Spoiler Title

Do you think John might make it out alive?

Announcer: Will Clark Kent find happiness with a new love? Stay tuned for chapter six — Clark Kent Finds Happiness!
Cinema Snob: Whoa, spoiler alert, movie!

— The Cinema Snob (on the Made-for-TV Movie version of the Superman musical), The Cinema Snob

Work and episode titles that give away what happens in the story.

This trope only applies if the title really is a spoiler. An important event — like a character's death — could be revealed by the title (and even take place near the show's end) but not have been meant as a surprise, so the title's not an example of this trope. See Foregone Conclusion or Oh, and X Dies for those. Quick litmus test: if the work was a paperback novel, the back would ask a question. Would the title answer it? Oh, and X Dies builds up tension whether we have a Lying Creator or Teasing Creator or not. If the creator is NOT lying or teasing, it's this trope.

If the title is shown in the opening of the episode, may be a Spoiler Opening. If the title is shown on the DVD cover for Season 2 and it's a casual giveaway of the shocking twist at the end of Season 1, you're looking at a Late-Arrival Spoiler. Many examples of an Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name! may also be this. If the title says everything important about what happens and how, then it is also Exactly What It Says on the Tin, but just revealing that someone dies or is introduced usually isn't enough. If it spoils the existence of something, rather than a plot point, then it's The Namesake. Some works hide the spoiler by closing on title (or not displaying it at all) instead of opening with it. Chapter titles in the "In Which a Trope Is Described" style often can end up as these.

Note that this can apply to episode titles that are never displayed on-screen during the episode, as it can be difficult to avoid seeing them in TV guides and on DVD packaging. Although possibly some creators figure that if the episode's been aired at least once, the audience should already be aware of it.

Contrast Never Trust a Title and Non-Indicative Name.

Note: This is a Spoilered Rotten trope, that means that EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and most of them will be unmarked. This is your last warning, only proceed if you really believe you can handle this list.

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Examples:

Animation

• I'll Return as the Rain. Near the end of the short, Guda-Guda, dies by melting in the sun, much to the dismay of his new friend, a human girl. Guda-Guda comes back as rain drops.

