Operation: [Blank]

Sure, Y not.

"Begin Operation: Something-Thingy!"

— Evil Blah, The Demented Cartoon Movie

The standard naming scheme for a military operation is "Operation: Some Phrase". Used in real life, and in any series involving spies, soldiers, and the government, or parodies thereof. Straight uses are too numerous to count, but some common subversions, variants, and spoofs come up. A Code Name for a plan instead of a person, and can follow the same conventions. Science uses an almost identical scheme, but their stuff starts with "Project:".

In real life, operation names are (at least American military ones), since the first Gulf War, often optimistically descriptive (Operation Restore Hope, Operation Allied Force, Operation Iraqi Freedom [an infamous Retool from Operation Iraqi Liberation…], Operation Enduring Freedom — which was originally Operation Infinite Justice until several nations complained that only God could dispense that).

The US began using marketing people to come up with these after their earlier method (a random name generator) produced "Operation: Bolton" as the name for Desert Storm (the American contribution to The Gulf War); there were fears about retaliation against the town of Bolton, and also that troops would be embarrassed to go to war in an operation named after a dreary little town in the north of England. You could argue that eventually the name becomes more of a brand name than a Code Name, particularly if very important, US-led and heavily media-covered.

Wartime or covert operations are more obliquely named, with security a higher consideration than sounding cool (though let's face it, Operation Anaconda was pretty cool). The British magazine New Statesman remarked that it said a lot about the difference between American and English culture that the USA called the Iraq War "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and the UK called it "Operation Telic" (a word that means "tending to a definite end", chosen from a random list). British stuffiness in choosing operation names is only rarely subverted, usually for especially momentous moments, such as the detonation of the UK's first atom bomb, Operation Hurricane.

During World War II, some British operations were entirely arbitrarily named from a big list of possible names, others were picked from vaguely related terms (Operation Dynamo for the Dunkirk evacuation took its name from the dynamo room in the naval headquarters below Dover Castle that Vice Admiral Ramsay used to plan the operation), while American ones tended to obliquely refer to the purpose (Operation Overlord as the final version of the Operation Sledgehammer proposal). Operation Market Garden, the airborne assault to push inland through the Netherlands from the Norman beaches, may have been pushing it.

Winston Churchill famously cautioned his commanders against assigning "silly" or frivolous codenames to operations, on the grounds that no mother or wife ought to have to hear that their son or husband died during "Operation Bunnyhug" or "Operation Ballyhoo". An example of that is when he changed the Canadian Army's designated landing area in Normandy for "Operation Overlord" from Jelly Beach to Juno Beach, and created a honored name in Canadian history and culture. Another principle he followed was that the code names should never be words from which a clever enemy could infer the purpose of the operation. Nazi Germany, in contrast to this, did use some fairly obvious code names, such as Seelöwe ("Sealion" or "Sea-Lion") for the planned invasion of Britain, Nordlicht ("Northern Lights") for the abortive summer-1942 offensive to cut Leningrad off from its lifeline through Lake Ladoga, and Barbarossa (referring to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, who died en-route to the third Crusade) for the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, a name Hitler chose, supplanting the original Wehrmacht name Blau ("Blue"). Others were more ambiguous or even deliberately misleading, often implying a defensive purpose when an attack was planned, such as Weserübung ("Weser Exercise") for the invasion of Denmark and Norway, and Wacht am Rhein ("Watch on the Rhine") for the 1944 Belgian offensive. Earlier on, the General Staff had called their operations things like "Green", "White", and "Anton", and some of the later ones appeared fairly random, e. g. Merkur ("Mercury") for the airborne landing on Crete and Zitadelle ("Citadel") for the 1943 Kursk offensive. Fun fact: the German term for a military operation is Fall, or "case"; they viewed campaigns as cases to be solved.

For their part, Soviet offensive codenames either were a inconsistent mix of historical figures in Russian history ("Suvorov" or "Bagration"), celestial objects ("Uranus" or "Star"), or generically geographic-temporal ("1944 summer strategic offensive operation" or "D'niepr strategic offensive operation"). They also had a habit of using numbers for their weapons development programs, especially if it involved Mnogo Nukes. For example, "Object 279" was the name for an experimental heavy tank, while "Project 1164" was used by the navy for the Slava-class cruiser. The Russian Federation continues the practice today .

Most fictional Operation/Project Names fall somewhere in between all of these. The name is non-obvious, but is obliquely related to the purpose of the operation (like American WW2 names). Our Hero is mystified until he happens upon the piece of information that clues him in... Can be an example of Arc Words.

Favorite things to fill in the blank:

• Mythological allusions, especially common if a scientist or academic named the thing, which they often do: Phoebus, Perseus, Hercules, Gemini. These are also common examples of "hero can work it out with the right information and some intuition".
• Animal name, with attached adjective: Stone Rhino, Burning Hawk, Concrete Donkey, Iron Serpent...
• Tool name: Crowbar, Hammer, Icepick...
• Sports position: Usually from American football, probably influenced by the real life Operation Linebacker during Vietnam. Operation Quarterback, Running Back, Pinch Hitter...
• Location name: Most infamously, Sedan (a 1962 nuclear weapons test, named for a city in France), which would cause an international incident when the name was entered into the United States Congressional Record as "Sudan" in 2005, leading to the question of whether the US was performing illegal tests in other countries.

Common subversions, parodies, and spoofs:

• Extremely silly name, or overly stereotypical
• Too descriptive to conceal the secret nature of the plan
• A line of snark from the team member who thinks it's a bad idea. (e.g. "Operation This Will End Badly", "Operation Fubar", etc.)
• Almost illiterate in construction

May sometimes begin after a Team Hand-Stack.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Data East USA trade ad for the Arcade Game Desert Assault was titled "Operation Coin-Drop."

Anime & Manga

• Ouran High School Host Club has a poster stating that the name of their scheme is called "Operation: Haru-chan Is Absolutely, Definitely And In All Ways A Guy!"
• In the Viz translation of the Naruto manga, the invasion of Konoha is called "Operation Destroy Konoha".
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED has ZAFT enact "Operation Spitbreak". SEED Destiny has Juna Roma name Operations after Greek mythological characters because he's a putz.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam is full of these. Running the full gambit of blatantly obvious "Operation Odessa" target was Odessa. To completely obscure, "Operation Cembalo" named after an old musical instrument. "Operation British" and "Operation Star One" fall in the relevant, but you'd have to know category.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory is partly named after Operation Stardust, which starts with Gundamjacking a Super Prototype Gundam armed with a nuclear bazooka.
• In Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Alpha Bitch tries a series of schemes to discredit Anthy Himemiya: Operation "Oh my gosh, Anthy Himemiya's a weirdo keeping a snail in her pencil case!", Operation "Oh my gosh, Anthy Himemiya's a weirdo keeping a snake in her drawer!", and Operation "Oh my gosh, Anthy Himemiya's a weirdo keeping a live octopus in her closet!" They don't work.
• Episode 6 of Neon Genesis Evangelion is "Operation: Yashima", where NERV plans to defeat an angel with a disintegration beam by having an Eva snipe it with a positron rifle (also appears with minimal differences in Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0). The Battle of Yashima was a naval battle between two clans fighting for control of Japan, known for one of the most legendary feats of archery in Japanese history.
• Yuri of Angel Beats! always gives her missions these names. Very frequently, as with Operation Tornado (using fans to steal meal tickets) and Operation Monster Stream (fishing), the names are Mundane Made Awesome.
  Yuri: Operation... START!
• In My-Otome Zwei, the name of the operation to free the hostages from the bus is named "Operation Silent Sea," based on the assumption that Haruka would be excluded from it. Unfortunately, she gives Cranial Eruptions to the people who tried to knock her out with a large rock, and heads to the scene on her own.
• Amazing Agent Luna was originally planned to be called Operation: High School.
• Girls und Panzer:
  • Miho has a habit of giving her battle plans silly and/or cutesy names, like "Operation: Sneaky Sneaks", "Operation: Teasy Tease", or "Operation: More Sneaky Sneaks".
  • Anchovy and the Anzio team instead name their battle plans after food. The "set up decoys as bait to ensnare your enemy" plan is "Operation: Macaroni".
  • The Movie has more operations, such as "Operation: Bumpy" for the main battle, "Operation: Kill-Serve" for catapulting a Hetzer at a Morser-Karl, "Operation: Mifune" for sending a Ferris Wheel of Doom at the enemy team, and "Operation: Macaroni Zwei" for using camouflage and decoys to set up ambushes.
• In Steins;Gate, Okabe Rintarou enjoys giving his experiments - and other, more domestic activities — dramatic names related to Norse Mythology; "Operation: Verdandi", Operation: Urd" and the like. Kurisu gets in on the act while helping him go on a date with Ruka, dubbing the occasion "Operation: Valkyrie".
• In Pom Poko, the tanuki's most ambitious effort to scare the humans is named "Operation Spectre" ("Youkai Daisakusen" in Japanese).
• In One Piece, Crocodile's plan to take over the kingdom of Alabasta is called "Operation: Utopia". Also the Tontatta Dwarves plan to Defeat one of Doflamingo's subordinates Sugar is called "Operation: SOP" (SOP is an acronym for Sugar Ottamage Panic, "Ottamage" meaning "to be very surprised").
• Lyrical Nanoha has "Project F" also known as "Project Fate", which was an attempt to bring the dead back to life via cloning and implanting memories. The eventual result of this being series deuteragonist Fate Testarossa.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Shirogane and Osaragi call their plan to make Ishgami and Miko get along "Operation Friendship".
• The entire premise of Spy X Family follows the super spy Twilight partaking in "Operation Strix". The mission is to spy on a far-right political leader that's very reclusive, and the only way to get to him is to have a family and enroll in a presigious private school where he sometimes appears. Thus Twilight, now taking on the identity Loid Forger, finds a wife and daughter to pose as a family and forward the mission.
• Episode 19 of The Vision of Escaflowne is called "Operation Golden Rule of Love".

