that was meant to separate the two syllables of "oven" left in; while the logo gradually changed, they've always kept some symbol between the o and v out of tradition, even if it's a barely distinguishable dot.
• English electronic musician μ-Ziq, pronunced "music".
• †††, a side project of Deftones' Chino Moreno (not to be confused with the already mentioned †‡†). It's pronounced "crosses". Also, they have a tendency to replace all T's in their song titles with cross symbols, as in "†his Is A †rick", and even have a song simply titled "†".
• KoЯn
• DANCE☆MAN, a Funny Afro-clad dude specialized in covers of songs from the 70s and 80s.
• J-Pop idol label GMG Entertainment enjoys doing this with their acts: SiLENT←NOiSE, Zero Kara⭐︎Star→t and the short-lived ↑ANiMO↑.

->Music - Individual Tracks and Albums

Themes

• Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star OP — "Makasete★Splash☆Star★"
  • The ending theme for Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GO!GO! has some ☆s in its lyrics, as Karen and Kurumi are so kindly demonstrating for us up at the top.
  • In Fresh Pretty Cure!, the lyrics for the second ending have some (^^)s thrown in, as does a song from the first Vocal Album.
• Higurashi: When They Cry, Rena's Image Song, "Egao Happy Peace♪"
  • Same with Inoue Orihime's Image Song, "La La La♪".
  • Higurashi also gives us "Sukisuki ∞ Nii Nii" for Satoko.
  • When They Cry in general, some of the letters in the title are red.
• My-HiME and My-Otome have this in spades. Both series' first opening theme has a star in it ("Shining☆Days" and "Dream☆Wing", respectively), and these titles are shared by the final episodes. In fact, the working title for My-Otome (舞-乙HiME) was 舞☆MAiD.
  • The title 舞-乙HiME counts too, since 乙HiME is meant to be pronounced "otome," which would normally be spelled 乙女.
• The opening theme for Tokyo Mew Mew has the ☆ as part of its kanji lyrics.
  • As does the ending theme of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo.
• The opening theme for Lucky Star has a ♥ in it.
• The second opening to Hayate the Combat Butler is called Shichiten Hakki ☆ Shijōshugi! And it has a (O_O;) in its kanji lyrics!
• "Groove☆Master", Sumomo's Image Song from Chobits (ft. Shinbo).
• In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Minako has a song (both in and out of universe) called "Kiss² Bang ²". Much like the lyrics state it's meant to be pronounced "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"
• The opening theme of Nanatsuiro★Drops is called "Shining Stars Bless☆."
• The OP single for Kanamemo has a second song titled "Wake Me Up (^_-)b!"
• The OP for Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! is called "Zettai Muteki☆Fallin' LOVE☆"
• Kawaii Metal group BABYMETAL's "ド・キ・ド・キ☆モーニング" ("Doki Doki Morning") and "ウ・キ・ウ・キ★ミッドナイト" ("Uki Uki Midnight").

Game music

• Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 has the theme song "Miracle! Portable ☆ Mission".
• ''We Love Katamari's'' "DISCO★PRINCE".
• The DanceDanceRevolution series has one song whose instrumental version is called "Candy☆", and whose vocal version is titled "Candy♥".
  • Konami has a lot of fun with this elsewhere in the Bemani series: "Happy☆Angel", "Sweet Sweet ♥ Magic", "Love ♥ Shine", "♥ Love² Sugar → ♥", "Stars★★★"... Need I mention "Magic Door (Theme of SPACE(Saturn)MACO"?
  • In The Groove songs "Utopia," "Destiny," "Delirium," and "Xuxa," among others, are credited to ☺. Pronounced "smiley." There is also a song entitled "!" pronounced "bang."
• Fictional Example: In K-On!, the two names Mio suggests for their band are "Chocolate ☆ Melody" and "Pure ☆ Pure". (Curiously, she suggested them purely vocally, so one might wonder if she just said "hoshi" or "suta" in a way that made it clear that she intended the symbol rather than the word... or just accept that it's manga, so if it can be printed, you just pretend that they can say it somehow.)