Anime & Manga

• Episode 21 of Assassination Classroom is called "Takaoka Time", revealing Takaoka has returned.
• Baccano!'s episode titles tend to be pretty explanatory in general, but the only real spoiler has to be "Firo and the Three Gandor Brothers Are Felled by Assassins' Bullets". In the show's defense, however, that also happens in the first episode. Of course, "felled" doesn't always mean "killed".
• Bakuman。 manages to avert this, with its The Noun and the Noun titles, which often only become clear when the chapter is read. For example, the chapter in which it is determined whether "Detective Trap" will be canceled, (and it is canceled) is titled "18 and 40", and refers to Mashiro realizing that his hope of getting an anime by age 18 will never come true, and after sending an e-mail to Azuki about the cancelation on the last page, she jokingly replies that she wants to get married before 40.
• In the last episode of the Bubblegum Crisis OVA Bubblegum Crash, until very late in the episode, the true plan of the Boomer antagonists is unknown but the Title of the Episode actually spoils a rather huge part of this plan.
• Twenty dollars on the outcome of "Tooya Dies" in Ceres, Celestial Legend. He dies. Sort of.
• Code Geass:
  • "Bloodstained Euphie" is a middle example. It spoils that something's going to go horribly wrong, but it's still quite surprising that Princess Euphemia is the one who does the killing.
  • The movie title, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection, gives away that Lelouch died and is going to be resurrected in the movie. Though the movie is a sequel to the Compilation Movie trilogy and not the show, where Lelouch remains dead.
• Digimon Tamers had that one episode with the title "The Kind-Hearted Hero, Leomon Dies".
  • One episode of Digimon Adventure 02 was titled "Sayonara, Ken-chan". What made it such a spoiler, though, was that the words on the screen were in a Wormmon-shaped silhouette.
  • Digimon Fusion was really bad about this. For example, both Deckerdramon and Beelzebumon's deaths were spoiled in episode titles — then further spoiled through the story narration lines in the corner, which showed up at the beginning and middle of the episodes.(The one at the beginning in episode 48 said, "Goodbye, Beelzebumon!")
• Dragon Ball Z has a reputation for this, particularly since every episode concluded with a On the Next segment that revealed the full name of the episode at the end!
  • The Saiyan saga, specifically during the battle with Vegeta and Nappa, has "Yamcha Dies! The Terror of the Saibaimen", "Farewell, Ten-san! Chaozu's Suicidal Strategy", "Tenshinhan Cries Out! This Is My Final Kikoho!" and "Ferocity of the Saiyans! Kami-sama and Piccolo Both Die". Come on, let's root for the good guys to win!
  • "Goku Dies! There's Only One Chance Left" was one of the first episodes, even — which probably let some savvy Japanese fans guess that the "twist" would be undone later on. Non-Japanese dubs mostly kept it under wraps, although for example the French (and its many European derivatives) titled the episode "Sangoku Sacrifices His Life".
  • One episode has "Such Regret...!! The Proud Saiyan, Vegeta Dies". Hello, we still have to watch the episode! Do you mind?!
  • Even worse, "The Death of Dende... Come Forth! Intense, Full-Force Power".
  • "Freeza Defeated!! A Single Blast Packed with a Totality of Rage" is an infamous but downplayed example, as it was pretty clear who was winning the fight at the end of the episode. Still, way to spoil how screwed the Big Bad was, and when he would lose.
  • How about "Planet Namek's Great Explosion!! Goku Disappears into Space". Not a Spoiler Title much, but the next episode title? "Son Goku Survived! The Z Warriors Are All Resurrected!!" Thanks for that, guys.
    • The dub has the same issue, titling the episodes "Namek's Explosion...Goku's End?" and "Goku's Alive!!".
  • And the dub title "Pay to Win", to a lesser extent.^note The episode where 18 and Mr. Satan are the two finalists in the Tenka'ichi Budōkai, which ends with her taking a dive for a bribe equal to double the actual prize money.
  • Can Videl win? Find out next time in Dragon Ball Z: "A Tragic Videl!! Are You Coming Out, Angry Super Gohan?"!
  • The original Dragon Ball had an episode called "Goku's Opponent is... Goku?!", in which Goku fights a masked fighter exactly his height with his exact skill. We wonder who it could be??
  • For movie titles, the Japanese title of The Return of Cooler was "Clash!! 10,000,000,000 Powerful Warriors", spoiling that Cooler made a bunch of copies of himself; something we don't even find out until near the end of the film.
  • Another big offender is the dub title of the 8th movie, Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan. Broly's power is supposed to be a big twist: half of the movie makes him look like a weakling who barely even speaks, but instead everyone's just waiting for the heroes to figure it out. In Japan it was called Burn Up!! A Red-Hot, Raging, Super-Fierce Fight.
  • In the third Broly movie, even though it was intended to be kept a mystery as to who exactly they were cloning other than the fact that it was a Saiyan, the US title spoiled it by explicitly stating Bio-Broly. In Japan, it's Super-Warrior Defeat!! I'm the One Who'll Win.
• To some extent, Eureka Seven did this with 2 episodes and averted it with a third: Namely "Acperience 2", "Acperience 3" and "Acperience 4", though the latter is averted in the same way as Gurren Lagann's two aversions. The first two just tells the viewer what is in store for them.
• Fairy Tail is pretty bad about this. Especially since at the end of each chapter, the title of the next chapter is shown.
  • Chapter 244: "Thunder Crashes" reveals that Laxus, who'd previously been expelled from the guild and had no reason to be on Sirius Island, pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment against Hades.
  • Chapter 492: "Elder Sister and Younger Sister" spoils the Agria sisters reuniting.
  • Chapter 493: "The White Dragneel" reveals that there's another Dragneel besides Natsu and Zeref.
• Depending on if you've seen the original series or not, Fate/Zero episode 17's title, "The Eighth Contract", is either this or Foregone Conclusion. Granted, the series shows the titles at the end of the episode, but Nico.jp displays the episode title right on the viewing page, defeating the purpose.
• Get Backers had it in the second Infinite-castle visit. It was a Tonight, Someone Dies title.
• God Mars has several episode titles like "Akira's Girlfriend is a Female Soldier" and "Marg Dies on Earth", which sum up the main points quite well.
• Episode 6 of GoLion is titled "Death of Shirogane the Hero".
• Gundam series occasionally have episode titles that give away major plot points, often referring to character deaths:
  • The original Mobile Suit Gundam has some of these, with "Garma's Fate" being a particularly bad one, along with "Big Zam's Last Stand". These become hilarious when the narrator asks "Who will survive?" after revealing the title.
  • Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is generally good at not choosing spoilerific titles, with a few exceptions like "Amuro Flies Again" and "Goodbye, Rosammy," and then the penultimate episode is the rather on-the-nose "Casualties of War."
  • Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has "Falling Sky", "Rasara's Life," and "Emary's Glory."
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny episode, oh excuse, phase 36, is called "Athrun escapes". The trailer in phase 35 really looked like "sorry for the spoiler. Here is Meyrin in underwear as an apology."
• In the middle of Higurashi: When They Cry we are treated to a Hope Spot arc, with everything hinting towards a happy ending. The title of the arc? Minagoroshi-hen, "the Massacre Chapter" or, if translated word-for-word, "the Kill-Everyone Chapter".
• The season 1 finale for I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying was titled "Me, Her, and Another", though it's a case of Close on Title.
• Chapter 84 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is simply titled "The Mysterious Nazi Officer"; however, the 2012 anime adaptation spoils the reveal with two words: Stroheim's Counterattack, making the constant shadowing of the character's face pointless.
• Some of the case arcs in The Kindaichi Case Files are spoiled because of the title in a given case.
  • One can guess who would be the prime suspect in the case arc titled "Kindaichi the Killer".
  • Anyone who knows what a "sommelier" is or does can guess who would be serving wine in the case arc that's titled "Case File of Kengo Akechi the Sommelier".
• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!:
  • This was often done with its Japanese titles. The dramatic reveal that Knuckle Joe isn't actually working for Night Mare Enterprises as a salesman, but merely pretending to so he can gain access to one of eNeMeE's most dangerous creations and kill it would probably have worked better if the episode hadn't been titled "Monster Hunter Knuckle Joe" in Japanese.
  • Downplayed in the case of an early episode, which has Tiff receiving a love letter written on a seashell, apparently written by someone named Kine. She wonders who Kine is. The Japanese title card saying "The Fish Who Loved Me" immediately pops up. Kine is not revealed to be a talking fish until two and a half minutes later, although if the audience were aware that he also appears in some of the games (and a few of the earlier episodes) they'd be less than surprised.
• Episode 8 of Layton Mystery Detective Agency revolves around the mysterious disappearance of £100 million in cash from a high-tech bank vault. Or at least, it would be mysterious if the episode wasn't called "The £100 Million That Blew Away In The Wind". And just to reassure you that the title isn't metaphorical, the first thing you see of the bank vault is its gigantic ventilation fan.
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes: The whole of episode 82 is spent watching one man's life in the balance but in the end "The Magician Did Not Return".
• Macross 7, Episode 47: "Basara Dies".
• Played with in Mazinkaiser Episode 6: "Koji Kabuto Dies in Magma!" Although he does in fact get dunked into Mt. Fuji, he does survive in the next episode.
• People who watch My Hero Academia on Crunchyroll should take extra caution during the second season's Sports Festival arc. The episode selector shows multiple episodes ahead of the one you're currently watching, and one episode is titled "Todoroki vs Bakugo", spoiling the fact that Midoriya will lose his fight against Todoroki (as does Iida, who faces Todoroki in the semifinals).
• Naruto:
  • An episode was titled "Gaara Dies!" Gee, thanks. At least he comes back to life.
  • Chapter 437's title is "Confessions", which doesn't sound like much of a spoiler until you see Hinata on the cover.
  • Chapter 473 is called "Brother". Again, doesn't sound like a spoiler until you know the context of the previous chapter in which Killer B is presumably about to be killed by Kisame. Anyone who had been paying attention would know Killer B not only has a brother but his brother is none other than the Raikage, who was last seen looking for him, and thus would be a great deal of help to Killer B.
  • Chapter 480 is titled "Sacrifice" which makes what happens at the end obvious several pages before then.
  • Chapter 599 is called "Obito Uchiha", which, again, is a very big spoiler if you know the context.
• Parodied on NEEDLESS. Episode 3 is titled "Gedo Dies Gedo Dies" and Blade is adamant that that happens in the preview. In fact, Gedo does not die and lives through the series.
• One Piece has quite a few spoiler titles.
  • Episode 32 was titled "Usopp's Death?! Luffy — Yet to Land?" Later subverted when it's revealed that Nami faked his death.
  • Episode 290 was titled "Uncontrollable! Chopper's Forbidden Rumble!"; in it, Chopper first uses Monster Point.
  • Episode 377 was titled "My Crewmate's Pain is My Pain, Zoro Fights Prepared to Die!", and in it, Zoro agreed to take in all of Luffy's pain to convince Kuma to leave, which was thought to be fatal.
  • Episode 405 was titled "Disappearing Crewmates! The Final Day of the Straw Hat Crew!". The title spoils the entire episode.
  • Chapter 512 is titled Zoro Vanished! ruining the ending.
  • Chapter 565 is titled Oars' Road. The previous chapter saw Akainu begin to melt all the ice the opposition were standing on causing readers to wonder how the pirates would end up ok. The title of this chapter told us.
  • Chapter 574 is titled Portgas D. Ace is Dead. Can't really get more spoilerific than that.
  • Played with in Chapter 429: Complete Defeat. Things are looking bleak for the Straw Hats when suddenly, they come upon a Hope Spot. Then the Marines thoroughly beat them anyways, right? Actually, it's their victory. The title was taken from a line near the end of the chapter, spoken by a marine: "This is our complete defeat."
  • One of the TV Specials has a spoiler right in its full title: 3D2Y: Overcome Ace's Death! Luffy's Vow to His Friends!
  • The title "The 500 Million Berry Man! The Target is Usoland!" completely spoils the episode's funniest moment; Usopp tops the list of people Doflamingo wants dead.
  • The title "Luffy's Peak Attained! Gear Fifth" completely spoils that Luffy is not only alive, but has unlocked Gear Fifth after Kaido decisively knocked Luffy out earlier.
• The title of the 25th episode of Ouran High School Host Club "The Host Club Declares Dissolution!" spoils half of the plot twist revealed in the last ten seconds of the episode.
• Our Yuri Started With Me Getting Rejected in a Dream is the story of a girl named Tsukushi, who has a dream about her long-time friend Hinoka turning down her Love Confession.: Chapter 36, which is a few chapters after Hinoka kisses Tsukushi, is titled, "The Couple That Started with Getting Rejected in a Dream." While the chapter ends with that title, anyone who sees the chapter name in advance will be spoiled.
• There is an episode of Perman titled "Perman 3's a Real Witch". The other characters have no idea that the witch is Perman 3 until near the end of the episode, so the title effectively ruins the plot twist.
• Here are the Japanese titles for a pair of Pokémon: The Series episodes that aired in May 2010. If the second title was revealed in the first's On the Next, it wouldn't be this trope. However, they were revealed at the same time, so...:
  Ep. 464 Semi-Final! Who is Heading to the Final^note in the Sinnoh Grand Festival?
  Ep. 465 Final! Hikari/Dawn vs. Nozomi/Zoey! ^note At least they have the decency to not tell us who wins.
  • Done once again with the Club Battle arc, which reveals that the two finalists are Ash and Iris.
  • And again with the Donamite/Clubsplosion arc, with all four episodes revealed at once, spoiling all the matchups and their outcomes:
    Ep. 731 The Unveiling Donamite! Scraggy VS Simisage!!
    Ep. 732 Quick Succession Donamite! Druddigon VS Bisharp!!
    Ep. 733 Fierce Fighting Donamite! Bisharp VS Emboar!!^note so we know Bisharp got through the last round and Druddigon must have lost
    Ep. 734 Decisive Battle Donamite! Throh vs Sawk!!^note only one of those Pokémon is owned by any of the rivals, so it's safe to say the others all lose.
  • Let's just say that the Japanese titles for the tournament arcs all have spoilers in the titles. The Junior Cup reveals Iris going to the semifinals, and the Vertress Conference reveals that Ash defeats Trip in the preliminaries, Cameron defeats Bianca, Ash defeats Stephan, and that Cameron's Riolu evolves, even though the last example happens in the episode before.
  • And releases are usually "Goodbye X!" If it's not definite, it's usually "Goodbye X?!"
  • The English dub is also not immune. The third episode, titled "Ash Catches a Pokemon!" is a primary example. Another egregious one is "Evolution By Fire!", where Tepig's evolution into Pignite is already leaked, even though it happens near the end of the episode.
  • Another really bad example was the English title "Tie One On!", which is centered on a League match that ends in a tie. Even worse in the Latin American dub. Since the pun was untranslatable, they simply translated the title as "Un empate!" ("A tie!"). To make matters even worse, unlike "tie", the word "empate" doesn't have multiple possible meanings.
  • This was surprisingly averted during the Alola League arc. The first part of the final four episodes where Ash fights Kukui does spoil that Ash will face him, but the title was not revealed until after Ash had won the League proper to keep Ash winning the League at all a surprise. Sadly for the creative department, the win wound up being spoiled in another way when screenshots of the episode were revealed showing Ash holding a trophy.
  • Subverted with the Japanese title of the final episode of the Kalos League: "Kalos League Victory! Ash's Ultimate Match!" Ash doesn’t win. The episode said "victory", it just didn’t say who would win.
• Many episodes of the Pretty Cure franchise usually mention any major events in the episode directly in the title, which could be anything from a Cure's debut to the evildoers the Cures are up against taking over their home world.
• Episode 98 of PriPara is titled "Playing Three Roles at Once is Hard~Nanon", spoiling the fact that Non herself is all three members of Triangle.
• Episode 5 of Punch Line is titled "Ito Dies". Doesn't matter that much though since the whole show is a huge Groundhog Day Loop plot and the death is obviously immediately undone.
• Sailor Moon did this with impunity. Magical Project S followed the model as well, although whether it was just another detail to parody the genre or an executive-mandated detail is hard to tell.
  • The various Sailor Moon dubs sometimes replaced the original Japanese titles with something that wasn't so spoilerific. For example, Episode 10, which introduced Sailor Mars, was called "Cursed Buses! The Fire Soldier Mars Appears" in the original and the VIZ dub, but "An Uncharmed Life" in the DiC English dub and "The Temple of Lovers" in both German and Dutch. Episode 13, translated by ADV as "Girl Power! The End of Jadeite", became "Fight to the Finish" (episode 10) in the DIC English dub.
  • Some other gems from the original Japanese are Episode 24 "Naru's Cry! Nephrite Dies for Love", 33 "The Last Sailor Soldier! Sailor Venus Appears", and most egregiously, 45 "Death of the Sailor Guardians! The Tragic Final Battle". The English dub changed these to "A Friend in Wolf's Clothing," "Sailor V Makes the Scene," and "Day of Destiny"^note which was episodes 45 and 46 chopped up with a meat cleaver with the remnants sewn together. They got better with this in the later seasons, although titles like "When the Galaxy Perishes! The Sailor Soldier's Final Battle" and "Disappearing Stars! The End of Uranus and Neptune" are still pretty obvious.
• Episode 53 of Saint Seiya is titled "That Man! Cassios Dies for Love". During the episode, Cassios indeed dies for love.
• Shimeji Simulation has several titles that are blatantly spoilery that talking about them is an immediate spoiler.
  • The manga's title, "Shimeji Simulation", is this. Wait for it... The title itself spoils the Tomato Surprise twist and The Reveal that everything about this world is a reality simulation.
  • Chapter 10 is titled "Dream". In that chapter Shijima travels through the Dream World by herself throughout this chapter.
  • Chapter 30 is titled "Change". It doesn't hide the fact that it blatantly spoils the manga's first Wham Episode where reality gets permanently changed by Sis almost at the end of the chapter. Nice way to spoil the plot with just one word!
  • Chapter 45 is titled "Reverse". That spoils the plot point where Shijima has to reverse the damage of the simulation which happens at the end.
  • Chapter 46 is titled "Genesis". Not only it blatantly spoils Majime's ascendance to godhood, but it also spoils the revelation that she becomes The Maker of her new world.
  • Chapter 47 is titled "Empty". If the chapter's Spoiler Cover is not an indication of what the chapter is all about, the chapter shows the exact fate of Shijima's fate as The Aloner.
• The Soul Eater anime averts this in the same way Gurren Lagann did, as the name of the final episode "The Word is Bravery" isn't revealed until just before the credits. But played straight with Medusa's Revival.
• Space Battleship Yamato and its dub Star Blazers are horrible about this. The Japanese titles are full-blown Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name! with spoiler included. Star Blazers originally had no titles, but fans created unofficial ones that can be found on fansites. These are also spoilers.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Averted: the title of Episode 8, "Later, Buddy", is not displayed until the end, although it would admittedly be hard to get the spoiler that Kamina dies from this one line. This is repeated in Super Robot Wars Z2, where the same title is only displayed at the end of the stage. Voiced.
  • Another example is episode 25: "I accept your dying wish!", which Simon says after Kittan dies. That was actually a brilliant Bait-and-Switch maneuver; in the previous episode, six of the minor characters died, so you'd be thinking Simon was talking about them when he said that.
• Transformers: ★Headmasters had an episode titled "Ultra Magnus Dies!!" The episode immediately after that was also the very specific "The Emperor of Destruction Vanishes on an Iceberg."
• Umineko: When They Cry's fifth chapter is called End of the Golden Witch. Just as bad (but only if you happen to know the definition of the term) is the seventh chapter's Requiem of the Golden Witch.
• YuYu Hakusho episodes: "Koenma of the Spirit Realm! A Trial Towards Resurrection", "Yusuke's Hard Battle! A Bruised and Bloody Counterattack", "Toguro Returns" (at least in the English dub), and "Genkai Falls! Settled After 50 Years!". What are they about?