Comic Books

• Captain America: Operation: Rebirth is the name of the experiment that gave Steve Rogers his Super Soldier enhancements that would make him Captain America. However, the "operation" would be more accurately named "Project: Rebirth." Or Project:Weapon I/Weapon Plus.
• Lampshaded and normally averted in Fables, when the Fabletown residents are in military mode. Normally they are very good about making sure that their operations have codenames that hold clues to their purpose, but (as Cinderella laments) the lads in charge just can't help themselves when they name their plan to isolate the Empire's capital, effectively cutting off its head, Operation Jack Ketch. Although, in all fairness, by the time the operation was well underway, not only did the Empire realise what was happening, they were pretty much powerless to prevent it.
• The plot of Scooby Apocalypse is driven by the fallout from Project Elysium, a secret project conceived by a private think tank (which Velma was part of) to use a nanite plague to remove people's negative impulses and emotions, thus bringing about world peace. Then the Four, Velma's superiors and her brothers decided to instead alter the nanites to remove The Evils of Free Will, allowing them to rule the world. And somehow, their mucking with the nanites somehow caused them to turn the infected into monsters instead.
• The Avengers crossover Operation: Galactic Storm.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Project: Total Insanity, Prowl's plan to study the Decepticon Phase Sixers to make Autobot super-soldiers. Brainstorm came up with the name. "Project: Asking for Trouble" was vetoed.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Operation Deadly Cuddles. Far more disturbing than its name suggests it has any right to be, since it's the Tails Doll.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Starline's master plan at the climax of the Imposters Saga to overthrow Eggman is called "Operation: Remaster".
• Invader Zim (Oni): The third Quarterly issue reveals that Professor Membrane's anti-Santa Claus arsenal (from the show's Christmas Episode) is codenamed Operation Snow Cone.

Fan Works

• In Shinji and Warhammer40k, Ritsuko gets fed up with Misato's lousy operation codenames and comes up with a random word generator. The result? "From now on we put our faith in Blast Hard Cheese!"
• In Ready, Sette, Go, Sette (who has been released from prison and seeks out Cinque for further orders) puts "Operation" in front of many things, including a suggestion by Wendi to act more normally and not call everything an "operation".
• Queen of All Oni: Jade's Batman Gambit to get one of the masks on one of the heroes and use them to infiltrate Section 13 and steal the other masks is called "Operation Steel Lightning". Her Quirky Miniboss Squad are quick to point out that the name makes no sense whatsoever and suggest more fitting alternatives, but she shoots them all down — she chose the name because it sounds cool, so she's keeping it.
  • It's revealed in a later chapter that Jade's attempts to find the location of the second tablet of the Teachings of Eternal Shadow is called "Operation Blazing Wolf"; no one comments on the name this time.
  • During the above, Jade name drops something in the works called "Operation Painted Lemur" (Tohru is stunned by the absurdity of the name, and Right agrees with him) which eventually turns out to be her plan to brainwash and transform Viper into a Shadowkhan General.
  • There's also "Operation Chirping Chipmunk", which was apparently a plan to trick the J-Team into thinking that Viper became Hebi voluntarily. However, Hak Foo's angry ranting after getting stuck with the Mini Khan includes the fact that Viper was brainwashed, which kills that plan before it can even happen.
  • However, Jade's plans for the Final Battle break this pattern, as it's simply called "Operation Endgame". Right lampshades the previous examples, though, when he jokingly suggests the alternative names "Operation Delayed Reaction", "Operation Coupon Cash-In", and "Operation Tea Drinking Rhino".
• Jewel of Darkness: Midnight's master plan at the culmination of the Jump City Arc, to capture Robin and torture him into insanity in order to permanently break the Titans, is codenamed "Operation Blackfire" — not after Starfire's sister, but after Deacon Joseph Blackfire, the Big Bad of Batman: The Cult who is famous for (temporarily) successfully breaking Batman to his will via torture.
• Examples from the Calvinverse:
  • Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie has the hilariously unsubtle Operation Kill Earth.
  • Parodied in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, where Calvin dubs one of his plans "Operation Spy on the Slimy Girl".
• A Brief History of Equestria: The Celestine Junta's plan for colonizing and relocating to a new homeland was codenamed Operation Withdrawal.
• Life in Manehattan: Twilight's plan in Brag You Down to restore Trixie's reputation after the Mare-Do-Well plot backfires is called Operation Reputation Rescue.
  • The pegasi moving the water to Cloudsdale in Hurricane Blossomforth is called Operation Rainrise.
• Worldwar: War of Equals, as it presents a realistic take on how the governments of the world would react to an alien invasion, naturally has plenty of these:
  • Operation Zeus: A joint American/Canadian operation on Race occupied Belleville which lead to several starships, including the 56th Emperor Jossano, being destroyed and Race operations in the United States being crippled.
  • Operation Halcòn: The Mexican military attacks a Race starship landing zone near Monterrey. The attack destroys one starship and damages six more.
  • Operation Marin: The first major victory for the European Coalition's air force and navy. The raid on Race starships in Bari destroys two starships and severely damages one which lands in the Adriatic Sea, with Europe collecting the remains of the ship and capturing the survivors.
  • Operation Piledriver: The United States Air Force drops three MOABs on The Race spearhead in Cotulla, Texas.
  • Operation Hermes (aka Operation Eve): Another joint American/Canadian operation, this time on Race positions between St. Louis and Jefferson City. With the enemy freezing thanks to good old mother nature, American and Canadian armored divisions and air forces strike vulnerable positions in occupied territory while ground and special forces are inserted into key positions behind enemy lines and destroy anti-armor and anti-air emplacements. The operation was a success and gives the American people the best Christmas gift they could ask for: the gift of a huge victory.
• In Bait and Switch (and the Foundry mission it's based on) the Starfleet attack on the Orion base in the Badlands is codenamed "Operation Blue Friday". This leads to the following exchange during the Mission Briefing:
  Adm. Amnell Kree: Any questions?
  Capt. Kanril Eleya: (under her breath) Where the phekk do they get these codenames from?
  Kree: Random number generator. Any pertinent questions?
• Repairs, Retrofits and Upgrades, a The Legend of Korra has Bolin's "Operation: Make Asami Forget About the Thing". Specifically, talk about his intention to propose to Opal to take her mind off Korra visiting Kuvira in prison.
• Played for laughs in "Past Continuous". Eleya comments that "Operation Whimsical Targ" doesn't translate particularly well into Klingon. Word of God is that it's even sillier in Cardassian, with "whimsical" equating to "slapstick" or "stupid".
• Worldfall: The Final Battle sees the allied nations of Earth launching Operation Endgame, which is a massive counter-invasion of South Europe and North Africa to drive out Race and Fifthp ground forces, while simultaneously, the Archangel Michael and the refitted 127th Emperor Hetto engage in a space battle with the remains of the Conquest Fleet and the Thuktun Flishithy.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Chapters 42 and 43 see SHIELD and MI13 enacting Operation Overlord, a full scale global roll up of HYDRA's resources and assets. The name is a deliberate Call-Back to the official name of the D-Day landings, meant to insult HYDRA due to their Nazi origins (and judging by Von Strucker's and Zemo's reactions, it works).
  • The Final Battle reveals the existence of Project Prometheus, an Iron Man suit Tony designed and keep secreted away at Hogwarts in case of god-level threats, created by combining bleeding edge science and top notch magic from both Earth and Asgard, as well as Project Wolftrap, MI13's special failsafe for the defense of London, which turns out to be a re-commissioned and radically updated HMS Belfast.
  • There's also repeated mentions of Project Pegasus, a government attempt at creating a magical Super-Soldier. According to Coulson, who was there at the time, they succeeded, which was the problem; the place became an Eldritch Location that Alan Scott had to seal off.
  • A major plot point in the sequel Ghosts of the Past during the "Forever Red" arc is Project Krysnyy Syn (Red Son), the Red Room's equivalent to Project Pegasus — an attempt to create a superpowered Super-Soldier to act as an upgrade/replacement to the Winter Soldier. Like Project Pegasus, it goes horribly, horribly right.
  • At the climax of the sequel's "Of Dungeons and Dragons" arc, we're introduced to Project Galahad, a suit of Powered Armor created for Harry by Tony and Jane combining Iron Man tech with Asgardian Magitek.
• Timeline-191: After the End has quite a few of these:
  • Operation Eagle Claw: The forced resettlement of the insurgent Mormon population from Utah to the Sandwich Islands.
  • Operation Husky: The American invasion, and subsequent annexation, of Russian Alaska.
  • Operation Banner: The final push by Russian Republican forces on the remaining pocket of Tsarist control in Petrograd.
  • Operation Dissolution: The launching of Japanese missiles, armed with nerve gas, at Compact of Democratic States military bases in northern Australia.
  • Operation Infinity: In retaliation for Dissolution, the US launches sunbombs (hydrogen bombs) on Japanese forward military bases throughout the Co-Prosperity Sphere, destroying their ability to launch further offensives anywhere in the Pacific.
  • Operations Hard Hat I and II: Strategic use of US superbombs to destroy the primary Unit 731 facilities in Manchukuo.
  • Operation Windtalker: A joint CDS-Russian invasion of Manchukuo... which turns out to be a ruse, deliberately leaked to distract the Japanese from Operation Grizzly, the real CDS-Russian invasion of Mongolia.
  • Operation Elephant: The CDS invasions of Japanese West Papua and Timor.
  • Operation Rainbow Dawn: The CDS-Russian liberation of Korea.
  • Operation Tunnel: The CDS, Russians, and newly established Republic of China make their final push on remaining Japanese forces in northern China.
  • Operation Tiger Shark: A CDS-Russian amphibious invasion of Hokkaido.
  • Operation Vengeance: The Russian liberation of the Kurile islands, with some naval and air support from the US.
  • Operation Cassowary: CDS forces invade the Indonesian islands still being controlled by Japanese warlords.
  • Operation Scorpion: Vietnamese and CDS forces make their final push on Japanese-controlled Saigon.
  • Operation Starfish: The CDS, along with a sizable force of defectors from the Japanese Navy, invade Filipino territory held by the local Japanese warlord.
  • Operation Cobra: A surprise CDS amphibious invasion of Singapore.
  • Operation Kaiser's Landing: The European Community's invasion of Civil War-torn South Africa to topple the remains of the Apartheid government and bring all the belligerent militias to heel.
  • Operation Sea Snake: A Russian amphibious invasion of Georgia (the Asian one) from the Black Sea.
  • Operation Vijayangara: A massive Baharti offensive into Pakistan aimed at seizing Karachi.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim has the lost Meekrob weapon known only by the blunt title of "Project Domination".
• In Chrysalis Visits The Hague, one chapter is presented in form of a mysterious, partially censored transcript that is simply entitled, "Orange Caltrop", probably making this one—and given what a caltrop is, a meaningful one.
• Project Bluefield follows the naming scheme.
• Doing It Right This Time: Parodied by Shinji, who thinks of his plan to Set Right What Once Went Wrong as "Operation Not Fuck Everything Up This Time".
• One of the Higurashi Parody Fandub episodes had Rika declare, "Operation: Get back at this crazy bitch for killing my friends is a go!" when she was about to spray tear gas into Shion's eyes.
• Earth's Alien History:
  • Operation Kusanagi: The final drive by allied Terran Treaty Organization and Citadel forces to retake the Citadel from the Mekon's forces.
  • Operation Harrowing: The use of the "Daisy Cutter" weapon on a planet occupied by the Vinn, destroying most of them.
• Avenger of Steel reveals that Baron Von Strucker's experiments with Loki's Scepter are known as Project Spear of Destiny.
• Becoming a True Invader: At some point during Tallest Miyuki's reign, there was an Irken conquest program called Operation Genesis Doom.
• There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton: The story The Royal We establishes the existence of Project ATLAS, S.W.O.R.D.'s program to reverse engineer Vilgax's ship, the Chimeran Hammer (which they took custody of after his defeat in Changing of the Guard), into a fleet of battleships for Earth's use.
• Crimson AU has Haru come up with "Operation Punish Akira", after Akira breaks up with Makoto over her conflict with Ann. Makoto herself objects to the name, which later becomes "Operation Destroy Akira Kurusu or Something Less Drastic".
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: The title of Episode 34 is Operation Omega. The actual military operation featured in the episode itself is called Operation Axum-Omega.
• Boldores and Boomsticks:
  • Yang dubs her "plan" to win the Golden Fist Tournament "Operation: Hit Them 'Til I Win".
  • Ruby calls the plan to reunite Blake with her parents "Operarion Stray Cat Strut" even though Weiss thinks the name is stupid.