Music of Asia

• BeForU songs titled "Peace (^^)v" and "BRE∀K DOWN".
• Japanese experimental noise rock band Boredoms is somewhat known for their odd song titles, but on Vision Creation Newsun all of the songs are the following symbols: "◯", "☆", "♡", "Ҩ", "〜", "◎", "↑", "Ω", and finally "ずっと".
• Some songs by I've Sound have this kind of title, for example "Otomegokoro + √Nekomimi = ∞".
• Japanese speedcore duo DJ Sharpnel's albums UG☆Psyclone and Running★★★All Night!!
  • The latter album also features a Lucky Star remix titled LITTLE GOD CH@NNEL.
• Japanese singer Maki Ohguro's album Suppin includes a song titled "君は✈☠☢☻☈". On top of that, no website other than her own even parses these characters out, and they won't show up on iPods, so this song has to be written as "君は■■■■■" or "君は○○○○○". The song's name is actualy read as "君はテロリスト", translated as "You Are a Terrorist".
• One song by J-pop group Plus-Tech Squeeze Box is simply titled "☆".
• Gravure idol Yuka Kosaka's debut mini-album is titled Ero♥Puri★Trance ~Yuka-chin Mahou wo Kakechauzo~.
• Cibo Matto's second album, Stereo ☆ Type A.
• Japanese pop/rock band High and Mighty Color entitled their debut album G∞VER. After some confusion as to how to translate that (Pandora typed it out as "Goover" at one point,) The Other Wiki stepped in and stated that it's supposed to be "Go Over." Songs on the album include the title track "(G∞VER)" and "RUN☆RUN☆RUN".
• Japanese Electropunk types Mad Capsule Markets have a song called "Pulse" that is properly spelt with a square waveform in the title also.
• Japanese composer Hiroyuki Sawano is fond of combining Japanese, English, Greek, the International Phonetic Alphabet, and emojis for titling tracks on soundtracks he scores. Xenoblade Chronicles X, Attack on Titan, Thunderbolt Fantasy, nothing is safe or even printable in most formats depending on where the song's name is listed. To give a relatively "simple" example, there's a Promare track called "Burning Formation"... except it's actually titled "BAR2NG4女14yoN" and reading the title requires knowing the japanese pronunciation of english words, an unusual reading of the kanji for "woman", and converting numbers into syllabs (with the number 4 used as two completely different ones in the same word).
• Almost all Loona album titles are symbols and/or numbers. Flip That is an exception, but even that is stylized as Fl!p That.
• The fourth and last song in the Kaisen Ichiba by Koronba is ".", and no actual pronunciation is given for this. Some fans call it "Jellyfish" ("クラゲ") instead.
• The subtitle of TWICE's Formula of Love: O+T=<3 (ONCE plus TWICE equals LOVE).
• j-hope has "=" (pronounced "equal sign") from Jack in the Box.