Comic Books

• BIONICLE: Bionicle Ignition #11, Death of a Hero. With the cover focusing on Matoro carrying the Mask of Life, an artifact that's known to do bad things to its wearer, and with the previous issue (and tons of other foreshadowings) having confirmed that he will have to wear it, guess what happens to him. He dies.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Album 14 is named The End of Days. Guess what happens?
• Dark Times: The first arc is called The Path to Nowhere, which hints at the "Shaggy Dog" Story outcome of the heroes' efforts to rescue Bomo's enslaved loved ones.
• Deadpool: Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe. Also had a sequel series called Deadpool kills Deadpool. As one might guess, this is a subversion of sorts since every single character, other than The Watcher is an alternate universe version of Deadpool. Thus the readers weren't entirely sure if the title meant the Kills the Universe Deadpool would kill the mainstream 616 Deadpool, vice versa, or if the title referred to one of the thousands of other Deadpools killing another one.
• Marvel Universe: Marvel has launched titles called Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe and Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe. Eventually they parodied this trend by opening What If: Infinity with the title Rocket Raccoon Kills the Marvel Universe (the events in the titles do not happen in the book). And later there was a G-rated equivalent with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe.
• The Punisher:
  • There's an Alternate Continuity comic that asks the question "What would happen if the Castle's family had been caught in the middle of a Superhero battle instead of a gangland shooting?" It's called The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe.
  • In another, Frank goes back in time to kill Al Capone in the '20s, ensuring his family doesn't get shot in Central Park. It was All Just a Dream, but what else can you expect from a story titled "When Frank Sleeps"?
  • Marvel Universe vs. the Punisher is a subversion — while Frank does end up inadvertently causing a Zombie Apocalypse in a way that leaves him immune to it, he's not alone against Marvel characters, as there are other survivors.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): The comic had a downplayed example with the early story "The Bomb Bugs Me!" Sonic overhears Robotnik bragging about using "the bomb" to kill them all, assumes he's talking about the bomb, and leads the Freedom Fighters in a raid to steal and disarm it. When they do, it turns out the title has a clever double meaning: the bomb is for bug infestations.
• Spider-Man: A certain very famous issue had a totally spoilerish title. Well, the writers figured that out, so they stuck the title at the end of the issue instead. The title was, of course, "The Night Gwen Stacy Died".
• Starman: There's an issue of the Will Payton run where the title was placed at the end: "Your Mother Should Know".
• Superman:
  • A popular arc featured a warped and bizarre Metropolis in which the villainous Superman every night broke out and had to be brought back to jail by the resident superhero, Bizarro. The reason behind this sudden change and the entity responsible? The mystery was tightly kept during the original release, even originally calling it Superman: Arkham, but the fact that the paperback collection was titled Emperor Joker ruined the big surprise. Of course, the thing is, most fans of the storyline apparently thought it to be the best title for the TPB anyway.
  • Until the Wham Line of "I'm dying" in the first part, DC advertised The Final Days of Superman as Superman: Super League.
• Tintin: The end of the album Destination Moon ends on a cliffhanger as the astronauts have passed out and earth has lost communication with them. As mission control gets increasingly nervous, the Narrator asks the reader rhetorically (paraphrased): "Will Tintin and his friends survive this dangerous mission to make it to the moon? Find out in Explorers on the Moon!" Not that any reader really thought they wouldn't make it, of course.
• The Ultimates 3: While the solicitations for the issues tried to keep the death that kicked off the main plot a secret, the collected edition doesn't bother, rather bluntly revealing it with the subtitle "Who Killed the Scarlet Witch?"

Comic Strips

• Knights of the Dinner Table: An in-universe example shows up in one strip when BA has everyone but Dave leave the room. Once they're alone, BA tells Dave that his character has been subject to a Kill and Replace by a Doppelgänger and if he agrees to play along he'll get a nice in-game reward. The moment the other players are called back into the room, Brian instantly declares he's attacking Dave's character, then says that BA made a mistake by running a module called "The Doppeler Effect".

Fairy Tales

• Rumpelstiltskin is about a princess who has to guess the name of the mysterious little man who helps her. It's easy for the reader to figure out; his name is the title.

Fan Works

• Believe It Or Not has some titles that hint at the culprit.
  • "Green Thumb, Red Hand" strongly implies that the student with a gardening talent (the proverbial "green thumb") will become the culprit (and be caught "red-handed")
  • The second chapter is titled "Puella Magi Masuyo Tragico". The student who's a walking Shout-Out to Puella Magi Madoka Magica is the culprit.
• Boys und Sensha-dō! has Chapter 6 titled, "Accident Against Anzio". It doesn't disclose who has the accident (Miho, when getting shot by a Semovente), but it does strongly indicate that this will be no ordinary match.
  • The next chapter is titled "Miho's Heartache", which suggests that something worse than suffering bruised ribs happens to Miho-her mother disowns her, as she'd hinted at doing earlier.
• Chapter 4 of The End of Ends shows the planet Tamaran blowing up. The title? “The End of Tameran!”
• Friendship Is Magical Girls does this in a rather subtle way. The fic itself is in English, but the author is fluent in Japanese; the chapter titles are written in kanji and only spoil you if you translate the title, meaning the spoiler is more of a Bilingual Bonus.
• In Girls und Panzer: Hope Dies, Chapter 12 is titled "Unrequited Love". It turns out to be the reason why Miho's killer, who'd confessed at the end of the previous chapter, had killed her.
• How to write a TSS story?: The title of the story-within-a-story "Losing a Beloved" heavily implies that someone close to Victor and Anita will die. While that does happen in the story itself, it's not at all who the readers expect it to be. It ends in the Tragic Stillbirth of their daughter.
• The Last Queen of Greenwood: Caradel marries Thranduil and becomes his queen. It helps that the marriage is not the whole plot.
• Njal Gets Burned. Granted, the original is often titled "The Saga of Burned Njal."
• In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Chapter 94 ("A Redux, the Jedi Shall Have") blatantly gives away the return of the Jedi and Force (which were pseudo-hidden in Insistent Terminology previously, being called "Current Channelers" and "the Current").
• Downplayed with Pokémon Strangled Red and its in-universe hacked game of the same name. The title makes it obvious that someone gets strangled, but never says who.
• Chapter 7 of pony.exe is entitled "POSSCapture.exe". This is the name of the application Twilight runs from inside the computer.
• Quarter-Life: Halfway To Destruction: CHAPTER TWO: THEY REVOCER TEH ISOTROPE BUT THEY DON'T. The heroes find and confront the bad guy, but the isotope hits "quarter-life" in the middle of their encounter.
• Return to Hinamizawa Part III, Chapter 15 ends with the last three survivors trying to get to safety. The next chapter is titled "And Then There Were None". Mind you, knowing the work it's based on, this is close to Foregone Conclusion territory.
• A Sad Story: The title gives away how the story plays out, with Harry ultimately dying after being severely beaten by Uncle Vernon.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Chapter 227 is called "Where Raptors Dare", which — if you're familiar with the original — gives a clue about a twist involving The Mole.
• Averted in Sonic Generations: Friendship Is Timeless : Chapter 13 has a ? in place of Trixie's name in the title, hiding her presence in the chapter.
• Episode 77 of Sonic X: Dark Chaos is titled "Tails's Work". If you know that the original episode's Japanese title was "Cosmo's Work" and that Cosmo dies in that episode...
• Twilight's List gives us chapter three, "Rainbow Says Yes", and the final chapter prior to the epilogue, "Twilight Says Yes".

Films — Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: We don't officially get that title until the end of the movie.
• The Chinese title for Coraline is "Ghost Mom". The Other Mother is not exactly a ghost, but still.
• Finding Nemo: Nemo is indeed eventually found. The title doesn't work quite the same for Finding Dory though, as it's more of a legacy title than anything else.
• How to Train Your Dragon starts off being about a village that battles dragons. One of the inhabitants, Hiccup, finds the most fearsome kind of dragon, and he trains that dragon.
• Oliver & Company: The titular character doesn't get his name until two-thirds of the way through the movie.
• The Animaniacs movie Wakko's Wish has multiple characters race to touch the wishing star first. Wakko is the winner.