Films — Animation

• Parodied in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, where the U.S. Army had two different operations: The minorities were in "Operation Human Shield", part of the "all-important first attack wave, expected to have heavy casualties" while the whites were in "Operation Get Behind the Darkies", who, well...

Films — Live-Action

• Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. The Ruler launches "Operation Ice Age" to turn Earth into a Tidally Locked Planet. Presumably "Operation Ice Age On One Side Of The Planet And Desert Age On The Other" would be too long.
• Operation Golden Fleece is used by The League of Gentlemen for The Caper they are planning. The man planning it named it after the (fictional) novel that inspired him to commit the crime.
• Inglourious Basterds has "Operation Kino," a plot to assassinate high-ranking German officials, including Hitler, when they are all gathered in a movie theater. "Kino" is German for "cinema," so this is a bit of Artistic License – Military, as military operations were never given names that referenced the actual plan.
• Commissioner Gibert from the French Taxi movies liked giving the police procedures names like this. The first movie features Operation Cobra, Operation Zen and Operation Puma, the second one has Operation Ninja and the third Operation Snow White.
• In Mystery Men when the group went to rescue Captain Amazing, The Sphinx called the rescue: "Operation 3-Eyed, 3-Legged Eagle."
• James Bond:
  • Bond overhears Goldfinger talking about "Operation Grand Slam". Although he hasn't the faintest idea what it means, he's able to bluff the villain into keeping him alive purely on the basis of knowing the name. This is the same for the original novel.
  • Also, the eponymous Thunderball is the operation involving the rescue of hijacked nuclear missiles. This is the same for the original novel.
  • In Moonraker, Drax's plan to exterminate the human race is called "Operation Orchid", as the nerve gas he tries to use is derived from an Amazonian orchid.
  • In For Your Eyes Only, the plan to retrieve the ATAC system from the sunken St. Georges is called "Operation Undertow" by MI6 while inOctopussy, the plan to discover what is happening to the stolen Faberge artifacts is "Operation: Trove". This is purely Rule of Drama as any real intelligence agency would avoid a Meaningful Name for their operations. Averted with the search for Blofeld which is called Operation Bedlam; that may be a Mythology Gag to how Blofeld had gone insane in the novels.
  • The series went totally meta with GoldenEye, which is the in-universe name of the Russian military project that forms the centrepiece of the villain's plan, and also the name of an actual operation that Ian Fleming ran while working for British Intelligence, which he then used as the name of his Jamaican estate where he wrote some of the James Bond books.
  • In an odd example, Non-Indicative Market-Based Title of Skyfall for the Latin American audiences turns it into this (Skyfall is a place - namely, the manor Bond lived in as a child and where the final battle against Silva occurs).
• Alice is part of Project Nemesis in Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
• In the popular Soviet comedy Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (Операция Ы), the titular operation is a mock robbery to conceal embezzlement by a warehouse administrator, named so by one of the hired thugs so that "nobody guesses why." In Russian, there are no words that start with the letter "Ы."
• The lawman in Lady Vampire's preview segment in Monster Brawl refers to his upcoming arrest of her as "Operation Holy Water" in his notes, which was named after the claims of the nearby townsfolk about her vampirism. He should have believed them.
• Star Wars:
  • Though it wasn't named as such until Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Operation: Knightfall from Revenge of the Sith was the ultimate culmination of Executive Order 66: Lord Vader and the 501st Legion's march on the Jedi Temple.
  • Various sources, such as Shattered Empire and Battlefront II, feature Operation: Cinder, a post-Battle of Endor Imperial campaign of Orbital Bombardment against key planets.
  • Rogue One: Jyn and Cassian list a number of project code names while searching for the Death Star plans. The novelization reveals the original mission Jyn and Cassian are sent on to locate and extract — or kill — Galen Erso is codenamed "Operation Fracture" by the Alliance.
• Operation Crossbow depicts a largely fictionalised version of the Allied operation of the same name, an espionage and military campaign to sabotage the Nazis' long-range weapons programme from 1943-45.
• A few Brazilian title translations use this. For instance, Canadian Bacon is Operation Canada, The Pacifier is Operation Nanny and Big Hero 6 is Operation Big Hero.
• The eponymous project in Project Metalbeast, which intends to create armored werewolf super soldiers.
• Universal Soldier: We find out in the (official) third film, Universal Soldier: Regeneration, that the official codename for the project that created the Universal Soldiers was "Project White Tower," with the project that created the upgraded Uni-Sol that is The Dragon of this particular film having the codename of "Black Tower."
• Who Killed Captain Alex?: Operation Cut Tigerz Ballz
• Operation Delta Force: The titular force is an elite special forces unit out to stop a diabolical terrorist leader intending to unleash a deadly bioweapon.
• Operation Thunderbolt is about the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport in which an Israeli special forces squad rescued 102 Israelis being held hostage by terrorists.
• Dr. Strangelove: "Operation Drop-Kick" was an exercise conducted by the bomber squadron from Burpleson AFB who were airborne over the Arctic Circle near Russia. It called for the squadron to maintain their positions unless Wing Attack Plan R (the "go" code to attack Russia) was initiated which is in the event that Washington was attacked by enemy planes and the normal chain of command was disrupted. Burpleson's General Ripper initiates Plan R but for the wrong reasons.
• Operation Finale, about the real-life Israeli abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
• Josie and the Pussycats has Fiona planning "Operation: Big Concert", where she plans to brainwash both those at the concert and those watching at home with special earphones that transmit subliminal messages. The messages aren't broadcast in the end, but we do get to hear them— it's all to make people like Fiona and think she's their friend. Evil Is Petty at its finest.
• Darkest Hour: Churchill tells an admiral to come up with a name for the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. The admiral looks around the room settling on Dynamo, based on the brand of fan in the admiral's headquarters.
• The Martian: Vincent dubs his plan to rescue Whatney "Project Elrond". Mitch and Teddy get the reference and how it applies ("It's a secret meeting"), but Annie has never heard of it and grows increasingly confused. Then Teddy demands that if they do call it that, his codename is "Glorfindel".
• Shin Godzilla. Noting that "A strategy to administer a coagulate to freeze and thus render the creature immobile" is something of a mouthful, the main protagonist decides to call it Operation Yashiori, after the sake used to intoxicate a famous Japanese monster of legend.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): GUN's plan to get close to Sonic by having an agent seduce and marry Maddie's sister is fittingly called "Operation Catfish".
• Spaceballs has Lord Helmet needing to come up with "Operation: Vacu-suck" as a lazily- and hastily-derived namw for the Spaceballs' scheme to literally suck out the air from the planet Druidia with a giant robo-maid's vacuum cleaner.
• Spy Game. Bishop overhears the phrase "Dinner Out" in the back of the helicopter. The phrase works a few different ways at once:
  • It's a Public Secret Message that his old mentor John Muir is behind the operation as Bishop had previously used the name "Dinner Out" for a covert operation in Beirut the two were involved with in the past.
  • The previous combined with the fact that Bishop had gone Rogue Agent and had gotten himself captured by the Chinese for trying to spring Elizabeth Hadley, whom he had met in Beirut, and the fact that a long-standing rule of Muir's was "never risk yourself for an asset" meant those two words alone tell Bishop Muir is breaking his own long-standing rule to bail him out with the SEAL team rescue, which elicits a tired smile from Bishop when he puts it together.
  • Muir used it as the just-finished operation's name to break Bishop out against the CIA heads' wishes, who wanted to let Bishop die so as not to jeopardize upcoming US-China trade talks, while in the same room as them in order to get the SEAL team in with a verbal "go" while the higher-ups present think it's just Muir talking weirdly with his wife about restaurant plans after Muir retires at the end of the day.
• In Thirteen Days about the Cuban Missile Crisis and its immediate prelude, while the Kennedy White House is trying to keep the fact that they know about the Soviets placing nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba a secret from the public in order to retain the surprise advantage until they decide upon a course on how to deal with them, the American press get a hold of US military exercises taking place in Puerto Rico called Operation Ortsac and ask the White House to comment, which catches O'Donnell and Salinger off-guard as they didn't know about it. It's just Castro spelled backwards, which makes it lazily clear that the exercises are meant to simulate invading Cuba and overthrowing Fidel in order to get rid of the missiles. The scene emphasizes both how complex the bureaucratic machine the United States government is as well as how much of a With Friends Like These... situation the Kennedy administration had with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the latter were by and large war hawks who wanted to invade Cuba by force even at risk of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
• In Trading Places, the Duke Brothers' plan to corner the frozen concentrate orange juice market was called "Operation Strange Fruit".
• Carry On Girls: When the Fircombe Women's Lib group uses itching powder to sabotage the Miss Fircombe Contest, their codename is "Operation Spoilsport".