Music of the Western World

• "Citizen/Soldier" by 3 Doors Down (although, being about the U.S. National Guard, it is appropriate).
• Some Autechre songs, such as "90101-5|-|" (pipe dash pipe?) and "O=0"
• Richard D. James has, among his repertoire, a song which is simply referred to as "a mathematical equation," due to the difficulty of actually pronouncing the title.
• Bass Hunter has an album titled LOL <(^^,)>
• The final track of Anamanaguchi's album Endless Fantasy is titled "(T-T)b".
• Will.i.am's #willpower, possibly the first album to be named with a twitter hashtag.
• The song "#Beautiful" by Mariah Carey featuring Miguel.
• The Godspeed You! Black Emperor album F♯A♯∞. This is actually meaningful, as on the LP version side one begins with an FF♯ chord, side two begins with an A♯ chord, and the last track ends with a locked groove that will continue for infinity if you let it.
• Bob Dylan's song "Love - 0 / No Limit" from Bringing It All Back Home. The title is meant to be expressed as a mathematical problem, pronounced "Love minus zero divided by no limit". The quotient, according to Dylan, is "absolutely unlimited love". This title confused some fans, who thought the track was a medley of two songs called "Love Minus Zero" and "No Limit," although it is clearly only one song. Many cover versions list the title as just "Love Minus Zero."
• "Hero/Heroine" by Boys Like Girls.
• BT's THЭSЭ HOPЭFUL MACHINЭS album.
• There exists a rare Devin Townsend EP named C:enter:### (See colon, enter colon, pound pound pound).
• Depeche Mode put out a pair of Greatest Hits Albums called The Singles 86>98 and The Singles 81>85. Which, if you read too much into their choice of symbol, makes it look like the band themselves are saying that their early singles are "greater than" their later ones.
• Fall Out Boy's live concert CD/DVD, * * * * : Live in Phoenix. The band stated that you pronounce * * * * by replacing it with any other four letter word you'd prefer.
• The band Five Knuckle has a song entitled "."
• "* * * * (Jungle Law)" by Love & Rockets. Oddly enough, there sort of is a title drop in the lyrics - "And it shows four stars where the name oughta be". Additionally, even the album version of the song bleeps out a certain word, and said word is in fact represented by four asterisks in the lyric sheet.
• *NSYNC, a trend Justin Timberlake would continue upon going solo with his album FutureSex/LoveSounds and its title track (which drops the plural).
• One of German industrial band KMFDM's albums has a title consisting of a sunburst, a skull-and-crossbones, a bomb, a spiral, and a banging fist (read 💥☠💣🌀👊)). It's universally called Symbols.
  • Blitz has a track with a modified Uranus symbol for it title. In the song, it's pronounced "Up Uranus"
• Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV. The cover has No Title, and the label has four symbols where the title would be, one representing each band member. Since no one can actually pronounce or write those symbols (apart from Jimmy Page's which resembles "Zoso"), it's mostly called Led Zeppelin IV—although some people, misled by Page's symbol, call it "Zoso."
• Marco V has a song entitled "C:\del * .mp3".
• METZ has a song entitled "—-))-–"
• Melvins' Mangled Demos From 1983 has several songs with symbols for titles, such as "☘". The album compiles old demo recordings of material that (for the most part) never made it to proper albums, so the band presumably either forgot the names of these songs, or they had just never agreed on proper titles for them to begin with. There's also the song "HOW —++—" off of Honky.
• Ministry's album Psalm 69 actually has a blank front cover and ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ written on the spine. The ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ part is actually the Greek word for "head" (κεφαλη, "kefali" spelled in Greek allcaps), combined with the Greek numerals for "69" (ΞΘ). "Head" in itself doesn't mean anything in Greek, but in English Al is making a Shout-Out to Aleister Crowley's The Book of Lies: chapter 69 of the book has Crowley use "the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs" (geddit?), and Crowley actually called the chapter itself ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ (HEAD69). Essentially, the album's title is the most pointlessly convoluted and reference-tastic pun about 69ing.
• Orbital has a song on The Middle of Nowhere called "Way Out —>", named after a London Underground station.
• One Porno Graffitti song is entitled "World☆Saturday Graffitti". The album version is "World☆Saturday Graffitti (★★★)".
• Prince:
  • The album and film Sign o' the Times feature a peace sign in place of the "o" (a contraction of "of").
  • From 1993 to 2000, Prince officially went by an intentionally unpronounceable glyph, known as the Love Symbol, due to Warner (Bros.) Records owning the trademark for his given name.
  • Starting with LoveSexy, his song titles replace the word "I" with an icon of an eye.
• Sasha's Invol2ver mix compilation.
• Shudder To Think's "Gang Of $". It's a Non-Appearing Title, but apparently it's supposed to be pronounced "Gang Of Money'.
• The Icelandic group Sigur Rós has an album entitled ( ), usually referred to as the Bracket Album, the Parenthesis Album or the Untitled Album, although it has no official pronunciation. In Icelandic, the band members sometimes call it Svigaplatan.
• Thurston Moore's 1995 solo album is usually referred to as Psychic Hearts, but the album artwork actually renders the title as Psychic ♥♥♥.
• Italian punk rock-turned-pop singer Jo Squillo has an album entitled 2p L♪ ± xy = (NOI). The "L♪" is probably supposed to be a "la" (the note); on top of that, the dot on the "I" of "NOI" has been replaced by a heart. The listeners just call it "Noi" ("Us").
• Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$." ("Christmas has two S's in it, and they're both dollar signs!")
• Talking Heads have "Love → Building on Fire", read as "Love Goes to Building on Fire".
• There's a Thelma Aoyama B-side called I☆You - pronounced in the lyrics as "I Star You".
• The brony musician µThunder. The µ symbol may actually be a mock Greek U, as evident by the YouTube channel URL.
• John Zorn: The tracks on the Hemophiliac album 50th Birthday Celebration Volume 6 are all symbols.
• Breakcore artist Qebrus abuses this with a majority of their song and album titles.
• David Bowie's final album has this zig-zagged: it's officially called just ★ and pronounced "Blackstar", but various press releases (and music stores) call it just by the latter.
• Sid Wilson (#0 of Slipknot) LOVES this trope. His 2018 Solo Side Project album ∫∑x©∆p∆D∑∫ øƒ †h3 høP∑£3∫∫ ®øbø†¡¢ AND every track title in it leaves almost no room for regular alphabetic spelling.
• The second album by Beak (the second band of Portishead member Geoff Barrow) is titled >>, which it was later announced is pronounced "two".
• Canadian electronic artist Grimes is very fond of those. Her albums contain song titles like "∆∆∆∆Rasik∆∆∆∆", "World♡Princess", "≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈ ", and "Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment".
• French house group Justice has an album titled †. (It's pronounced "cross".)
• Part 4 of the "Something at the Bottom of the Sea" suite by the band Quantum Jump is given a squiggly line in lieu of a name for a title.
• The Gang Starr song "The ? Remainz". The "?" is pronounced as "question".
• Solarstone has a trilogy of albums with Morse code titles, namely .—— (1) ..—- (2), and ...— (3), otherwise known as the Magenta, Cyan, and Yellow albums respectively by their cover colors.
• Toy-Box has a song titled "www.girl"
• Caravan Palace's third album is named <I°_°I>. It's a text representation of the band's mascot, hence it is officially pronounced "Robot Face".
• Guns N' Roses' debut live EP Live ?!★@ Like a Suicide.
• Boards of Canada teased the release of Tomorrow's Harvest by making six individual singles (only six, total) and placing them in record stores in Europe & the United States. Four are known to have been found, all named along the line of ——— / ——— / ——— / XXXXXX / ——— / ——— (this was the fourth single, and the XXXXXX was a six-digit number spoken on the record).