Films — Live-Action

• Subverted in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. The great question of the plot is who the mysterious killer in the hotel could possibly be. Could it perhaps be the evil Swami, played by Boris Karloff? Turns out, it's... not Boris Karloff's character at all. It's the hotel manager.
• The Hungarian release of Alien³ gives away the ending by naming the film The Final Solution: Death due to a somewhat forced pre-2010s tradition of putting the word "Death" into every Alien title, as if that were the aliens' name.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Subverted in that Robert Ford wasn't a coward and Jesse James wasn't the heroic figure, nor was he "assassinated".
• The film Blood Red Sky is about a single mother with a rare medical condition travelling to the US for treatment when her plane is hijacked. The twist comes at the end of the first act; as hinted by the title, she's a vampire.
• Brian De Palma's Body Double gives away the fact that the woman the protagonist was peeping on was not the real Gloria, but a porn actress body double.
• The tagline for The Boy Who Could Fly alludes to an amazing secret shared between the main character and the eponymous boy, which is his ability to fly.
• The sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger is titled Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Seems likely that the Winter Soldier will be showing up and therefore Bucky didn't die. Which is only a spoiler if you know that Bucky is the Winter Soldier... Subverted in that it was done intentionally to distract from the real twist that SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA since the very beginning.
• The Italian title of The Crazies (1973) and its remake is La Città Verrà Distrutta All'Alba meaning The Town Will Be Destroyed at Dawn.
• One of the segments of Creepshow is called "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", just in case you were in danger of getting attached to ol' Jordy.
• Japanese film The Crucified Lovers — in the English-language market title. It's set in 18th-century Japan where adultery was a capital crime, and at the end, the lovers are in fact crucified. Averted with the Japanese title, A Story from Chikamatsu ("Chikamatsu" being the name of the original playwright).
• Allegedly, one Asian dub of The Crying Game had a title that meant Oh No, My Girlfriend Has a Penis!
• The Deadly Mantis, like 90% of the 1950s Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever films, spends the first 20 minutes or so with mysterious disappearances and goings-on in the Arctic. Or rather they would be mysterious if the name of the film didn't give the monster away before it even started. To be fair, the monster is pretty much the big selling point of these kinds of movies. People wouldn't throng to see a movie called "Vague Imminent Threat That May Destroy the World and May Involve Monsters and/or Aliens!"
• Dead Man's Letters: The title spoils the reveal that Prof. Larsen's letters to his son are being read posthumously.
• Averted with Deep Rising, which was originally shopped around Hollywood under the script title Tentacles. Thanks to the change, the "worms" being appendages of a larger creature was obscured.
• The Devil's Advocate: In the actual film it is treated as a shocking reveal that Al Pacino's character is the Devil himself. But the title as well as a theatrical poster with some noticeable occult themes gives away the twist well in advance.
• Eating Raoul plays with this trope. Yes, the film has a character named Raoul who gets eaten, and it's an important plot point, but it's not the ending.
• The ending to Eddie and the Cruisers reveals that Eddie, who was thought to have died, turns out to still be alive; He's Just Hiding. The title of the much-delayed sequel: Eddie Lives!. Though it's hard to see how there could be a sequel otherwise.
  Agony Booth: Is it even possible in movies for someone whose body was never found to actually be dead?
• End of Watch is named after a police term for when a police officer dies on duty.
• A review for The Flight of the Phoenix (2004) preemptively apologized for spoilers, then excused it by pointing out "it's called 'Flight of the Phoenix,' not 'They Crashed in the Desert and Died.'"
• The Flying Deuces: The movie is called The Flying Deuces, and Laurel and Hardy are shown in an airplane and in pilot gear, they don't fly anywhere until the madcap chase that forms the climax of the movie.
• Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare: Yes, Freddy Krueger does die for real. It is not however the final Nightmare.
• Francis Ford Coppola's 2020 recut of The Godfather: Part III received the title The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.
• For The Green Goblin's Last Stand, this trope was defied by using the second part of the storyline's title as opposed to the first part's very spoiler-filled "The Night Gwen Stacy Died".
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle tells you exactly what will happen at the end: Harold and Kumar will indeed go to White Castle.
• Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday ends with Jason going to Hell at the end. Ironically, he's dragged down there by the guy above. Also not the last Friday the 13th film.
• John Dies at the End plays the trope the same way as in the book, which is to say it both inverts and subverts it. He dies at the beginning, but gets better. See Literature.
• Johnny English Reborn. He is "reborn" at the end.
• The 1969 film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun didn't have a spoiler title: it's established fairly on that a journey to the far side of the Sun is involved. What's discovered there, however, wouldn't have come as a suprise to North American audiences, where it had been distributed under the title Doppelganger.
• Lone Survivor starring Mark Wahlberg, telling the story of Operation Red Wings. There is only a single survivor, Mark Wahlberg.
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Guess who dies at the end. Liberty Valance. Subverted in that the main protagonist (Jimmy Stewart) wasn't the man who shot Liberty Valance. To be fair, they only said 'shot', not 'killed'.
• Double-subverted in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. The movie title certainly points to a Downer Ending but then along comes Greg reassuring the audience twice that Rachel is going to live. But this is not what happens ultimately.
• The UK video release of The Mighty Ducks was named The Mighty Ducks Are The Champions. The theatrical release was the less spoiler-heavy Champions.
• Played with on the MST3K showing of It Conquered the World — Tom Servo riffs over the title "Hey, they're giving away the ending!" But it didn't conquer the world. Also played with in another Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, The Thing That Couldn't Die. It dies.
• The Swedish title for The Night of the Hunter gives away where the money is hidden: Trasdockan, meaning "ragdoll".
• Penn & Teller Get Killed. Well, yeah. Lampshaded by Penn Jilette. Teller informs him that they screwed up a sequel, to Penn's realization and dismay.
• The Completely Different Title of the original Planet of the Apes in Portugal kinda qualifies: O Homem que Veio do Futuro, "The Man Who Came From the Future". Sure, the only Time Travel is forwards... but it in some way qualifies to him returning to what was Earth All Along. Similarly, the Portuguese title of Vertigo, A Mulher Que Viveu Duas Vezes ("The Woman Who Lived Twice") also counts, depending on how you interpret it.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Guess what guys? Those Two Guys get killed! Mind you, that's only a, what, Four hundred year old spoiler? This is taken one step further than is immediately obvious. If you accept the reading that the plot occurs in a time loop or sort of endless metatextual hell that the characters exist in means they're already dead at the start in a certain sense.
• The French title of The Shawshank Redemption is Les Évadés, which means "Those Who Escaped" roughly, so not only does it give away the twist that Andy escapes the prison but also that Red flouted his parole. The Finnish title for the movie is Rita Hayworth — avain pakoon, which translates to "Rita Hayworth — The Key to an Escape". So the title doesn't just spoil Andy escaping, it also hints at how he manages to do it.
• They Saved Hitler's Brain: This 1969 film was a reworking of a 1950s unfinished film called Mad Men of Mandoras. They actually recycled all of the footage of that movie and spliced it with newly shot footage that looked oddly modern for a movie that was set in the Eisenhower era of the 1950s. In the original film, the fact that they saved Hitler's brain was supposed to be a surprise revealed near the end when the protagonists discover the bad guys hang out. It is hinted earlier in the film that some suspect that Hitler may still be alive but no one knows exactly how.
• Thor: Ragnarok: the humorous prophecy of the fall of Asgard by Surtur's hand that seems like just a joke in the cold open would've worked a lot better if the movie weren't called "Ragnarok."
• The Virgin Suicides: Subverted by Lux! But we aren't saying how.
• The Wicker Man. What's a wicker man? Well, it's a big wicker statue that the ancient Romans claimed that the druids used to sacrifice people by sticking them inside and burning them. The film is set on a remote Scottish island that practices Neo-Paganism, in the lead-up to a big May Day festival, so obviously the islanders must be plotting a Human Sacrifice using one. The question is who the intended victim is going to be.
• Yor: The Hunter from the Future's alleged "twist" is that this primitive world is not the past but a post-apocalyptic future. Now read the title again.