Literature

• Exception: David Weber's Star Kingdom of Manticore in the Honor Harrington books plays very true to its Real Life analogue, 17th/18th-century Britain, in using operation names pulled at random from a list of innocuous names. Dame Honor herself has participated in Operations Buttercup, Cutworm, Sanskrit, and Sanskrit II. The trope is played straight with the People's Republic of Haven, whose Operation Bagration shares its name with the Soviet Belorussian Offence during WWII.
  • Admiral White Haven does complain that Buttercup is a rather silly name, especially considering how successful it was in steam rolling the Havenite Navy.
  • With the exception of Bagration, most of Haven's operation names tend to be mythological or grandiose, like Scylla, Icarus, or Thunderbolt. Honor points out wistfully that Haven names sometimes give their natures away.
  • Solarians pick florid names like Operation Winter Forage and Operation East Wind.
  • Mesan cover ops tend to pick names that are kind of poor at disguising their intent, like a poison gas assassination plot called Operation Rat Poison and Operation Wooden Horse which planted bombs in the ships of their expendable pawns. Not to mention the much-foreshadowed Oyster Bay, which turned out to be a sneak attack on the home bases of the Manticoran and Grayson navies. Possibly justified by the fact that no one knows Mesa exists in the first place, so they don't really need a Non-Indicative Name to preserve secrecy.
• The Sixth Battle has a US amphibious landing codenamed Operation Evil Hyphen.
• In The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan is told his operation's codename is "Mandolin" and his mission codename is "Magi". The names came from a list, as Ryan considers "Magi" inappropriate for him.
• H. Beam Piper's The Edge of the Knife revealed that the U.S. prepared for the possibility of World War III in 1973 with "Operation Triple Cross": the enemy launched missile attacks on a number of vital bases — but each had a better-concealed duplicate and triplicate.
• Operation Terror, a suspense novel by Gordon and Mildred Gordon that was adapted into the 1962 film Experiment in Terror.
• Operation: Dump the Chump, an '80s children's book by Barbara Park.
• Classified items in The Laundry Files usually use a fairly descriptive codename, but it also seems that the more significant something is, the shorter its codename. CANDID and TEAPOT are high-value assets within the agency, the Higher-Tech Species that lives in the deep ocean is codenamed BLUE HADES, while the species that lives underground and is at war with BLUE HADES but has no contact with humans is ANNING RED SKULL. However, it is noted that many of the codenames given in the books are not the real ones. The Framing Device is that the books are Bob's semi-official journals, and a lot of the things he has worked on are so deeply classified even the codenames are need-to-know. This, along with Bob's love of pop culture, leads to the case of a mogul using ritual magic to turn himself into a James Bond villain being codenamed BROCCOLI GOLDENEYE, former criminal mastermind turned ritual mage Persephone Hazard being codenamed BASHFUL INCENDIARY and two projects involving vampires are DRESDEN RICE and OPERA CAPE respectively.
• Operation Peacock in Beauty Queens.
• Given that it dealt with espionage, each of the do-it-yourself activities in the late-90s/early-2000s Scholastic "Spy University" book club was named like this, usually some sort of pun on the purpose or materials involved. (Disguising yourself with false teeth was "Operation Grin and Bear It", for instance.)
• James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and its better-known adaptation South Pacific culminates with Operation Alligator, a fictitious amphibious assault against the Japanese in World War II.
• James Bond
  • Dr. Murik's plan to take over nuclear reactors for ransom in Licence Renewed is called Operation Meltdown.
  • The eponymous operation in Icebreaker is a joint effort by MI6, KGB, CIA and Mossad to take down the Nazi terrorist organization NSAA. The operation itself fails since every member sans Bond is a double-agent of some kind, but the desired result is still achieved.
  • The bad guys' plan in Role of Honour is called Operation Down Escalator, a play on the word "de-escalation". Fitting, since they plan to remove the nuclear capabilities of USA and Soviet Union.
  • The now-defunct Operation Cream Cake in No Deals, Mr. Bond was about MI-6 setting up a false Honey Trap campaign to secure two defectors from East Germany.
  • The operation to stop the suicide bombers and capture their leader in Scorpius is called Harvester, and the operation to stop the final one in the climax is called Last Enemy (named after a passage in The Bible, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" from First Corinthians).
  • Win, Lose or Die opens with BAST putting the Operation WIN into action, which is just test-run for their main mission, named Operation LOSE.
  • A small sublot in Brokenclaw is about an operation by Red China to crash the stock exchange in Wall Street, called Operation Jericho.
  • Operation SeaFire in the eponymous book is Max Tarn's plan to test his oilspill-cleaning craft, whether it works or not (ecological disaster is still going to happen).
  • In COLD, the eponymous organization's plan to take over United States is called Operation Blizzard, while the good guys' counter-operation is called Antifreeze.
  • A subplot in Carte Blanche features Bond investigating a Russian operation called Steel Cartridge, which he suspects of being responsible for the deaths of his parents.
  • The eponymous Operation: Thunderball is MI6's direct response to SPECTRE's "Plan Omega" to hijack a pair of nukes and threaten major cities for ransom — not that they know the exact name. Two or three books later, the villain refers to the events of the book, but seems to have got the two names mixed up.
  • In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it's established that "Operation Bedlam" is the continuing pursuit of the mastermind from the previous book, and while they work out a new plan to bait him, the peculiarities of the idea lead the Chief of Staff to quip it should have been called "Bezants"; it ends up being Operation "Corona".
• Star Wars Legends: In the Enemy Lines duology, General Wedge Antilles labels a couple of his battle tactics this way, with Operation Emperor's Hammer and Operation Emperor's Spear.
• Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series has Operation Blackbeard (the Confederacy's blitzkrieg invasion of the United States at the start of the Second Great War) and Operation Coalscuttle (the attempt by the Confederates to seize the vital industrial center of Pittsburgh). As a Genius Bonus, the former is also a slanted reference to its real-life model, WWII Germany's Operation Barbarossa, which translates to "Redbeard."
• The Man in the High Castle has Operation Dandelion, a plan approved by Josef Goebbels, but one which Hitler refuses to authorize. It's revealed to be a preemptive nuclear attack on the Japanese home islands.
• The Murderbot Diaries. In Exit Strategy, Murderbot mentally dubs the plan to rescue Dr. Mensah as Operation Not A Completely Terrible Plan. When things (inevitably) go wrong Murderbot changes this to Plan Approaching Terrible.
• Rivers of London has multiple Metropolitan Police operations, often working on different aspects of the Faceless Man case (such as Operation Carthorse; the pursuit of The Dragon, and Operation Wentworth; the investigation into the Skygarden explosion). Once the Faceless Man's identity has been revealed, these all get folded into Operation Jennifer.
• 1632: Don Fransisco Nasi, the USE's spymaster, refers to the operation he put in place to dismantle potentially violent anti-Semitic organizations within the USE as Operation Crystal Night. Nasi is a Sephardic Jew, and well read on the topic of anti-Semitism in the 20th century, and states that the choice of code name was very much deliberate.
• Black Tide Rising:
  • The clearance of the hospital at near-totally abandoned Guantanamo Bay for the sake of gathering materials to make a vaccine to the zombie virus is dubbed Operation Echo Bird.
  • The mission to clear the Leeward Islands in order to secure a landing zone for the ISS evacuation capsule is given the rather on-the-nose name Operation Leeward Sweep (as Steve points out, there's not really anybody left to disguise the mission's intent from).
  • The mission to clear and secure Mayport Naval Station is named Operation Rattlesnake.
  • The mission to the London Research Institute to retrieve vital vaccine-making materials at the climax of Islands of Rage and Hope is retroactively revealed in Strands of Sorrow to have been called Operation Golden Lion.
  • The systemic clearing of Marine and Navy bases along the East Coast is called Operation Swamp Fox.
  • Steve calls his plan to create zombie-killing traps using radiation-emitting devices Project Subedey.
  • The mission to begin clearing Washington DC is called Operation George.
  • The Valley of Shadows reveals that Tom's evacuation plan for his corporate associates, as carried out in the first book, was called Plan Zeus.