◉—Pinball

• Technically, the title for No Good Gofers is "No Good GoLfers", but the "L" in the logo is smashed to pieces by (one would assume) a stray golf ball.
• Dutch Pinball's The Big Lebowski is spelled "The Big Lebow$ki".

Pℜofessional Wrℰstling

• FMW's first and most persistent rival, W*ING, as well as it's most iconic wrestler, W*ING Kanemura.
• The "Infamous" on Bobby Fish's tights uses a star in place of the "a".
• While Su Yung was trying to seduce Rich Swann for the Premier Athlete Brand, and for sometime after the fact everyone knew it was an act, she wore a pair of pants with SW*NN on them.

→Soft→ware

• The computer programming languages C++ (pronounced "see plus plus"; "++" means "increment by 1" in it^note on numeric primitives; due to operator overloading you can never be sure what it will do on any custom type and its predecessor C, so C++ means "C incremented"^note or, for extra pedantry, return the value of C and then increment it—perhaps a subtle nod at its fairly large degree of backwards compatibility?) and C# ("see sharp", despite actually using a pound sign, which is subtly different from a musical sharp symbol, which has led to its nickname "D flat", or Db)
• A host of C++ imitators: F# (F-sharp), #develop (Sharp-Develop^note Which is a development environment, not a programming language. But still.), etc
• Parodied in the joke about the object-oriented version of COBOL, which, given the established naming convention, was called "ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COBOL".
• The Bittorrent client "μTorrent", which we're supposed to pronounce "uTorrent". Geek options: muTorrent for the linguistics geek; microTorrent for the science geek (the program was so named because it is one of the smallest and least processor-intensive Torrent programs available).
• #! Was a version of the Linux operating system ("CrunchBang", in pronunciation - might be confusing to UK English speakers, who generally pronounce # as "pound" instead of "crunch" or "hash"). The name calls-back a syntax that commonly starts a type of simple programs called shell scripts.
• The 'bang paths' of pre-internet email. Before nameservice, you had to specify the host-by-host route to forward email until it got to a backbone host, then again from the backbone to the destination host. Hostnames were separated by the '!' character, and the chain of hosts was referred to as the 'bang path', where 'host1!host2!...' was spoken as 'host1 bang host2 bang ...'. One actual path was '...!crash!bang!boom' through the hosts 'crash', 'bang', and 'boom', making the bang path to someone's email on 'boom' 'bang crash bang bang bang boom'.