Literature

• 1Q84: The last chapter of Book 3 names the perspective as being "Tengo and Aomame", revealing that the main characters managed to reunite after twenty years of being a part.
• The Adventures of Pinocchio humorously subverts the spoiler potential of its "In Which a Trope Is Described" chapter titles with a chapter entitled, "In Which Pinocchio Finds in the Body of the Dogfish... Whom Does He Find? Read This Chapter and You Will Know, My Children."
• Brian Aldiss' first Science Fiction novel was published in the UK under his title, Non-stop. Unfortunately, his US publisher didn't think this was exciting enough, so they renamed it Starship. This is a spoiler because, until the big reveal, the viewpoint characters have no idea that they're living in a starship.
• Isaac Asimov's The Bicentennial Man: Thanks to the title, we know that Andrew becomes a man and lives to be 200 years old.
• The Baby-Sitters Club:
  • In the book where Stacey's parents divorced, most of the plot centered around her choosing whether to stay in New York City with her father or move back to Stoneybrook with her mother. The book was called Welcome Back, Stacey.
  • In another book, Jessi is asked to participate in a synchronized swimming competition. The title of the book is Jessi's Gold Medal.
  • In a book, Stacey is excited to spend a week with her best friend from New York, Laine. By the title Stacey's Ex-Best Friend, you can tell how much they will get along and in fact, by the end of the book, they are no longer friends.
• A Certain Magical Index: New Testament Volume 10 is a Boss Rush in novel form, with each chapter representing a particular fight. The titles of the chapters hint at the enemies being fought, with some being more obvious than others. “The One who Bears White and Black Wings and Opposes the World” doesn't just reveal that Accelerator is the enemy, but also that he's actually sided with Touma and Othinus (thus opposing the rest of the world). The final chapter subverts this, having only question marks in place of the hint.
• Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: Doubling as a Late-Arrival Spoiler, if you see the title Viper's Daughter before reading Outcast, you can probably guess it refers to Renn.
• The titles of the last two Codex Alera books are massive spoilers once you figure out the pattern. Namely, the ranks in the titles all refer to Tavi. It's probably for the best that Jim Butcher didn't go with his original name for the first book, or it would have been even more obvious.
• The Cuckoo's Calling: Cuckoo chicks kill their adoptive siblings by pushing them out of the nest; similarly, John Bristow pushes both of his siblings to their deaths.
• Georg Büchner's Dantons Tod (Danton's Death). As history dictates, Danton gets beheaded in the end.
• Discworld: The title of Monstrous Regiment, if you know anything about sixteenth-century history, in particular, John Knox's misogynistic Protestant tract The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
• The title of the Encyclopedia Brown mystery "The Case of the Happy Nephew" gives away the fact that the suspect's young nephew (who's otherwise a very minor character in the story) is a vital clue, as is the fact that he's happy. Encylopedia figures out that the suspect's alibi is a lie when he notices the nephew happily smiling while walking barefoot on the hood of his car, proving that he wasn't on a long car trip when the crime took place (if he were, the hood of his car would still be hot, and his nephew would have burned his feet).
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone embodies this trope. The three heroes discover that a magical artifact, whose nature remains unclear, is hidden in the school... Hm, could that be that philosopher's stone mentioned in the title? Invented by that guy Flamel mentioned at the beginning of the book? In France, the character of Nicolas Flamel is better known than in Anglo-Saxon countries, so the title was changed to "Harry Potter at the Wizardry School" to avoid a complete giveaway of the story's plot.
• The third book of His Dark Materials has a seemingly spoilery chapter title, so if you read the table of contents before reading, you might be a little dismayed by the chapter title "Lyra and her Death". Turns out it's just that Lyra meets a "personification of her eventual death", which every living being has.
• The early chapters of The Invisible Man don't actually reveal the mysterious bandaged stranger's condition until his self-inflicted Dramatic Unmask, but the reader is only surprised if they've forgotten which book they're reading.
• John Dies at the End. It's actually a subversion and inversion because John dies in the beginning and becomes Dave's Spirit Advisor, although Dave eventually helps John's spirit return to his body, bringing him back to life; Dave is actually the protagonist who dies at the end. Or, to be more precise, he dies closer to the middle and only realizes he's dead at the end. Also, Dave's love interest Amy dies at the end, except it turns out that the Amy that Dave saw die was a clone, and the real Amy is at Dave's house, sobbing over Dave's corpse. It's complicated.
• Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase. Bet you can't guess the plot of that one.
• Apparently, J. R. R. Tolkien disapproved of the title under which the third The Lord of the Rings book was published for this reason, and wanted to call it The War of the Ring instead of The Return of the King.
• In a 1901 novella by E. M. Forster, all humans left on Earth live in a worldwide underground complex, completely dependent on a great automatic mechanism that provides for all their needs. The story is called The Machine Stops. Guess what…
• Subverted in Moby-Dick. One of the chapters is titled "Queequeg in his Coffin", so naturally you assume he dies, especially if you casually see the title in the table of contents. He doesn't. The chapter is literally about him trying on a coffin he intends to be buried in.
• Possibly the most extreme example of all time is The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who Was Born In Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety For Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife [Whereof Once To Her Own Brother], Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon In Virginia, At Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.
• My Brother Sam is Dead, a story in which Sam, the narrator's brother, dies on the final page.
• Njal's Saga is frequently titled "The Saga of Burned Njal."
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Working Title for the first book was The Son of the Sea God; however, since we don't actually learn who Percy's father is until about a third of the way through the story, Rick Riordan's students suggested that he change it.
• Ayn Rand thought her original working title for Atlas Shrugged, The Strike, was this, so she ended up using Atlas Shrugged instead.^note The French translation uses the working title. The title is about the people who run stuff like the banks, railroad companies, etc., all going on strike.
• Shatterbelt by Colin Thiele is the story of a teenage girl named Tracy who starts Dreaming of Things to Come, specifically what appears to be a terrorist bombing connected to a controversial tourist mine. The final chapter reveals that she was actually seeing the result of an earthquake, but it's easy to see the twist coming if you're aware that shatterbelt is a (slightly obscure) term for a string of fault lines. And if you're not, it's explained in a Chekhov's Lecture early in the book. It also doesn't help that the sequel is called Aftershock!
• Sherlock Holmes: A beautiful subversion is the chapter title "The Trapping of Birdy Edwards" in The Valley of Fear. The title is accurate... but not in the way you assumed.
• Star Wars Legends: Galaxy of Fear does this constantly, and the covers and blurbs get in on it, even though in the text the spoiler in question is typically just hinted and nudged at rather than outright spoiled. Pretty much the only one that doesn't spoil anything right there is Army of Terror.
• The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez is actually titled "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time".
• Sweet Valley High:
  • One book has Elizabeth rejecting a would-be boyfriend who gets his revenge by going around telling Elizabeth's friends about all the embarrassing things Elizabeth "told" him about them. Jessica is sure Elizabeth wouldn't have told these secrets, but how could he have known them otherwise? It might have been quite the mystery, had the book not been titled The Stolen Diary.
  • Another book had Lila trying to get her divorced parents back together. Its title: The Wedding.
• There is a book called They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera. It delivers what it promises (but there's still a twist in how and why they die).
• Ken Follet's thriller The Third Twin: at the beginning of the novel there are just two twins. But as you read the title, you know that a third one will soon show up. Actually, an aversion as the big twist are the fourth through the twentieth twin.
• The sequel to Valhalla is called Ragnarök. While this seems a logical progression, it's possible to tell who in the novel is based on who in the myth, so anyone who knows the story of Ragnarök in Norse Mythology will know some major spoilers for the novel.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Space Marine Battles novel Fall of Damnos gives away the fact that the Ultramarines will not succeed in their defense of the eponymous planet right in its title.
• Warrior Cats has several. In part, this is due to the fact that once a character ascends to a high rank, their name gets changed, so when books are titled after characters, this leads to spoilers.
  • Firestar's Quest spoils the fact that that character becomes leader, ditto for Mistystar's Omen and Bramblestar's Storm.
  • SkyClan's Destiny, a direct sequel to the first Super Edition, spoils the existence of SkyClan, the lost Clan Firestar sets out to rebuild in the previous book. The same thing is spoiled by the manga series SkyClan and the Stranger.
  • The manga series Tigerstar and Sasha spoils both that a certain cat from the original series becomes a leader, and who they have kits with. The former is a twist in the first series, and the latter is a twist in the second.
• Also subverted in The Gathering Storm, book 12 of The Wheel of Time with a chapter entitled "The Death of Tuon". It's about Tuon, the Daughter of the Nine Moons, becoming Empress Fortuona.
• The Virgin Widow: This Romance Novel about the courtship of Anne Neville and her second husband, the future Richard III, lets the reader know that Anne wasn't terribly close to her first husband.