Live-Action TV

• In 3rd Rock from the Sun, Sally and Harry determine that Mary's brother Roy, who seems to be an alien abductee, knows too much and must be done away with. Their plan to get rid of him is fittingly named "Operation: Kilroy".
• Alias: Early in her training as a spy, Sydney participated in "Project: Christmas", a series of procedures that would make her immune to pretty much any form of mental coercion or mind control.
• In the Angel episode "Ground State", Gunn asks what they'll need for "Operation Chance in Hell".
• From an episode of Arrested Development:
  Buster: A hot mission. We should give it a name like Operation: Hot Mother.
  Michael: No, let's try to top that.
  Narrator: They never did and five minutes later, Operation: Hot Mother was under way.
• One episode of Blackadder Goes Forth ends with a vengeful Blackadder "volunteering" George and Baldrick to take part in a mission codenamed Operation Certain Death. In "General Hospital", Melchett tells Blackadder that if he succeeds in finding the spy, he will be head of Operation Winkle, to winkle out the spies.
• A small-scale Government Conspiracy revolves around covering up the details regarding the rather ironically named Operation Daylight in Blindspot. This is ultimately revealed to be a Ripped from the Headlines operation where the NSA supplied illegally obtained information to government officials to blackmail opponents, the CIA for intelligence, and the FBI for criminal activity. Mayfair's part was to come up with fake sources for the information that was being provided to her to pass to law enforcement under the guise it had been obtained legally.
  • More important to the Myth Arc is Orion, an off-books CIA black-ops project that not only indulged in the usual SEAL Team Six sort of activities, but also highly-illegal assassinations and military attacks. Details are still vague, but Jane was a member at some point in her mysterious past, and it appears to have operated under the same umbrella as Daylight being provided with intel from the latter.
  • One of the new tattoos Jane is given in Season 3 leads towards a secret CIA operation codenamed Project Dragonfly, which Keaton and Zapata are eager to keep secret from the rest of the take force. It ultimately turns out to be using the still alive Borden as a Double Agent within a terrorist cell, instead of arresting him as they should have.
  • An episode from the back half of Season 3 features a military project called "Golden Rhino", which the Conspiracy Theorist who uncovers it believes is a Mind-Control Device, but is actually a sonic weapon.
  • Throughout Season 4, new Big Bad Madeline Burke and her minions repeatedly mention working towards a plan codenamed "Helios", which ultimately turns out to be framing the FBI team for a terrorist attack, in order to leverage herself into a position of authority over the Bureau.
• Played for Laughs in Chuck. The protagonists are running a top secret operation tasked in part with protecting the Human Intersect Project, one Chuck Bartowski, and in part with using his abilities for spy business of all kinds. It's called "Operation Bartowski". Facepalm.
• Dark Angel had the pretty obvious Manticore Project, which created Super-Soldier Half Human Hybrids by combining human and animal DNA.
• Ensign O'Toole, an early '60s sitcom set aboard a Navy destroyer, titled each of its episodes "Operation (something)". As did the short-lived 2007 comedy series The Knights of Prosperity. Ditto the '70s crime series O'Hara, U.S. Treasury.
• The Greatest American Hero: The episode "Operation: Spoilsport" revolves around Ralph being ordered by the aliens who gave him the suit to stop a General Ripper from beginning World War Three. The titular operation (a NORAD plan to screw over the Russians in case of a nuclear strike by keeping a small number of missile silos independent from the rest and under orders to not launch immediately, but rather wait twenty-four hours as a surprise third strike) is his lynchpin (he will take over one of the independent silos and open fire).
• The Great Martian War 1913–1917. Operation Trojan Horse involves horses carrying the means of destruction to a seemingly victorious enemy. Presumably whoever thought up the name figured that invaders from another world would not be familiar with The Odyssey.
• Lucifer (2016). When Lucifer recruits the patients at a mental hospital to help himself and God Johnson (literally God in human form) escape, he dubs it "Operation Help Lucifer Escape."
  God Johnson: A little on the nose, son.
  Lucifer: You are literally the judgiest person in the universe!
• Nikita: Division missions are all codenamed this way. According to Michael, the more innocent sounding the name, usually the more devastating the mission.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • In season 1, Henry calls his efforts to break the curse "Operation Cobra". This would wind up the first of many.
  • Season 2 features "Operation Scorpion" (to rescue Emma and Mary Margaret from the Enchanted Forest) and "Operation Praying Mantis" (to figure out what Neal's fiancee Tamara is up to).
  • In season 3, as a tribute, Regina calls the attempt to rescue Henry "Operation Henry". She sadly muses that Henry himself would have thought of a better name.
  • Season 4's mission to write a happy ending for Regina is called "Operation Mongoose". This one was also her idea as opposed to his (though he approved).
  • Season 5's first mission, to rid Emma of the Dark One's powers, is called "Operation Light Swan".
  • In season 5's second half, when the heroes' journey to The Underworld to rescue Hook grows to include redeeming and releasing as many of the trapped souls there as possible, Henry christens the plan "Operation Firebird".
    Regina: Is that what we're calling it?
    Emma: Are you referring to the mythological bird, or the muscle car?
  • The fifth season finale sees a post-Despair Event Horizon Henry embark on a desperate plot to destroy all magic, which he codenames "Operation Mix Tape" (mostly to impress his crush Violet, with whom he bonded over a mix tape).
  • After an influx of refugees from the Land of Untold Stories arrive in Storybrooke, the heroes determine to help them find their happy endings. Naturally, Henry dubs this "Operation Cobra part II".
  • When Hook asks Henry to play a role in his and Emma's wedding, he jokingly refers to it as "Operation Best Man", which Henry is very happy to take part in.
  • In the sixth season finale, the Black Fairy's curse has altered reality so Emma is locked up in a mental hospital. Henry calls his attempt to break her out "Operation One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
    Emma: Didn't that end in a lobotomy?
  • Season 7 shows that even as an adult, Henry hasn't outgrown this habit, referring to his mission to reunite with Cinderella as "Operation Glass Slipper". When Regina tags along to help with this, as well as to finally find her own happy ending, Henry dubs it "Operation Next Chapter".
  • Later in Season 7, as Lucy and Regina team up to find a way to break the new curse that won't result in Gothel's magic poison killing Henry, they dub it "Operation Hyacinth", after the flower Henry gave Cinderella as their first present.
• The title character from Parker Lewis Can't Lose would occasionally do this in the middle of an episode.
  Parker: "Gentlemen! Synchronize Swatches. It's time for Operation ______."
• Pennyworth: Season 2 has Project Stormcloud, a chemical weapon program developed by the Raven Union to win their Civil War with the English League.
• Power Rangers Operation Overdrive. From the same franchise, Operation Lightspeed (the Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue) and Project Ranger (which developed the tech later used by the Power Rangers RPM).
• Runaways (2017): Alex's plan to get inside and hack Tina Minoru's server is....Operation Tina Server Room. He's quick to admit he's not great at making up names.
• In the later seasons of Smallville, Lex Luthor had a tendency to name his secret projects this way with some straightforward classical references: the culmination of his experiments on "meteor freaks" to create a Super-Soldier was called "Project Ares,"^note effectively, Project War God his attempts to clone his brother was "Project Gemini,"^note Twin Brothers his attempts to build a suit that copies Clark's powers was "Project Prometheus,"^note The god who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man etc. Hilariously lampshaded by Tess when she takes over LuthorCorp and comments that she's still catching up on all the projects that Lex "named after constellations".
• "Operation Exodus" is the name given to the evacuation of the Moonbase in Space: 1999.
• Space: Above and Beyond gives us "Operation Roundhammer", the code-name for an all-out assault on The Chig Homeworld. For bonus points, the moon that the operation is planned to be launched from is code-named "Anvil". The operation is even mentioned in foreshadowing earlier in the series, with earlier missions being stated to be in support of it, without revealing to the viewers just what Roundhammer was supposed to accomplish until the penultimate episode of the series. ^note They are forced to abort the operation when the Chigs find out about it and sue for peace, only for the negotiations to break down in bloodshed and renewed war.
  • Given the show's love of historical references, Operation Roundhammer is a likely reference to Operation Sledgehammer, a planned (but aborted) 1942 Allied invasion of occupied France.
• Stargate Atlantis:
  Sheppard: Operation "This Will Most Likely End Badly" is a go.
• Stargate SG-1 hid the SGC's funding under the innocuous label of "Project Blue Book", but they were apparently unable to resist calling the effort to repurpose technology stolen from alien "Gods" the Prometheus Project. Note that in real life, "Project Blue Book" was the Air Force's investigation into UFO sightings, ending in 1970.
• The ninth chevron project in Stargate Universe is called Project Icarus. The novelization of the pilot episode implies that General O'Neill plans to tear a strip off of whoever jinxed the operation by giving it that particular name.
• Stargirl (2020): Throughout Season 1, the Injustice Society are working towards the completion of what they call Project New America. It ultimately turns out to be a plan to create a machine that will amplify Brainwave's abilities to the point that he'll be able to brainwash millions of people at once, at which point they'll be able to reshape American society to fit their (surprisingly progressive) views.
• The last episode of season one of Star Trek: The Original Series is called "Operation - Annihilate!".
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • In the two-part episode "Scorpion", Janeway's contingency plan for the Borg's inevitable betrayal in Part II is code-named "Scorpion", after Chakotay's fable about "the frog and the scorpion" from Part I.
  • "Dark Frontier", the plan to steal a transwarp coil from the Borg is called "Operation Fort Knox," after the American gold depository that not even the Ferengi could break into.
• The mission to retake the space station from the enemy in season 6 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was called "Operation Return." Good thing the Dominion didn't hear that name beforehand.
• Stephen Colbert was once given a flag that had been flown over the US Embassy in Afghanistan (?) during an (apparently actually real) mission known as Operation: Beef Hammer. As he noted, it doesn't get more American than that.

• The X-Files episode "Fallen Angel" has "Operation Falcon", which refers to a government procedure for covering up UFO crashes.
• On Z Nation, the mission to get Murphy to the last remaining CDC lab in California is called Operation Bite-Mark.

Music

• Folksinger David Rovics roundly mocked the original U.S. name for the invasion of Iraq in his song "Operation Iraqi Liberation."
  It's Operation Iraqi Liberation!
  Tell me, what does that spell?
  It's Operation Iraqi Liberation!
  O-I-L!
• The song "Operation Ground and Pound" by DragonForce.
• The last refrain of "Super Rad!" by The Aquabats! mentions "Mission Codename Applesauce".

Puppet Shows

• Parodied by Spitting Image: At a loose end after the first Gulf War, General Schwartzkopf unveils his plan to unblock a troublesome lavatory: "Operation Get The Shit Out Of Here".

Tabletop Games

• Played with in a piece of marginalia from Warhammer 40,000 the Sabbat Worlds Crusade background material: Warmaster Slaydo code-names the assault plan for Balhaut "Operation Hell-Storm". On his deathbed shortly thereafter he became increasingly maudlin about the casualties incurred, believing the operational codename had condemned his men to a "storm of hell". This is snidely remarked upon by Lord Militant General Hechtor Dravere, who said that Slaydo might have been happier with the death tolls if he had named his plan "something better disposed, such as a constitutional in fine parkland, or tea on the terrace"
• The titular heroes of Crimestrikers are elite international crimefighters who protect Creaturia, a World of Funny Animals. The group includes Operation Overnight, a "night shift" subteam which is comprised of members from nocturnal species.