Tabletop Games

• The Alternity and d20 Modern campaign settings Dark•Matter (1999) and Star*Drive.
• C°ntinuum: roleplaying in The Yet is stylized with the ordinal notation in the name of the game and the eponymous Sourcebook, though not in the eponymous Magical Society. The practice would have been continued the unreleased sourcebook Nªrcissist: Crash Free.
• Magic: The Gathering does this a few times. Mostly it's the A-E ligature, such as Æther Storm or Æther Flash. Originally this wasn't possible to print, so Ærathi Berserker is rathi Berserker instead. During the Tempest block, they were also fond of gratuitous use of the italics, such as the en-Kor or the il-Vec.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has the card Magi Magi ☆ Magician Gal.

Video✊Games

• Q*bert.
• Deus Ex: HumΔn Revolution.^note  To be fair, though, there is a defensible reason for this: delta (Δ) is invoked as a symbol to represent Daedalus, whose story and imagery are frequently referenced in the game.
• The Champion and Turbo editions of Street Fighter II are written as Street Fighter II', pronounced "Street Fighter II Dash" in Japanese.
• Guilty Gear:
  • The Xbox version of Guilty Gear XX was called Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, pronounced "Sharp Reload." It had a sequel called Λ Core.
  • The revisions to Guilty Gear XX generally had strange names: Guilty Gear XX ♯Reload (pronounced "Sharp Reload"), Guilty Gear XX/ ("Slash"), and Guilty Gear XX Λ Core ("Accent Core"), with Accent Core itself receiving a Plus and Plus R update (that's six iterations of XX including the vanilla version, for those who haven't kept count). Even the "XX" part of the title is actually pronounced "igzex" (continuing off of Guilty Gear X, which is pronounced "Guilty Gear Zex").
  • Made even worse by Guilty Gear Xrd, which is either pronounced (ex-ard),(ex-ird), or (zird) depending on who in the fan base you ask.
• One of the Tokimeki Memorial games, Tokimeki no Houkago ~Nee★Quiz shiyo♥~
• Hλlf-Life. The symbol is a "lambda", which is the scientific symbol for a substance's half-life decay constant. Pronouncing the original Greek letter would yield "Hllf-life." Once again, Rule of Cool trumps the rules of spelling.
  • The sequel uses the "squared" symbol instead of a traditional 2, but then again the sheer difference in scale between installments makes it not completely incorrect.
• We ♥ Katamari, in which the heart is pronounced "love".
  • Not to mention that the game includes a song titled "DISCO ☆ PRINCE".
• Metal Gear Ac!d. The sequel was Metal Gear Ac!d 2.
• Quite a few Pokémon have non-alphabetic symbols for names.
  • Nidoran♂ and Nidoran♀. the gender symbols are canonically part of their names because they were introduced in the original games, back when Pokémon didn't have their genders displayed, but they were still intended to be each other's Single-Gender Species counterpart.
  • Farfetch'd and Sirfetch'd; the apostrophe is part of the name. It's supposed to be a misspelling of far fetched, referencing the unlikelihood of a duck holding a leek together (duck and leek soup is considered a delicacy in Japan).
  • Porygon2, Porygon's evolution. Called so because Porygon is supposed to be a living computer program, of which the evolution is just an "upgrade".
  • Porygon-Z; the hyphen is part of the name. It is the evolution of the above, and intended to be an unauthorized upgrade. The Z was also used because it looks like a 2. It seems that the hyphen was added specifically to invoke this trope, too.
  • Ho-Oh had a hyphen in its name two generations before Porygon-Z and was introduced in the same generation as Porygon2, though it isn't artificial like the Porygon line. (It's also a palindrome, but that's unrelated to this trope.) Possibly because a houou is a mythical Japanese bird akin to a phoenix, and it's difficult for non-Japanese speakers to pronounce "Hoou", which would be the literal Romanization.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon introduces Type: Null, an artificial chimera-like Pokemon that starts off as a Normal-type and its evolved form, Silvally, can change its type based on its held item. Oddly, Silvally doesn't follow this naming convention.
• The Super NES game Lester the Unlikely goes by Odekake Lester: Lelele no Le (^^; (whatever that is at the end, it's part of the title) in Japan.
• The star spirit "♥♪!?", also known as Geno, from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Geno is the name of the doll he is possessing, and he uses it during the game since his real name is hard to pronounce.
• Amorphous+.