Live-Action TV

• Episodes two and three of Angie Tribeca are named "The Wedding Planner Did It" and "The Famous Ventriloquist Did It". No bonus points for guessing who did it.
• Arrested Development did this subtly with the episode "Justice Is Blind". Michael is dating a blind prosecutor in charge of his father's case. It's later revealed that she's only faking blindness, but her seeing-eye dog Justice actually is blind.
• Breaking Bad had "Ozymandias" in the final season. There was also a promo with Bryan Cranston reading the poem before the final season hit. Anyone wondering "where does everything REALLY get bad for Walter White" can make a pretty good guess.
• The German episode titles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer tend to give away the entire episode's plot and/or ending. Some of the most egregious examples are: "Gingerbread" is renamed "Hansel and Gretel"; "The Body" becomes "Death of a mother"; "Seeing Red" is "Warren's revenge".
• In Castle, "Hell Hath No Fury": the "woman scorned" is obviously the dead man's wife, and the ending comes as no surprise.
• If you don't speak Korean and are interested in watching Dae Jang Geum, don't look up what "dae" means. Also, don't go to Wikipedia and find out who Jang Geum was. Also, don't read any descriptions of the series. The real historical event that happens at the end is an incredible plot twist. At least it would be, if the title didn't tell you what was going to happen so that you more or less spend the 50+ episodes of the series just waiting for it, ruining all the tension and drama that leads up to it.
• Doctor Who:
  • This is a famous problem, particularly for Dalek or Cyberman episodes, in both the old and new series. It was a running gag amongst fans of the old series that a serial would be called "Noun of the Daleks", and the Episode One Cliffhanger would be... a Dalek!:
    • Averted in early Dalek serials — "The Daleks", "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", and "The Daleks' Master Plan" — as all of these serial names are names applied retrospectively to the stories and at the time the convention was to title each episode individually. Thus, you don't expect Daleks at the Episode 1 cliffhanger while watching "The Dead Planet", "World's End" or "The Nightmare Begins". You're stuffed if you're watching them on DVD or video or online, though, which of course you are, being that you are living in the future. And then there's "The Chase" and "Mission to the Unknown", Dalek stories which don't have "Daleks" in the title.
    • There's a Shaky P.O.V. Cam monster that's obscured from us, it's called a "Metaltron" by the cast, there's a Cyberman mask shown as a Red Herring, but the title is "Dalek". Hmm. I wonder what that could be about?
    • One Series 5 episode takes this even further: it's called "Victory of the Daleks". Wonder who wins that one.
  • Subversion: The episode "The Death of Dr. Who". Of course, it aired as the fifth part of a six-episode serial in 1965, and they're still making the show... and the character is still alive, not that his name is Dr. Who anyway.
  • Averted with the serial "The Invasion", which was originally to be named "Return of the Cybermen", but was retitled to avoid spoilers since they do not appear until halfway through the eight-episode serial (incidentally, the Working Title would later be reused for a Fourth Doctor story before being renamed again to "Revenge of the Cybermen", which averts this trope by showing the Cybermen well before the cliffhanger of part one).
  • A similar aversion: Part One of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" was simply titled "Invasion", so as to conceal what exactly was invading. This ended up birthing a popular but ultimately debunked urban legend among fans, which claimed that the episode was wiped by the BBC (the only one from that story to meet such a fate during the network's routine archive purges at the time) because it got mixed up with the earlier serial "The Invasion".
  • Partially averted with "Robot", which was going to be called "The Giant Robot" in development but this was changed. While the presence of a robot is carefully concealed to us with a Shaky P.O.V. Cam shot, and the Episode 1 cliffhanger is The Reveal that the thing in the lab is — a robot!!!, the fact that the robot grows giant and terrorises UNIT in the Episode 3 cliffhanger is properly concealed by the new title. The Target novelization by Terrance Dicks uses the original title.
  • The two-part serial scripted as "The Deadly Experiments" used the revelation that the Sontarans were behind the experiments as the only cliffhanger. Script editor Robert Holmes was very unhappy to learn at a late stage that it had been retitled "The Sontaran Experiment" but the cliffhanger left intact. The new series did it again with "The Sontaran Stratagem", which is shot so that no actual Sontarans are shown for a good while.
  • The novelization of "Terror of the Zygons" gives away a fact about their Skarasen creature. The title of the novelization is Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster.
  • A really bad case is "The Android Invasion", where the title gives away something that in-story is meant to be a mystery all the way up to the cliffhanger of the second episode.
  • There's a Locked Room Mystery entitled "The Robots of Death". The robots did it. (Although the actual mystery of the story quickly turns into which of the human characters is reprogramming the robots to kill.)
  • Apparently the writers managed to catch onto this with the Cybermen on at least one occasion, as their reintroductory serial in Peter Davison's tenure (after a seven-year absence) was purposefully not titled "X of the Cybermen" or any variation on "Silver" — it was instead called "Earthshock".
  • "Rise of the Cybermen". The cybers are only hinted at until the very last scene of the episode, but the title gives their presence away right from the beginning.
  • "The Visitation" surreptitiously gives away the ending. The 1669 Rebuilding Act ordered the construction of the Great Fire of London Monument, "the better to preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation".
  • Interesting variation: The title of "The Stolen Earth" gives away a big spoiler^note Although the titular planet theft does happen during the teaser, prior to the opening titles, so the producers kept the title a secret until only a few weeks before the episode aired. Of course, that didn't stop Radio Times from completely spoiling its villain. At least "Daleks" wasn't in the title this time...
  • "The Wedding of River Song". According to Steven Moffat, the wedding takes place after the episode, but that doesn't make it any less of a spoiler.
  • "The Angels Take Manhattan". This episode also contains an in-universe example: when the Doctor reads the chapter titles in the Melody Malone book and realizes from "Amelia's Last Farewell" that Amy is going to have to say goodbye to somebody.
  • The French titles for the new series are quite bad, although for some reason quite a few of them leave out the spoileriffic mentions of Daleks and Cybermen. Yet the series two finale was named "Farewell Rose", "The End of Time, Part One" "Return of the Master", "The End of Time, Part Two" "Return of the Time Lords", etc. There are a lot more examples of other titles that spoil what is supposed to come as a surprise in an episode.
  • "The Girl Who Died": Especially egregious because, apart from companion Clara, the titular "Girl" is the only major female character in the episode.
  • The final Doctor Who comic published by IDW lampshades the whole mess when the Eleventh Doctor Real-World Episode ends up in the "real" world where he's a fictional character.
    Eleventh Doctor: And how can parts of my life have titles!? And if I'd known some of these were called things like "The Android Invasion" it would have saved a lot of bother!
• Donkey Hodie:
  • "Bye Bye, Book" is about Duck Duck not wanting to give away her book of facts to other people because she cherishes it. By the end of the episode, she gives it to Purple Panda.
  • The episode "Donkey's Bad Day" is about Donkey trying to have a perfect day. The title makes it clear what's going to happen to her. Downplayed with the book adaptation, which is instead titled "Donkey's Awesome, Very Good, Extra Fun Day".
  • The title of "Donkey and Panda Cheer Up" spoils that at the end of the episode, Donkey Hodie gets upset when she learns she lost a contest and needs Panda's help to feel better again.
• Enemy at the Door has an episode titled "From a View to a Death", in which an escaped prisoner is hunted down by the Germans. It's a foregone conclusion that there's going to be a death; recognising the phrase as a reference to fox-hunting makes it clear whose.
• Friends had several episodes titled "The One Where X Dies", with X usually referring to a person and once a recliner. Granted, the death usually occurred fairly early in the episode. Averted in "The One Where Rachel Tells Ross", which is sometimes listed as "The One Where Rachel Tells..." to avoid spoiling things since the identity of the person she has to tell was The Reveal at the end of the previous episode.
• iCarly:
  • In "iGo Nuclear", for a Green week school assignment, Carly eventually gets the help of a guy who builds what is eventually revealed at the end to be a mini nuclear reactor.
  • In "iMeet the First Lady", the gang tries to contact Carly's father in a secret location when the government tells them they know about their contact. After a good part of the episode of them fearing the worst of what could happen to them, the agents bring them to Carly's home to visit with then-first lady Michelle Obama, who saw their show and commends them for supporting a family member in the military.
• Austrian cop-and-dog show Inspector Rex wrote out the human partner, Moser, in an episode entitled "Moser's Death".
• Every It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a straightforward episode title like "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom" and "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire" that often contradicts the last line of dialogue before the Title Card. It's done very deliberately and very hilariously.
• Jessie: The second-to-last episode of Season 2 is called "Break-Up and Shape-Up". Jessie and Tony break up in the end.
• The Joe Schmo Show was a parody of reality shows in which everyone except the chosen schmoes were actors performing from a script. The promo for the sixth episode of Joe Schmo 2 promises that "We've laughed with them, cried with them and one of them is going to die." The episode is titled "Requiem for a Frog," purposely giving away that it's Bryce's pet frog, Everett, which "dies" in that episode.
• No points for guessing what happens at the end of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger episode "Burai Dies..." and while this happened two episodes after "Burai's Departure of Death", he still had time left to live at that point while his time ran out when he died. Not to mention that this was also one episode after Blaze, Burai!!.
• Given the sheer number of episodes in the Law & Order franchise, it was bound to happen on occasion.
  • One episode of the original series is called "Charm City". Guess where the investigation leads?
    • "Harvest" is an apparently simple case where a woman was shot in a robbery gone bad, but the title, combined with the fact that her organs were donated after death, suggests that the donation itself will come into play somehow.
    • The title of "Doped" kind of spoils The Reveal that an apparent drunk driver was actually drugged, since that's not usually a term associated with alcohol intoxication.
  • One episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has detectives investigating a woman framed for murder. They discover she was working on a project called Tuxedo Hill, and wonder if it was connected. The fact that the episode is called "Tuxedo Hill" suggests the answer.
    • In "Astoria Helen", detectives find there are two people who could have leaked sensitive information from an armored car company. One is a male guard, the other a female dispatcher named Helen. It's not quite as clean as they thought, but she does end up being the one with the connection to the case.
    • A woman is murdered in the style of a serial killer who was executed six months previously, even copying a signature that was never made public. Since the episode is called "Disciple", it's not hard to figure out how that could happen.
    • The title of "Three-In-One" suggests how some of the pieces of a particularly bizarre case fit together, which the detectives spend the first half of the episode trying to figure out.
  • In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit the Title of Episode 11 of Season 5 is "Escape". In Germany the title is "Geraubte Jahre" meaning "Stolen Years".
    • "Stranger" teeters right on the edge of this. It could be a reference to a kidnapped child being virtually a stranger after being gone so long, but it's also a hint that things may not be what they seem.
    • In the episode "The Third Guy", two boys are accused of murder, but they insist it was just a robbery. Guess what the missing piece turns out to be?
    • "Forgiving Rollins" doesn't give away any specific details but, it does suggest that the eponymous detective has a connection to the case; combine the title with the few crumbs that had been dropped in earlier episodes (something bad happened to Rollins on the job, and it involved a Deputy Chief being "out of line"), and once the first few pieces of the episode's case are in place, it's not hard to figure out the rest of it.
    • "Making A Rapist": Well, we know this guy was just exonerated after spending years in prison for a rape he didn't commit...
    • "Florida" is a subversion, especially given that it's the sequel to an episode called "Philadelphia" that did occur in that episode's eponymous city. But in this episode, it turns out that Florida is a Red Herring; the witness who gave them the evidence was in the early stages of dementia, and was recalling a sign referring to Florida.
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show had an episode entitled "Feeb", which nobody says until the very end.
• Merlin had an episode where Merlin rescues a Druid girl from execution and falls in love with her. At the end of the episode, she is seemingly Killed Off for Real... Except the episode was called "The Lady of the Lake". Guess who she turns out to be?
• One episode of Midsomer Murders is called "The Axeman Cometh" and is about a murderer killing members of an aging rock band. The killer is the band's guitarist, Jack McKinley AKA Axeman.
• The Noddy Shop's final episode is called "Closing Up Shop". In that episode, NODDY's closes, and all the toys are sold off. However, there's a plot twist where Noah decides to keep the shop open after realizing the terrible mistake he made in closing it.
• One episode of NUMB3RS was entitled "The Fifth Man". At the beginning of the episode, Charlie's analysis of a robbery crew indicates a four-man team. When the team arrives to stop the robbery, guess what — or rather, who — they get surprised by?
• The last episode of The Outer Limits was about a group of plane crash survivors who wind up on an alien space probe — without either the characters or the audience realizing it — and spend about half the story trying to figure out where they are. The episode's title? "The Probe".
• Quite a few episodes of Seconds from Disaster have titles that are this due to being literal descriptions of the incident; episodes called, for example, "Collision on the Runway" or "Crash Of The Concorde" don't leave a lot of ambiguity about the ultimate outcome of the situation. Justified in that many of these are famous disasters anyway, and in that the show's plots are generally not about what happened but why it happened.
• Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Immunity Syndrome" was translated to French as "Amobea".
• The page quote at the top is of the example that happens in the Made-for-TV Movie version of the Superman Broadway musical, It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman!
• You can sometimes figure out pretty major plot twists in Supernatural if you look at the title of the episode.
  • For instance, in "Good God, Y'All", the Big Bad is the horseman War. Knowing the song that the title comes from pretty much gives that away.
  • Another example would be "The Song Remains the Same". In the end, everything goes back to the way it was. All that the Winchesters have changed in the past goes back to how it was originally.
  • The season 4 finale is an obvious example. It has the brothers trying to prevent Lucifer from escaping his jail. The title is "Lucifer Rising".
  • A number of season one episodes were named after what the Monster of the Week turned out to be. For instance, "Wendigo", "Bloody Mary", and "Hook Man".
• One episode of Ted Lasso has a major subplot revolving around mercurial footballer Zava, and who he's going to sign for. Chelsea are the frontrunners, and at the end of the episode they schedule a press conference to announce his arrival. The episode is titled "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea". Take a wild guess what happens at the press conference. Downplayed, as it's easy to guess that he won't be signing for Chelsea as soon as Rupert Mannion gets involved, and who he actually signs for is the real spoiler./
• The Twilight Zone: The title of "Dreams for Sale" makes it obvious that the idyllic country picnic experienced by Jenny is not real.
• The Young and the Restless: Every single episode title is just an awkward summary of the episode's plot.

Music

• Downplayed with Jhariah's The Great Tale of How I Ruined It All, which does not have a happy ending. However, the album's pacing and song titles make it ambiguous as to exactly what he did until the final track.

Music (Soundtrack Albums)

By Creator:

• John Williams is notorious for doing this:
  • His soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban contains a whopping four — Lupin's Transformation, The Werewolf Scene, Saving Buckbeak, and Forward to Time Past — that basically spell out what happens during the film's climax. One wonders if the reason Pettigrew's theme wasn't included on the soundtrack was to preserve the only major twist the movie had left.
  • The worst example may well be Presumed Innocent, where the penultimate track is called "Barbara's Confession". That's right, he gives away who the murderer is.
  • The soundtrack to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released two weeks before the movie itself came out. Anybody who picked it up got treated to tracks called "Qui-Gon's Noble End" and "The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon's Funeral". Oops.