Theatre

• South Pacific: A major part of the plot concerns the preparations for an Allied offensive called Operation Alligator

Theme Parks

• Both versions of The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal's Islands of Adventure have this involved. In the first version, Bruce Banner's experiment to de-Hulkify himself is referred to as "Project Gamma". In the current version, the government's experiments to create Hulk soldiers is called "Project Greenskin".
• On the Hollywood version of Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge, Bowser's plan to beat Mario in the race is dubbed "Project Number MK-526". This doubles as a Development Gag, as "Project 526" was the construction codename for the land.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: In the past, The Consortium secretly engineered The Gatekeeper Project that conducted experiments on seven subjects to grant them inter-dimensional abilities that would assist investigating Hinterland. The project was soon halted after an incident resulted in a facility's destruction.
• Bentley names the climactic missions in the Sly Cooper games this way. He parodies himself with the climax to the Holland arc in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: OP: Turbo Dominant Eagle.
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails
  • Trails from Zero: An international collaborative operation called The D∴G Cult Extermination was conducted throughout Zemuria. Its aims were to exterminate the D∴G cult without leaving any trace.
  • Trails of Cold Steel: Operation: Shining Steel is the heroes main plan to put an end to the Erebonia war.
• XenoGears: Fei and Citan assist Bart in "Operation: Aveh" to rescue Margie from captivity.
• Super Robot Wars: Original Generation spoofed this with Operation: SRW. We're never actually told what it stands for, but this invites several characters to speculate with amusing results, such as "Sexy Romance Weapons", and of course, "Super Robot War".
• In .hack//IMOQ, the strategy commands Kite can issue to his party fall into this trope, such as "Operation Wonder Battle" for attacking the nearest enemy without using skills or items, and so on.
• Metal Gear:
  • Part spoof and part Shout-Out, the first mission in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is code-named "Virtuous Mission." Anyone who had been annoyed by Raiden in the previous game must've been glad to know that it was not, as Snake joked, "Virtual Mission". The second mission fits as well, being code-named "Operation Snake Eater."
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance features a plot to assassinate the U.S. President code-named "Operation Tecumseh", after a Native American leader who, according to legend, placed a curse on the American presidency.
• In City of Heroes, the covert paramilitary force known as the Malta Operatives uses realistically obscure codenames. For instance, the World Wide Red arc involves three groups, Kingdom, Omnivore, and Dreadnaught, with the middle group working on Project Wildflower. Kingdom was tasked with destabilizing US/China relations, which was the political end of the operation. Omnivore was responsible for deploying the nanotech weapon which would be used to kill people, mostly supers, on demand, i.e. it could eat anything. Dreadnaught's job was to prepare Kronos-class Titans, giant robots with the firepower of a battleship, which fits the name fairly obviously.
• Each mission in Supreme Commander is named Operation _______. Generally, the mission name reflects the content of the mission in some way — Operation Metal Shark, for example, focuses heavily on naval units and strategy.
• Ace Combat missions often have titles of this form. While the stage may have a different name, an Operation: Blank code name frequently appears in the Mission Briefing (except emergency missions which get no operation name). See examples: AC04, AC5, ACZ.
• Command & Conquer:
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 has these for each mission. The first Soviet mission is Operation: Red Dawn.
  • Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars doesn't usually do this, except for one particularly tough Nod mission; Operation Stiletto.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, Cerberus was responsible for the Lazarus Project, a name with such obvious implications that Commander Shepard's resurrection was not surprising in the least.
    • DLC adds Project: Overlord, an attempt to sway the loyalty of the geth by creating a new god figure to replace Sovereign, and Project: Firewalker, an archaeological mission to recover a Prothean artifact from a volcanic world.
  • Multiplayer events in Mass Effect 3 take this format as well, with Operation Goliath (kill 1 million of the appropriately-named Brutes), Operation Fortress, Operation Raptor, Operation Beachhead, Operation Resurgence (play on the new Resurgence maps), Operation Exorcist (kill 1 million Phantoms), Operation Silencer (kill 3 million Banshees), Operation Shieldwall, Operation Mastiff (complete 100,000 fetch quests), Operation Savage (kill 7 million Mooks), Operation Broadside, Operation Overwatch, Operation Olympus (extract from London; this operation was held during the London Olympics), Operation Alloy, Operation Patriot (full extraction with everyone playing the same non-human species), Operation Overdrive (full extraction in twenty minutes or less), Operation Bloodlust (score a gold melee medal with a krogan), Operation Valkyrie (the first operation after the Asari Valkyrie was made available and the N7 Valkyrie became an available reward), Operation Jackhammer (score 75,000 points with Biotic Charge), Operation Blast Furnace (score 75,000 points with fire-based powers), Operation Gearhead (score 75,000 points and extract 3 times with an engineer), Operation Detonator (score 20,000 points with biotic explosions), Operation Onslaught, Operation Alamo (survive 5 waves on a map unpopular with some because of how difficult it is), Operation Prophecy (on the weekend of December 21, 2012), Operation Genesis (extract with the default characters), Operation Geronimo, Operation Ballistic (score medals with any gun), Operation Firestorm (score 3 killstreaks in one match), Operation Nightfall, Operation Heartbreaker (Valentine's Day challenge), Operation Tribute (in memory of Robin Sachs), Operation Impact, and Operation Lodestar.
    • The Mass Effect 3's single-player gets in on it, too. The project to build a superweapon from plans found in the Prothean ruins on Mars is dubbed Project Crucible. In the assault on Earth in the endgame, the three prongs of the attack receive Arms and Armor Theme Naming: "Sword", the main thrust of the allied fleet, is meant to cut a path through to the Citadel for "Shield," the force escorting the Crucible. Meanwhile "Hammer" is an all-out ground offensive by the Resistance and allied forces to get to the teleporter to the Citadel.
    • The Leviathan DLC gives us Task Force Aurora, an Alliance team tasked with researching and following leads that can help the Alliance learn more about the Reapers. Aurora itself runs two code-named projects: Project Basilisk and Project Scarab.
• Battalion Wars has several of these, such as Operation: Nautilus, and Operation: Reprimand
• In Alpha Protocol, Steven Heck names all operations that occur in Taipei - even the ones that aren't his. Then again, he's not entirely there in the head.
  "I name all the operations that go down in Taipei, even the ones that aren't mine. Operation Latex Turtle, Operation Angry Bees, Operation YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH! Heh. That was a good one."
  • The game itself names all of your missions in this fashion: Operation Desert Spear (Saudi Arabia), Operation Deus Vult (Rome), Operation True Heirs (Taipei), Operation Blood Feud (Moscow), and Operation Full Circle (the Grand Finale).
• Mega Man:
  • In Mega Man Zero 2, there's Elpizo's "Operation Righteous Strike", which is essentially an invasion by La Résistance of Neo Arcadia. The operation fails horribly, with many redshirts dead and Zero having to rescue Elpizo before he's killed by the Guardians, which also directly influences Elpizo's Face–Heel Turn to obtain the Dark Elf to get revenge for his failure.
    • In the drama tracks, there's "Project Elpizo", the project that instigated the creation of the "Sigma Antibody Program", Mother Elf. TK-31 (Elpizo's former codename) accidentally found the data about this project, and because it's supposed to be a secret for Neo Arcadia, he's declared a Maverick by Harpuia. Eventually, he managed to run away from the country and changed his name into... you know... As well as starting his quest for power by stealing the Baby Elves.
  • Mega Man ZX has Serpent's Evil Plan code-named "Project Haven", which would lead to the creation of the ultimate Mega Man and destined ruler of the world...by awaking the Model W Core and using it to feast on the souls of countless innocent humans and reploids for power. Aptly enough, Vent/Aile's goal is to keep this from happening at all costs and inadvertently help him finally wake it up in the end before killing him.
• R-Type gives us Operation Last Dance from R-Type Final, and Operation Bitter Chocolate from R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate.
• Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure has "Operation Takeback."
• Hitman: Absolution has Gulf War vet Benjamin Travis masterminding "Operation Sledgehammer", which is about as subtle as it sounds. Taking over a small town in South Dakota, setting fire to parts of it, having his goons execute most of the civilians, all to capture one bald assassin... How on earth did this guy find a job in a top-secret contract agency?
• The Taito arcade game, Operation Wolf, and two of its sequels, Operation Thunderbolt and Operation Tiger.
• In Persona 3, Junpei calls the guys' attempts to pick up chicks on the beach Operation Babe Hunt. It doesn't go well.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, all missions get codenames of this sort. The ones for regular missions are realistically random (e.g. 'Operation Cursed Jester'), storyline missions can have more meaningful names (the final mission is named 'Operation Avenger').
  • Missions from the DLC packs have both a fixed name ("Friends in Low Places", "Site Recon", "Deluge") and a randomly generated "operation" codename.
  • To elaborate, the name of each operation consists of two randomly chosen words (the first and second words being chosen from different, albeit overlapping, lists). Most of the words are things that sound reasonably badass when strung together; however, it can still turn out some rather silly and/or on-the-nose ones (e.g. Romantic Night, Fallen Hero, or Sleeping Sleep). Then the sequel went and added a .2% chance of "Chicken" being selected as one of the two words...
• X3: Terran Conflict has Operation Final Fury, a privately funded effort to drive the Kha'ak the rest of the way out of the Community of Planets. X3: Albion Prelude has Operation Loose Ends, during which the Terrans launch a raid into the Community of Planets to recover technologies stolen before the war, and recover stolen information on Terran deep-cover operatives.
• Kuhga - Operation Code: Vapor Trail
• Operation C, a Game Boy installment in the Contra series.
• James Pond 3: Operation Starfish
• The subtitles of Codename: Kids Next Door Licensed Games carry on this kind of Idiosyncratic Episode Naming with Operation V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. and Operation S.O.D.A.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us has Green Arrow provide us with "Operation: Thunder Eagle Lightning….whatever", the off-the-cuff name for a bout of Storming the Castle.
• Veigues: Tactical Gladiator has "Operation Last Rally."
• The Telenet Japan game Browning has "Operation Running Saber."
• In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Nick Fury tells Mister Fantastic and Captain America "I need you guys for our Latverian operation. I call it...Operation Latveria!"
• In the FreeSpace game mod Wings of Dawn, Crystal calls her plan to break through the Hertak fleet and destroy their mothership Operation: Ragnarok. The other characters note that that seems rather over-dramatic.
  • The vanilla campaign in Freespace 2 has Project ETAK, which is believed by the GTVA to be an NTF superweapon project. It's actually not. ETAK is short for "Etamnaki", a site believed to have inspired the myth of the Tower of Babel, and the project is an attempt to communicate with the Shivans.
• In the climax of ZombiU, London is declared a no-rescue zone and the RAF launch "Operation Firewall" - firebombing the city to destroy what's left of the virus.
• The MechWarrior series uses this, particularly the second game with names like Iron Piston, Burning Chrome, Velvet Hammer, Golden Spade, etc. The third game has Operation Damocles and also references BattleTech's Operation Bulldog as part of the Refusal War.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: The eponymous "Zero Dawn" is the name of an actual In-Universe project meant to revive the biosphere and humanity after all of is killed off by The End of the World as We Know It. The events of the game happen hundreds of years after the Project came to fruition. Operation: Enduring Victory was the worldwide military operation supporting Zero Dawn, aimed at convincing millions if not billions of people to take up arms and hold off the Faro Swarm for as long as possible. Which they did.
• Homefront has Operation Water Snake, the Korean plan to divide the United States by pouring radioactive materials into the Mississippi river. The result is a massive Forbidden Zone between the western occupied zone and the remnants of the country in the east. To top this off, they carry out Operation Fan Fire every few months, setting fire to the local flora to reintroduce radioisotopes into the air, making it dangerous to even be in the area.
• Starblade has the obvious Operation Starblade.
• In The New Order: Last Days of Europe Hermann Göring, as a potential Hitler's successor, is very fond of naming his military campaigns. Operation Isabella (invasion of Iberia), Operation Herkules (invasion of Greece), Operation Sea Lion II (second invasion of Britain), Fall Rockwell (invasion of the United States; named after George Lincoln Rockwell).
• A bunch of events in Warframe had titles prefaced with "Operation:".
• Early games in the Rainbow Six series named their levels in this fashion; for example, Operation Ghost Dance in the original game is a mission to rescue hostages at the Worldpark amusement park.
• Rebel Inc. uses this as Hello, [Insert Name Here], allowing the players to name their operation, allowing them to either use randomly generated names, or to pull the usual shenanigans that come with Hello, [Insert Name Here].
• Theme Park Inc., also known as SimCoaster in the states and Theme Park Manager in Australia, despite being barely military themed, oddly uses this trope to full degree as every single objective in the game follows the same naming scheme, such as "Operation: Expand!", "Operation: Onwards!", etc.
• In Metal Wolf Chaos, the President's secretary Jodi concludes each briefing with the mission's callname, accompanied by a drumroll. These range from on-the-nose like "Operation We Love NYC" in New York City to just plain odd like "Operation Bring Fashion Back to the Street" in Beverley Hills .
• Fortnite:
  • All four Limited Time Modes that are part of the Spy Games event are named this way: "Operation: Dropzone", "Operation: Knockout", "Operation: Payload" and "Operation: Infiltration".
  • The holiday event that took place during Chapter 2 Season 5 is called "Operation: Snowdown".
  • The end-of-season live event for Chapter 2 Season 7 is called "Operation: Skyfire".
• Sunrider has Operation Wedding Crash, in which the Sunrider crashes the wedding of Big Bad Veniczar Arcadius and Princess Asaga di Ryuvia in order to rescue the bride.
• Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri uses single word operation names which are usually somewhat relevant to the mission. Examples from the demo include the night mission Operation Flashlight and the mountain base assault Operation Citadel. The only exception is the final mission, Operation Absolute Zero.