• There's a Doujin Soft shmup called ∀kashicverse: Malicious Wake. The Harder Than Hard alternate web version released as a standalone game was called ∀kashicverse ∀lternative ∀rguments.
• Silent Hill 2's iconic Pyramid Head's name in the original Japanese is rendered ▲-head. Don't ask how it's pronounced.
  Triangle-head?
• Capcom insists that the title of Street Fighter X Tekken is pronounced "Street Fighter Cross Tekken", making the character between "Fighter" and "Tekken" a symbol for the word "cross" rather than the letter X and, hence, an example of this trope.
• Project × Zone uses a similar formatting as Street Fighter X Tekken, with the X standing for "Cross". This is enforced with the title screen announcing "Project Cross Zone."
• Similarly, Kingdom Hearts χ is Kingdom Hearts Chi and its later iteration Kingdom Hearts Union χ is Kingdom Hearts Union Cross.
• The Sega Master System and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive were marketed by Samsung as part of the "Gam*Boy" line in South Korea. One would think that this was to avoid a lawsuit from Hyundai Electronics, which was selling Nintendo's Game Boy as the Mini Comboy in Korea, or from Nintendo itself, due to its indirect presence in the country through Hyundai, but the release dates of early Japanese game consoles in Korea are completely unknown. The Gam*Boy could have been released before or after the Mini Comboy was, and no one knows for sure. However, the Genesis (Super Gam*Boy) was renamed later in its lifetime presumably because of the Game Boy.
• Odin Sphere: The logo for the remake, Leifthrasir is rendered as LEIFÞRASIR, with a thorn. Thorn is a regular letter in Icelandic and Old Norse, but is unlikely to be widely recognised.
• In Persona 4: Arena Ultimax, both Yukari and Rise have some attacks which use this. Yukari has "Feather☆Slasher", "Feather☆Arrow", "Feather☆Flip", "Feather☆Shot", "Feather☆Bomb", "Hyper Feather☆Shot" and "Final Feather☆Arrow". Rise has "Rock☆You" and "True♥Story".
• In the Triangulum Arc of Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, Airi and Hinako form an idol group named "AiHina☆☆", the latter part of which is pronounced as the word "stars".
• The title for Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse has the "A" in Apocalypse displayed as the symbol for Anarchy overlaid on top of the symbol for Peace.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 and its sequel. The semicolon is silent.
• CROSS×BEATS. Averted with its arcade counterpart, crossbeats REV.
• The King of Fighters has a fighter named K' (pronounced K Dash)
• F.E.A.R. is an acronym for First Encounter Assault Recon. The name is used until the third game, F.3.A.R.. All interactions are pronounced as "fear" however.
• The official title of the game that this wiki knows as Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book is Atelier Sophie ~The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book~.
• There is a doujin shooter game whose title is rendered as _____, because for some reason all the text in it is some made-up alien language, including the numbers.
• Gal*Gun and its sequels. The * is silent.
• The final level of the Doom mod Kama Sutra is named "<|>" in the documentation, and its in-game title is a simple geometric symbol (warning: potentially NSFW content on linked page).
• TETЯIS, of course.
• Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers.
• Telling Lies, stylized as telling l!es in promos and on the title screen.
• The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth's second expansion is named Afterbirth†, pronounced Afterbirth Plus. It's quite fitting, as it's an add-on for the larger Afterbirth expansion but ties into the game's Religious Horror theme.
• Battle Chasers: Nightwar: Styled as Battle Chasers Nigh†war (with a dagger, not a cross) on the cover art.
• Hero & Daughter: The Updated Re-release, Hero and Daughter+.
• Tokyo Xanadu: In game, the pop star group SPiKA's latest single is titled Wish☆Wing. The game also has a re-release called Tokyo Xanadu eX+.
• One of the three main campaigns in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which has you battle against the delinquent Team Star, is titled "★ Starfall Street ★" (「スターダスト★ストリート」 Stardust ★ Street in Japanese).
• Indie Steam game pear potion🍐 has an all lowercase letter title plus an emoji. Yes, the pear is not just a part of the logo graphics.
• €uro-Man, a Pac-Man clone with 2.5-D graphics made in 2001 as an introduction to the Euro currency.
• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ and WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$!: The "s" at the end of the games' respective titles is replaced with a dollar sign. This references Wario's (greedy) plan to make money in the video game business.