By Work:

• Ace Attorney:
  • Leitmotifs will typically have the associated character's name in the title; as the majority of killers since the second game have their own themes, it's a safe bet that anyone without a theme is innocent.
  • For a more specific example, in Spirit of Justice the track title "Dhurke ~ A Dragon Never Yields" does not mention the associated character's last name Sahdmadhi, to avoid spoiling his relation to his son.
• While the Brokedown Palace soundtrack album is almost all songs, there's a 6:55 suite from David Newman's score made up of two tracks — "The Arrest/Darlene Goes Home".
• Cutthroat Island's soundtrack titles sum up the whole movie. Especially the expanded version particularly "Morgan and Shaw Jump the Cliff/The Big Jump" followed by "Shaw Captured", and the lengthy "The Battle/To Dawg's Ship/Morgan Battles Dawg/Dawg's Demise/The Triumph".
• The soundtrack for Godzilla (2014) has basically a 20 sentence summation of the plot. Closing with "Godzilla's Victory" and "Back Into The Ocean".
• Moana: The soundtrack lists "Tala's Deathbed", "Tala Returns", "Sails to Te Fiti", "Te Fiti Restored", "Navigating Home" and "The Return to Voyaging"... basically summarizing key plot points and conclusion of the movie.
• The soundtrack for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED contains the track "Flay's Death".
• The audio CD for The Sixth Sense spoils the ending with the final song title "Malcolm Is Dead" (though in their defense, the surprise ending is already pretty well known).
• The soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie also mainly consists of songs, but does include a few pieces of the score by Vince DiCola... The first of these is titled "Death Of Optimus Prime".
• TRON: Legacy's soundtrack (by Daft Punk) spoils the movie with the song "Flynn Lives". Double Subversion in that case: on the one hand, it's a reference to the "Flynn Lives" Alternate Reality Game, but on the other, one Flynn "lives," the other is presumed dead...
• Turning Red has the tracks "Tyler's Deal", "Keeping the Panda", "I'm Keeping It", "Unleashing the Panda", "Stadium Ritual", "Pandas Unite/Nobody Like U (Reprise)", and "The Real Ming". All of which give a general idea of what happens during the second half of the film.
• The soundtrack for X-Men: The Last Stand contains the dual pieces of "Farewell to X" and "The Funeral", hinting at Professor Xavier's Comic Book Death.
• Two tracks on the Zootopia soundtrack album have one: "A Bunny Can Go Savage", which gives away a plot point, and "Ewe Fell for It", whose Punny Title reveals the identity of the Big Bad: Assistant Mayor Dawn Bellwether, a sheep.

Radio

• The Dragnet episode "Claude Jimmerson: Child Killer". Even with Jack Webb's this-ain't-for-kids-but-parents-need-to-know-this warning at the beginning of the episode, it still isn't clear until just before the commercial break (more than halfway through the episode) that the two missing girls are even dead, let alone whodunnit.
• The Ricky Gervais Show often uses this for humour during the "Monkey News" segments, where Karl Pilkington has to tell a story about monkeys. Karl will usually obscure the identity of the monkey character in the story, intending it as a Tomato Surprise twist, despite the fact that the presence of monkeys doing outrageous things is the whole premise of the segment. Ricky just loves needling him by asking questions like "and was he a short, hairy bloke with long arms?" long before the intended reveal — or pre-emptively debunking why the person could not possibly be anything other than a human.
• Played with in The Adventures of the Falcon episode "The Case of the Careless Client". While not completely giving away the killers identity, the title gives a huge clue to their identity and motive.

Tabletop Games

• When Magic: The Gathering announced the Innistrad block they also revealed the names of all three sets. The last one was named Avacyn Restored. Before spoiler season even started everyone know that "Avacyn" would be important, would be taken out of the picture for some reason, and would then come back.
  • New Phyrexia was such a spoileriffic title that they circulated two possible titles for the set, the other being Mirrodin Pure, for as long as possible prior to the set's release to keep up the drama of the Mirran-Phyrexian War.^note This may have been an Author's Saving Throw, as Mark Rosewater has said the initial concept wanted New Phyrexia to be the title of the first set in the block, and have it be revealed to be Mirrodin all along.
• When BattleTech finally hit the final battle of the Dark Age era, ready to transition into the new ilClan era, the suspense of the final showdown between the Wolves and the Jade Falcons was spoiled by the title of the novel which detailed it: Hour of the Wolf.

Theatre

• Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman (although it doesn't spoil HOW he dies). Additionally, the phrase "death of a salesman" is used halfway through the play, and it does not refer to the titular salesman.
• Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. The name of the eponymous knight isn't pronounced until quite late in that opera, as keeping his identity a secret drives much of the plot.
• Love's Labour's Lost. Big surprise when all the courting doesn't work out, right?
• Les Misérables has two songs titled "Javert's Suicide" and "The Death of Gavroche". Three guesses as to what happens in these songs.
• Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. To be fair, anyone familiar with Hamlet has a good chance of remembering that detail mentioned in passing.
• The title of M. Butterfly will spoil Song's secret to anyone who understands enough French to know that "M." is short for "Monsieur."
• In an instance of a change being a spoiler, there's Wicked. The subtitle of the book is "The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West"; the musical's is "The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz". The key difference is that "The Life and Times" is used when the subject of the biography is dead - which Elphaba is in the book, but isn't in the musical.

Video Games

• One of the things that happen at the end of Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt is Awesome Possum kicking Dr. Machino's butt.
• In Bravely Default, you can miss the spoiler entirely if you only put the game in sleep mode to recover SP for something. During chapter six while awakening the crystals again, awaken three of them then go back to the title screen. Certain letters in the current subtitle for that file will turn red and vanish, turning the subtitle from "Where the Fairy Flies" into "Airy Lies".
• Concussion's title spoils the twist at the end — that most of the mod happened in the Sole Survivor's head after he fell and suffered the titular ailment.
• The title of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back should tip you off that Cortex's Heel–Face Turn isn't sincere, even before the game blatantly and repeatedly foreshadows his true intentions.
• The DLC campaign for DmC: Devil May Cry, which takes place after the main game, is called Virgil's Downfall thereby spoiling his Face–Heel Turn and his being trapped in Hell at the end of the main game, which wouldn't be that bad except the DLC was announced before the game was released!
• Dragon Quest III had a case of Spoiler Subtitle with its Japanese subtitle (which translates into "And Thus Into the Legend..."). After the Stealth Prequel reveal, it's pretty obvious whose legend it's referring to. (The Western mobile release gave it the subtitle "The Seeds of Salvation", which is far less spoiler-y.)
• Dragon Quest V has the subtitle "Hand of the Heavenly Bride". Guess who's descended from the Zenithians and becomes the mother of the Legendary Hero?
• The credits song in Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is "Real Life". Guess what The Reveal is.
• The Elder Scrolls: Quest names have a bad habit of doing this. Who'd ever guess that quests with names like "A Brotherhood Betrayed" or "Ulterior Motives" involve people not being entirely honest...
  • One of the worst cases is a sidequest in Oblivion. Reynald Jemane asks you to find out why someone has been impersonating him. The explanation is completely spoiled by the quest's name: Separated at Birth.
• Subverted by El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron: you never do see Enoch ascend and become Metatron.
• A subtle example comes in the Japanese version of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The Japanese version of the title translates to "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon", which spoils the fact that the game has four routes, not three. Each word is included in a route's name- the Golden Deer route is Verdant Wind, the Black Eagles route is Crimson Flower, the Church of Seiros route (if you take the Black Eagles route but don't join Edelgard) is Silver Snow, and the Blue Lions route is Azure Moon.
• The Halloween Hack has the alternative title of "Press the B Button". Pressing the B Button at a critical decision will allow the Player to access the rest of the game.
• The twist in Inazuma Eleven Go Galaxy when Storm Wolf's players turn out to be aliens, and a spaceship appears over the stadium, then the plot swerve in the next episode where the storyline turns from an international soccer tournament to an intergalactic space adventure, is kinda spoiled by the title of the game. Although the promotional material didn't exactly try and hide this either.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • The game normally avoids this, except for Chapter 11: "Viridi, Goddess of Nature". Judging by the end of Chapter 10, you'd normally think 11 would be about stopping the humans from wiping each other out fighting over the Wish Seed, and the start of the chapter makes you think so until the titular goddess arrives and nukes everyone. Unfortunately, the title kinda ruins the surprise early.
  • The game, however, also gives us some very clever subversions via Exact Words. The name of the Disc-One Final Dungeon, for example, is "Medusa's Final Battle", which is completely true; it is Medusa's final battle, but it's not Pit's by a long shot.
• In the English version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, the game starts with Link getting shipwrecked during a nasty storm and then waking up on a strange island. About two-thirds of the way through the game, you make the (very unexpected) realization that all of Koholint Island (including the various people he's met) is just a dream of the Wind Fish, and the goal of the game is to escape the dream by waking the Wind Fish, even if it means erasing the island from existence. Meanwhile, the Japanese title for the game is The Legend of Zelda: A Dream Island. So much for subtlety.
• Kinda hard to talk about the third Mega Man X: Mavericks game when its title, Zero's Revenge, spoils that Zero turned evil at the end of the second game.
• Chapter 1 of Mother 3 is titled "Night of the Funeral"—guess what shocking news Flint gets halfway through the chapter? Though it's early in the game, it's still a spoiler. And if you take into account that players are likely to name Hinawa after their own mother, this can become quite a shock.
• Since Pentiment is a relatively obscure term, one might not realize that the eponymous pentimento - an image of a Greek goddess underneath a peculiar painting of the Virgin Mary - is one of the objects that set the game's events in motion.
• Parodied in Persona 3, where an episode of the Show Within a Show "Phoenix Ranger Featherman R" is titled "Death of a Condor! Get Your Tissues Ready, Kids!"
• In Persona 4: Dancing All Night, the last scene of Chapter 6 is titled "The witness^ContextTo Yuko Osada's suicide was me." If there's any doubt as to who it's talking about, the chapter is from Kanami's POV.
• Portal 2: Chapter 9: The Part Where He Kills You
  • Which is a completely hilarious and memorable subversion. That is, if you're any good at Portal.
  • The game practically shouts the title at you when you reach it. Aside from the chapter title being prominently shown in the middle of the screen, the two main characters say a variation on it and you get an achievement with the same title. Of course, it's hardly a surprise that it was eventually going to happen, given how unsubtly Wheatley talks about it beforehand.
  • In the game's menu and achievements, it's only listed as "The Part Where...". It's only when you get to it that the full title is displayed, whereupon Wheatley promptly tries to kill you. Emphasis on "tries".
• Red Dead Redemption:
  • There's a side quest early in the game about people who go missing in the hills. It's titled "American Appetites" and is revealed in the 3rd (and last) part to be about cannibals.
  • The final mission before the Playable Epilogue is titled "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed". Even though they tried to hide it by leaving off the last two words (Is Death), if you're familiar with that quote, then it should come as no surprise that The Hero Dies.
• The School Days visual novel and anime are divided into episodes; many of the episode titles would spoil the episode they refer to, but Close on Title avoids this.
• The Secret World has Sidestories: "the Last Pagan" introduces Ricky Pagan, who charges the player to find the lost members of his Rockabilly gang or failing that return their leather jackets. Only two members of the Pagans have survived one is killed by an onryo when you find him, the other renounces the gang to join the samurai of the Jingu Clan, leaving you to return all of the jackets and making Ricky the last Pagan.
• Silent Hill 2:
  • The title of the main scenario, "A Letter from Silent Heaven", reveals of the game's big twists. Mary is in fact dead and she was envisioning heaven for herself and James as Silent Hill as it was when he and she went there, and in particular their hotel room when she wrote her farewell letter.
  • The title of the sub-scenario "Born from a Wish" is an even bigger spoiler, as it reveals Maria's true nature. However, this title is probably vague enough that a typical player wouldn't understand it fully without context.
• Subverted in Spec Ops: The Line, which features two support characters named Adams and Lugo. Chapter 13 is entitled "Adams", in which Lugo dies.
• The first Spider-Man Game Boy Advance game has a story where Spider-Man investigates weird occurrences and thefts, in an attempt to determine who could be behind it all. In the story as presented (always from Spider-Man's point-of-view), he does not find the culprit's identity until the start of the final stage. The full title of the game: Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace.
• One of the soundtracks in Spiritfarer is called "Stella's Departure", spoiling the fact that Stella dies after her work is done.
• Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands doesn't reveal that the islands are cursed until well into the midgame. Presumably the developers added that subtitle to distinguish the game from other works called Stranded.
• Chapter 6-2 of Super Paper Mario is titled "The End of a World", so it should come as no surprise that The Bad Guys Win this round.
• The title of Chapter 4 of Tales of Monkey Island is called "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood", which is fulfilled differently: Even though Guybrush manages to get his name cleared of all charges (especially with the help of LeChuck, of course) and avoid execution, he does get killed at the end of the chapter, making it a Wham Episode.
• The Talos Principle: Some of the puzzle titles tell you how to solve them. Similarly, if you know your Bible, Road To Gehenna pretty much gives away the plot of the DLC. Gehenna is a Hebrew version of hell, so the title refers to the proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
• The title of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings makes it clear to the player that there's more than one Kingslayer long before the characters realize this. Unexpectedly, you only ever meet one of them in person.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, one sidequest involves searching for a missing soldier. Why are they missing? The sidequest is called "Duplicity."
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3's final chapter is titled "Time Moves Again." Downplayed, as the titles are only visible in the Events Theater menu instead of being displayed onscreen at the start and end of chapters like the previous game.