Web Animation

• One of Blue Laser's plots in the Homestar Runner cartoon Cheat Commandos is "Operation: Don't Crush Ourselves". It fails.
• A complicated hostage swap in Red vs. Blue is initially titled Operation Circle of Confusion, but...
  Tucker: I'm just saying it doesn't look like a circle. It kinda looks more like we're forming a triangle.
  Church: Okay, fine. Triangle of Confusion. Rhombus of Terror. Parabola of Mystery! Who cares?! Get the goddamn show on the road!
• In one of the last sketches of The Demented Cartoon Movie, Evil Blah refers to "Operation Something-Thingy", which even he isn't sure what it does—all anyone knows is that Super Blah's job is to stop it.
• Meta Runner: MD-5's plan to put an end to TAS Corp is specifically named Operation: Silent Demon.
• In Episode 55 of The Most Popular Girls in School:
  Jenna Darabond: [to Than] I just wanted to make sure you're ready to execute "Operation Lose the Fucking Football Game".

Web Comics

• Parody: In The Order of the Stick #153, when Roy the Genius Bruiser refuses to help the others rescue Elan, they note that this eliminates "Operation: Send the Meat Shield in First" and "Operation: Wait for Roy to Come Up with a Better Plan".
• In a strip of Schlock Mercenary, one of Mercenary Captain Kaff Tagon's customers asks for a name for an operation. Following military procedure, Tagon suggests an unrelated name so as not to give away unnecessary information. The customer's suggestion is more in line with this trope...
• In El Goonish Shive, Tedd refers to the rescue of Elliot as "Operation: Zelda". Revealed by Word of God in a filler that this had been a long planned joke, but that's something else entirely.
• Parson from Erfworld decides to experiment with a new combination of powers to create a stealth golem to test his opponent's defenses. Not really believing it will be enough, but wanting to try it out anyway, he dubs the experiment "Operation: Simply Walk Into Mordor"
• In Adventurers!, Cody announces, "Commence mission code name Enter the Khrimalith." He's not very imaginative at coming up with these.

Web Original

• Tech Infantry plays this straight most of the time, but lampshades this at one point.
  "The plan was codenamed Operation Foliage Gear. The Federation had gone back to random computer-generated operational code names after Operation Ziggurat had failed to relieve the siege of the planet Babylon due to poor security.
• The Falcon Cannot Hear sees a few of these carried out during the Second American Civil War:
  • Operation Valley Forge: The agrarian Continental Congress carries out its first offensive of the war, taking advantage of the devastation wreaked by the harsh winter of 1938 to strike at fascist White forces in Oklahoma and Missouri.
  • Operation Spoon: The British, in light of the collapse of MacArthur's "legitimate" military government, move in and bloodlessly seize control of the Panama Canal Zone.
  • Operation East: The aptly named offensive by the Whites to break through Red and Blue lines on the East Coast.
• The Ruins of an American Party System has Operation Azrael, the allied plan to both blockade the Japanese Home Islands and perform air strikes on their food supplies, to coerce a surrender.
• The New Deal Coalition Retained timeline has a few of these:
  • Operation Thunder-III: Soviet special forces teams infiltrate Yugoslavia and assassinate Josep Tito, allowing a more pro-Moscow government to take over.
  • Operation Reciprocity: A continuous series of bombing runs and air strikes designed to shut down the Ho Chi Minh trail and destroy North Vietnam's defense network.
  • Operation Dropkick: A combined American/Australian/South Vietnamese/Cambodian assault on North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia.
  • Operation Bombardier: Joint British/Irish efforts to wipe out the IRA for good.
  • Operation Normandy: Massive amphibious invasion of Hanoi and Haiphong.
  • Operation Pegasus: In tandem with Normandy, paratroopers are dropped in order to secure key points along the invasion route.
  • Operation Barak: An Israeli drive to seize control of the Sinai from the United Arab Republic.
  • Operation Hell's Gate: With Iraqi aid, American forces are infiltrated into Tehran to rescue the staff at the American embassy.
  • Operation Gamal: Sudan, Cameroon, and Nigeria launch a blitzkrieg to overrun neutral Chad and Ubangi-Shari, in order to clear the way to unite with other African Socialist Alliance forces fighting the Entebbe Pact further south.
  • Operation Arctic Fist: A Soviet invasion of Iceland to shut down NATO's anti-submarine defense network and open the North Atlantic.
  • Operation Tukhachevsky: The Warsaw Pact invasion of Austria and Czechia, designed to eliminate a potential counterattack of their planned invasion of West Germany.
  • Operation Konstantin: The Warsaw Pact's five-pronged invasion of West Germany.
  • Operation Ivan Grozny: A blitzkrieg by Warsaw Pact armor designed to break through and divide defensive lines in northern Italy, opening the country up to full invasion.
  • Operation Kutuzov: The attempt by the Soviets to break through the stalemate on the Rhine and overwhelm all Allied territories in the region.
  • Operation Kitsune: Japan's entry move in WWIII, destroying the Soviet Pacific Fleet, invading and occupying the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin Island, and using them as a staging ground to invade Siberia in order to cut the Trans-Siberian Railway and lay siege to Vladivostok.
  • Operation Springbok: The Entebbe Pact's invasion of Zambia.
  • Operation Gamecock: A joint French/Israeli campaign to destroy Syria's air defense network, in order to open the country to a full Allied invasion.
  • Operation Frunze: Mass Soviet attack to smash through defensive lines outside Bologna, allowing the stalled invasion of Italy to pick up steam again.
  • Operation Sigrun: The Allied counter-invasion and liberation of Iceland.
  • Operation Vasilevskiy: The Soviets breakthrough the Rhine front through the Netherlands and Baden, in order to create a pincer aimed at Paris.
  • Operation Mjolnir: In response to Vasilevskiy, American and West German forces counter-invade across the Rhine in order to seize Hanover and Hamberg.
  • Operation Fenrir: An Allied blitzkrieg designed to take advantage of the chaos and disorder plaguing the Warsaw Pact nations, resulting in the liberation of East Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland.
  • Operation Julius Caesar: The Allied liberation of northern Italy.
  • Operation Sea Dragon: The British liberation of the Falklands.
  • Operation Fist of God: A two-pronged invasion of Iran by all the Allied forces in the Middle East.
  • Operation Sledgehammer: The Allies' four-pronged invasion of the remaining Communist-controlled territories in Europe, to finish rolling up the Warsaw Pact and finally end the war.
  • Operation Arminius: A side operation to Sledgehammer, to liberate East Prussia.
  • Operation Red Dog: A failed attempt by a group of KKK members to seize control of Trinidad and Tobago (based on a real plot to take over Dominica).
  • Operation Treurnicht and Operation Zebra: The Concordat and Entebbe Pact names for their respective attempts to seize control of the Sabi River border crossing between South Africa and Mozambique, in order to invade the opposing side.
  • Operation Mau Mau: The Entebbe Pact's invasion of Rhodesia.
  • Operation Yama: A week-long strategic bombing of Djibouti by India to enable an invasion of the country by Somalia.
  • Operation Shiva: A three-pronged Indian invasion of Pakistan, composed of a diversionary assault on Gujarat in the south, an attempt to take Kashmir and threaten Islamabad in the north, and a main thrust through the center to split Pakistan in half.
  • Operation Agni: To help spur the stalemated Shiva, India and China launch a continuous series of massive airstrikes to soften up Pakistani forces for an infantry and tank-based assault.
• Magic, Metahumans, Martians and Mushroom Clouds: An Alternate Cold War:
  • Operation Asgard: The umbrella name for the Nazis' occult research.
  • Operation Baldur: A Nazi contingency plan enacted by Otto Skorzeny after the war to awaken Frederick Barbarossa from his slumber under the mountain and use him to establish a Fourth Reich.
  • Operation Svyatogor: The efforts by the Soviets to create wards powerful enough to protect important sites from nuclear strikes.
  • Project Morlock: Efforts by the British to harness the Loch Ness Monster's natural Time Travel abilities.
  • Project Lazarus: Efforts by the US to develop a virus which creates controllable zombies.
  • Operation Foresight: Soviet experimentations on children with Psychic Powers.
  • Project Libitina: The American counterpart to Foresight.