Visual✽Novel

• Uta no☆Prince-sama♪.
• CROSS†CHANNEL, the source material for the Flash game NANACA†CRASH!!.
• Nanatsuiro★Drops is technically Nanatsuiro★Drops.
• Chaos;Head — the first a also sports umlauts in the series logo. The ";" also applies for the later visual-novels made by nitro+, namely Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes.
• Fate/stay night. Even more so its parodic alternate continuity Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, which then stepped it up further with Oddly Named Sequel Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 2wei! (yes, the exclamation point is also part of the title.)
• φnal Approach (Final Approach - the Greek letter is a phi)
• Koihime†Musou
• Ace Attorney:
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations features the Phantom Thief Mask☆DeMasque. The fandom has come to a consensus that the star is "pronounced" by pausing and making a "jazz hands" gesture.
  • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has the following exchange:
    Trucy: When I sign my name, I always put in a little diamond! "Trucy ♦ Wright" See? Cute, don'tcha think?
    Apollo: It's a little confusing. Won't people think your middle name is diamond?
    Trucy: Hey! You could write your name like "Apollo = Justice"!
    Apollo: I do like justice, but that's taking it a bit far.
  • The Italian version has Trucy suggesting "Apollo @ Justice", and Apollo remarking it would look like his e-mail address.
• Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni and Umineko No Naku Koro Ni officially are written with a red "Na". The official dub of Higurashi calls it When They Cry, with a red "C."
  • Higurashi Daybreak by Tasogare Frontier: The b is officially off-color, although the color depends on the material - if the rest of the text is white, the b is normally black, but if the rest of the text is black, the b is red. Spelled in Japanese, the "bu" (ブ) is treated the same way.

#Web <Animat.ion>

• Homestar Runner has Bubs' Concession Stand. Its sign on top has a "5" replacing the second "S" in "concession", making it say "BUBS' CONCES5ION STAND".

Web O-R-I-G-I-N-A-L

• ProZD: Satired in anime story arc titles, which includes titles such as Dog 5 and Ho! Tell d.u.s.k..

Web->comics

• Boyfriends. has "☆ Pretty Planet Idol Puri ☆", a fictional in-universe anime.
• Parodied in Homestuck, with the languages ~ATH (til death), ^CAKE (caret cake), and DIS* (dis asterisk).
• Housepets! Exclamation point mandatory!

Western❯❮Animation

• My Life as a Teenage Robot is known in Japan as ジェニーはティーン☆ロボット^translationJenny Is a Teen☆Robot
• The Simpsons:
  • "$pringfield". Since the episode has Springfield legalizing gambling, probably a Shout-Out to the live action TV show Vega$.
  • Another episode, "Luca$," deals with a one-off character who styles himself by the same name (he actually pronounces it "Lucadollar").
• The PBS Kids show, Peg + Cat. It's appropriate, since it's about math.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic toyline, (the pony formerly known as) Derpy Hooves's "name" is symbolized as a muffin.
• Parodied in Gravity Falls, where Mabel performs a song in the episode "Scaryoke" by "&ndra" (pronounced "Ampersandra"; the spelling should probably be "&ra").
• There's a Show Within a Show on Arthur titled $tock Market Today.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In place of the "R" in the episode title "Nurse Stimpy" is the "℞" symbol.
• The follow-up series to the film Arlo the Alligator Boy is titled I ♥ Arlo, the symbol being pronounced "heart" as in I ♡ Huckabees above.