Web Videos

• Hellsing Ultimate Abridged has Alucard and Walter's original mission called "Operation Kraut Control". While accurate, it's so vague that the Nazis would never have been able to figure out what it was (it was a directive to stop the Nazis from creating a vampire army).
• In Boatmurdered, StarkRavingMad is responsible for the creation of Project "Fuck the World", a canal funneling lava to the outside world, as a drastic solution to the settlement's elephant infestation. He also has a secret escape tunnel built as part of Project "Get Me The Fuck Out of Boatmurdered".
• Mined for as much juvenile humor as possible in Let's Drown Out, as Yahtzee had previously modded the aforementioned XCOM's pool of possible adjectives/nouns for random operation names full of Inherently Funny Words of his choice... without telling his partner in crime Gabe, leading to some amusing reactions to what he thought were legitimate operation codenames. Examples include Operation Sweaty Slapfight, Operation Dribbling Bastard, Operation Burbling Jesus, Operation Oozing Panties and Operation Smelly Stench.
• THE MONUMENT MYTHOS has two examples of this; Operation Pyramid Plasma from the video ROCKEFELLERREVELATION which involves harnessing the anomalous power of the Great Pyramid of Giza to shoot down Nazi airships, and Operation Thunderbird from the video ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE which uses the namesake of the mythological lightning-creating Thunderbird to symbolise the planned high-energy battle between the Statue of Freedom and the Air Force One Angel (two entities that had proven to be very dangerous to the public in the past).

Western Animation

• Archer occasionally tries to invent a snappy operation name for something he's doing, but isn't always successful:
  Archer: Commence operation... something about I rescue Lana and she begs me to take her back, so then Cyril commits suicide. Swear to god I had something for this.
• In season three of Beast Wars, the time-displaced Maximals have to watch over and protect the crashed ship containing their own ancestors from the G1 cartoon. When the Ark is endangered in the Grand Finale, Optimus considers using Operation Eternity - firing up the engines and moving it.
• Codename: Kids Next Door uses this for all their episode titles, with the part after Operation a silly "backronym".
• This also occurs frequently on Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, whenever Dick Dastardly devises a new plan to catch that pigeon. In fact, two of the shorts were titled "Operation Anvil" and "Operation Birdbrain". A comic book story was titled "Operation No-No" (Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #9, Gold Key, October, 1971).
• DuckTales (1987) had a villain named Phantom Blot plot to steal an experimental stealth jet from the Navy under the codename of Operation: Aardvark. His henchman complains it's a stupid name, but Blot reminds him that they agreed they'd name their evil schemes alphabetically.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • The Gizmoduck suit was developed under the code name "Project Blatherskite", named after the phrase used to activate it.
  • The Grand Finale revolves around "Project 87", whose name is a Mythology Gag to the original series' release date. It's an attempt to obtain a powerful magical artifact that could only be found by Scrooge's true heir by making Opposite Sex Clones of him.
• Family Guy:
  Army General: Peter Griffin! Surrender immediately, or we will institute "Operation: Bomb the Crap out of Your House". The guy who makes up the name is on vacation.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends parodies this in "Adoptcalypse Now". To prevent his friends from being adopted, Bloo implements Operation Eight Legged Drop Purple Scaredy Cat Run and Scramble. It consists of scaring Eduardo with a toy spider so that he freaks out and scares everyone away.
• In the second season of Frisky Dingo, Killface's presidential campaign is struggling to raise funds, so his campaign manager directs his bodyguard Wendell to raise funds using prison gangs to smuggle drugs.
  Wendell: Commence Operation: Meth Nazis! Heeyah! [engine revving]
  Killface: Operation what!?
  [beat]
  Killface: You know, I... don't have a great feeling about this.
• In Futurama, Dwight proposes that he and Cubert leverage their paper route jobs to take over Planet Express using a ruthless business strategy titled "Strategy: Dwight Lightning". Cubert replies, "OK, but I get to name the next strategy."
• Gravity Falls:
  Mabel: It's time to begin "Operation: Get Stan Over His Fear Of Heights"! I came up with that name.
• Invader Zim's Irken plan for galactic conquest is called "Operation Impending Doom". Well, "Operation Impending Doom Two". "Operation Impending Doom One" turned out a little differently than expected, thanks to the title character.
• Many on Kim Possible:
  • Project Phoebus made Rufus a genius, and Project Ray X made a ray gun, Ray X, which was to be stored at undisclosed location, Location X, for instance.
  • Also worth mentioning is Dr. Drakken's "Operation Catastrophic Doom". Which Shego renamed "Plan Too-Complicated-To-Actually-Work."
  • Drakken takes it to the point of telling Shego that he needs her for "Project Gherkin" — which turns out to be getting a stuck lid off a pickle jar.
  • Shego also once snarked to Drakken by asking how Operation-Growing-More-Ridiculous-By-The-Day was going.
• An episode near the end of The Legend of Korra that focused on Lin, Toph, Opal, and Bolin trying to rescue the rest of the Beifongs from Kuvira was named Operation Beifong.
• An old Looney Tunes short had Wile E. Coyote attempt to capture Bugs Bunny with a number of complex scientific contraptions, the name of the cartoon (and each device, with an ascending number as the previous attempts fail) is "Operation: Rabbit".
• The Loud House: Lincoln is the resident "man with a plan" and frequently indicates his plans with ridiculously long operation names, which usually take the form of "Operation [insert ridiculously long description for whatever his operation is about] And Also Think of a Shorter Name for This Operation".
• Happens Once per Episode in The Penguins of Madagascar. Sometimes the operation names are clever, sometimes they're quite obvious. A lampshade is hung in "Popcorn Panic" when Kowalski points out that "Operation: Popcorn" seems "a bit on the nose". Whenever Nickelodeon promotes new episodes, promotions for it usually give it such a title, when the actual title is something entirely different. So far the only episode titles actually done this way are "Operation: Plush and Cover", "Operation: Cooties", "Operation: Good Deed", "Operation: Antarctica" and "Operation: Big Blue Marble".
• Two episodes of Recess were named as this: "Operation Field Trip", and "Operation Stuart".
• Sheep in the Big City:
  General Specific: We will begin Operation Kidnap That Sheep That We Need For The Ray Gun And Don't Let Him Get Away Again Storm as soon as I say "Commence Operation Kidnap That Sheep That We Need For The Ray Gun And Don't Let Him Get Away Again Storm". Commence Operation Kidnap That Sheep That We Need For The Ray Gun And Don't Let Him Get Away Again Storm!
  • You could always use the acronym: Operation KtStWNftRGaDLHGAAS.
• The Simpsons:
  • Bart tries to make the teacher's strike go longer. His plan: "Operation: Make Strike Go Longer".
  • In another episode, the family tries to make Lisa reverse her conversion to Buddhism using "Operation: X-mas, Remind Of How Good Is".
  • "Operation: Judge Get Back At"
  • "Operation: Hoyven Mayven"
  • Project Arctarus.
  • In the movie, after several days of Springfield being trapped under a transparent dome, the government prepares to enact Operation Soaring Eagle… which involves nuking Springfield.
• South Park:
  • In the "Imaginationland" Trilogy, the army uses such operations as "Project: Imagination Doorway" and "Operation: Blow up Imaginationland with a Nuclear Missile", which are exactly what they sound like.
  • In "The List" Cartman comes up with "Operation: Cannot Possibly Fail", to steal the titular list from the girls. This involves a Groin Attack on the girl carrying The List and taking it. When that doesn't work, Cartman instigates Plan B, "Operation: Cannot Possibly Fail A Second Time."
• In The Transformers, Soundwave would seem to use this trope, except his speech patterns meant he was simply issuing orders.
  "Rumble: activate piledrivers. Operation: tidal wave."
  "Laserbeak: prepare for flight. Operation: assimilation."
• The Venture Bros. naturally has plenty of these. Brock Samson's assignment as Venture's bodyguard is the insulting, if accurate, "Operation: Rusty's Blanket."

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