➒ther

• The Trope Namer is an aversion. "Lucky Charms" itself has no symbols in its name.
• Media distributors:
  • The 2004 merger of BBC Video and another video distribution company produced a new entity called 2|Entertain, presumably playing off their intended mission ("to entertain"). The numeral means it also overlaps with Letters 2 Numbers.
  • Sm:)e Records.
  • The now-defunct British satellite channel L!ve TV.
  • Canal+, a French film and television studio and distributor, and TV channel.
  • E!, the American cable and satellite television network.
• Cisco ūmi telepresence.
• Using currency symbols is often used as a slight against institutions to accuse them of putting profits ahead of morals:
  • $cientology
  • Micro$oft.
  • Appl€
  • NA$CAR.
  • $tarbuck$.
  • Di$ney.
  • 4Kid$. Also acceptable is $Kids, since keyboards will have the 4 key become $ when Shift is held.
  • When Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was the monster that all the small role-playing game companies contended with, it was common to refer to the company that owned it as T$R. This usage became quite common with a segment of the player-base during the '90s, when the Internet was initiallly taking off with the public, since the company became quite infamous for being legally aggressive and claiming that they owned any website that mentioned D&D rules, sending legal threats to any and all D&D fansites they became aware of. Basically, TSR started attacking their own fanbase for giving their product free promotion and publicity. (Go ahead and ask some old D&D grognards about trying to run a fan website back in the '90s, and find out just how many of them received Cease and Desist letters from T$R.) And then there's the latest (4th) D&D edition, known as "$e". This was originally a typo, but has since reached a full-blown meme.
  • See also Game$ Work$hop
  • Autistic community members and autism rights activists who oppose the practices of Autism Speaks refer to them as Autism $peaks or A$ for short.
• Sony's U R Not e ads for the PlayStation.
• And Toys 'Я' Us, meant to evoke a child's attempt at handwriting rather than the Cyrillic letter.
• The famous (and often parodied) I ♥ NY T-shirts.
• The Swedish feminist party (which didn't quite take off in the 2006 elections, and now hasn't been heard from in a while) chose "F¡" for their symbol. It was, of course, impossible to stop the party's detractors from reading it as "Fi", which is the traditional Swedish military abbreviation for "enemy" ("fiende" in Swedish).
• The Coexist bumper sticker, which comes in many variations.
• The ¥€$ currency in Ghost in the Shell.
• Actor Laurence Tureaud legally changed his name to Mr. T.
  "First name: Mister, Middle name: Period, Last name: T!"
• The English seaside town Westward Ho!, in which the exclamation mark is an official part of the name. This was because it was originally a planned community named after a novel by Charles Kingsley.
• Earth☆Star Voyager: A Poorly Disguised Pilot that originally aired as a 2-part miniseries on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney in January 1988. It focused on a bunch of young people from a late 21st century Crapsack Future Earth as they trekked through the stars to find a new home for the human race.
• A<<laim.
• On Top Gear (UK), the new "reasonably priced car" is a Kia Cee'd (pronounced like "seed"). Jeremy Clarkson, however, insists on calling it the "see apostrophe dee."
• g0y, used by gay men who don't want to identify as gay. They get amusingly pissy if you call them "goys".
• Rebuild of Evangelion's English titles use the format You VERB (Not) X. Yes, "not" is in parentheses.
• The SS symbol was ᛋᛋ, a pair of runic 'S'es, which look like lightning bolts.
• According to an urban legend with problematic racist origins, a mother named her child Le-a, which she insisted should be pronounced Ledasha.
• Author Jennifer 8. Lee. Yes, her middle name is the numeral 8, with a period after.
• Game designer Mark Rein•Hagen.
• One of Ooyala's previous logos was o•o•y•a•l•a. The •'s were colored.
• The logo of the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (J☆XA).
• A few Japanese models and celebrities render their stage names in Western alphabet to stand out more. ☆HOSHINO trumps them all with the use of a symbol and all caps ("Star" is "hoshi" in Japanese), though it doesn't seem to have worked that much.
  • Manga artist Oh!great chose his pen name as a bilingual play on words. The exclamation point is not spoken; rather, it emphasizes the stress on the first syllable of the phrase. When pronounced with a Japanese accent, the English expression "oh great!" sounds very similar to the author's real name: Ogure Ito.
• Author David Malki ! spells his name with an "!" (it's not pronounced).
• The Book of Mormon has a doorbell in place of the second "o" in "Mormon".
• Transformers is an odd case. In the G1 and G2 franchises, whenever the name is broken up over two lines, it is spelled Trans * Formers, where the * is either faction's symbol (Autobot by default, Decepticon when used on a G1 Decepticon toy's package). The G1 packaging also added text to the right of the symbol identifying the toy's character as either a "Heroic Autobot" or "Evil Decepticon".
• Spam listings are unfortunately rife on online store sites like Shopee, where bot accounts stealing otherwise legitimate sellers' listings are polluting search results. These are often distinguised by their use of obscure ASCII or Unicode characters in said spam listing titles, e.g. "∋❈【 ONLY BOX 】1pcs For iPhone SE2020 X XS MAX XR US EU Version Empty Phone Package Packing Box Case" or "【Ready Stock】┇✻✆Amazon Fire HD 8 Tablet with Alexa, 8" HD Display, 32GB 10th Generation for Portable".

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