Web Animation

• Despite the full name of Dream Come True being Dream Come True (A Mule Mom's Story), Flow isn't even born until 3/4th way through the short. Her having a foal isn't brought up until the last 3 minutes.
• Invoked by Homestar Runner in "The Name of This Cartoon Would Ruin It", aka "Front-Facing Homestar". That title is only displayed at the end of the cartoon, and the only hint you're getting is a front-facing Strong Bad in the thumbnail (which, while he does do that for a split second in the cartoon, Homestar isn't doing it in the thumbnail).
• Similar to the John Dies at the End example above, we have Mega Man Dies at the End. Guess what happens at the end of the series? Sonic kills him. Mega Man kind of dies at the end of Season 1, but turns out that was just a trick made by the creators.
• Many GoAnimate videos describe the main event that will happen in the video in their title.
• Popular Boy Kissing Game contains thus in brackets after the title: (old flash game, TW: assault), completely giving away that it's not as innocent as it looks.

Webcomics

• The B-Movie Comic averts it with a joke in the second movie, "Attack of the [ Description withheld in order not to spoil the surprise ]".
• The full title of Concerned is Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman. Most people will have forgotten this by the time they reach the end of the comic, but as the notes point out, you really shouldn't be surprised when Gordon Frohman does indeed die.
• Homestuck: Every movie title on Alternia contains a spoiler (their society has been around for so long that they've run out of shorter titles):
  CG: ONE THAT IS AMAZING AND A CLASSIC IS:
  CG: WHEREIN NUMEROUS VIGILANTES CONFRONT PERIL; ONE OF THEM BETRAYS THE OTHERS; (BUT IT TURNS OUT TO BE PART OF THE PLAN ALL ALONG);
  CG: SEVERAL ATTRACTIVE FEMALE LEADS PROVOKE ROMANTIC TENSION; FOUR MAJOR CHARACTERS WEAR UNUSUAL HATS; ONE HOLDS PLOT-CRITICAL SECRET;
  CG: 47 ON-SCREEN EXPLOSIONS, ONE RESULTING IN DEMISE OF KEY-ADVERSARY; 6 TO 20 LINES THAT COULD BE CONSTRUED AS HUMOROUS;
  EB: wait...
  EB: this is the title?
  CG: IT GOES ON.
  CG: THEY TEND TO BE MORE LITERAL AND INFORMATIVE THAN YOUR TITLES.
• One of the Jix story arcs is called "Kelelder's Revenge", however, no one in the comic (and presumably the audience if they didn't look at the title) knows that Kelelder is behind what is going on.
• Nicole and Derek: The chapter "Cerise and Daisy" wasn't named in the tags or captions until was finished, to avoid spoiling the identity of Cerise's mystery lover.
• The Order of the Stick plays with this: Vaarsuvius is battling the Ancient Black Dragon, and the last strip of the battle is called "A Dragon's Victory." This is accurate... sort of.
• The title of The Quick and Dirty Life of Fritz Fargo suggests that Fritz will die young at some point in the comic.
• Twisted Tropes: A woman reads a book "Harry Potter and the Unlikely Coincidences" where Harry is poisoned by Dolores and ends on a Cliffhanger and To Be Continued. The last page has an advert for "Ron Weasley and the Very Sad Day" where the team visit Harry's grave.

Web Original

• GHASTLY MACARONI!!!: "YOU WERE THE FROGS" has the second-person protagonist find their house full of frogs and put them all outside, and ends with the revelation that the protagonist was the frogs themselves all along. Lampshaded, with the first line of the story being "WARNING SPOILER TITLE".
• Parodied on a WB fansite, in an article supposedly discussing The WB's Hot New Lineup. An episode summary for the new Pokémon: The Series show was roughly: "Pikachu must decide whether to save his partner, Tash. What will he decide?! We find out in the next episodes, 'Tash's Funeral' and 'Pikachu Gets a New Partner'!"

Web Videos

• The final part of GamerThumbTV's The Perfect Castlevania Timeline video series about the Castlevania franchise is called "The Dark Lord Returns". Anyone who has played the duology of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (which the part focuses on) can safely predict that it doesn't end well for Soma Cruz.
• lonelygirl15 did this all the time. "Bree's Dad Is Dead" was a bit of a giveaway, for instance.
• Stampy's Lovely World: Many episodes involving HitTheTarget tend to involve this, complete with Darker and Edgier thumbnails — most notably Episode 541, "I Lost" and Episode 542, "Hero Helpers".
• "Steamed Hams but it's edited like Dragon Ball Z (and it's the Funimation Dub)", as the title implies, is the "Steamed Hams" sketch from The Simpsons edited into a parody of Dragon Ball Z's English dub. So of course it ends with a preview for the next Simpsons episode, with a title that completely spoils the ending.
  Narrator: Meanwhile, Bart faces his toughest challenge yet. Can he find the treasure before the evil Mr. Burns?
  [Insert episode title: "Burns Gets the Treasure!"]

Western Animation

• In the Italian version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, "Crossroads of Destiny" is called "Fall of the Earth Kingdom".
• Batman: The Animated Series had several episodes that tried to keep the main villain's identity a secret until the first commercial break (or later), but this was more often than not kneecapped by the titles. Gee, who's responsible for all the lunacy in "Make 'em Laugh"?
• The Nelvana animated The Berenstain Bears series has "Papa's Pizza" in which Brother and Sister are throwing a party, but can't figure out what to serve for food because all of their friends have different likes and dislikes. Three guesses how the problem is solved, and the first two don't count.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: The acronym for "Operation: F.L.U.S.H." (foolish loser undoes sinister hopes) gives away that the Toiletnator messes everything up for the villains.
• One episode of the 1950s sci-fi cartoon Colonel Bleep saw Squeak disregard his space pilot training, driving his spaceship recklessly, getting arrested, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The end reveals it was only a nightmare Squeak was having. A huge twist...for anyone who missed the intro, seeing as how the title was "Nightmare".
• In-Universe in an episode of Dave the Barbarian. When Dave finally finds a replacement narrator when the regular guy gets laryngitis, he forgets to give him a script to read, leading The Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy to proclaim that they might not be the victors this time around. His hopes are immediately dashed when the narrator announces the title of the story; "Dave Beats Chuckles Like a Cheap Suit".
• The Dragon Prince starts off by telling the audience that the dragon king was killed and his egg was destroyed. Given that the show is called the Dragon Prince, it's not terribly surprising to learn that the egg is still intact.
• Family Guy:
  • The show seems to play this straight with "Stewie Kills Lois", but subverts it at the very end of the episode when it turns out that Lois miraculously survived. The next episode, "Lois Kills Stewie", is a bigger subversion, as Lois can't bring herself to kill Stewie, so Peter does it instead, but then the whole thing turns out to be Stewie running a virtual-reality simulation to decide whether killing Lois is a good idea.
  • Played straight with "Life of Brian", in which Brian dies, after being struck by a car, although two episodes later, he returns.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "Reincarnation", the Anime short "Action Delivery Force" is presented as an ongoing show, with an episode entitled "Medical Dance Crab With Lesson". Try to figure out how the episode is resolved.
  • Guess what Reveal occurs in "Leela's Homeworld". Yep, Leela finally learns which planet she's really from. It turns out her parents are Earth natives. Leela's a mutant, not an alien.
  • Also, if you haven't seen "Leela's Homeworld", the episode title "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" tells you exactly how it ends. Also, the title for that episode was released before "Leela's Homeworld" aired.
• Gravity Falls has two episode titles that aren't spoilers for the episode in question and aren't in the episodes themselves, but are for the major plot twists that happened in the last minutes of the previous episode. In this case, the show's irregular scheduling (along with very tight control of new episode names) works to its advantage, but anyone watching them digitally is at a huge risk of accidentally spoiling themselves.
  • "Not What He Seems" centers on Dipper and Mabel becoming very suspicious of who Grunkle Stan really is and what he's trying to do, ultimately meeting Stan's twin brother. The next episode title, "A Tale of Two Stans", pretty plainly tells you what was implied by the final scene of "Not What He Seems".
  • "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future" ends with Bill Cipher tearing down the barrier between the physical realm and the dream realm. Because of this, the next episode was initially listed under the seemingly-gibberish title "Xpcveaoqfoxso" just in case episode guides revealed its name early. It was actually encoded, and only with a key found in "Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future" could one uncover its real title: "Weirdmageddon".
• The final episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is titled "The Death of Harvey Birdman".
• The episode of The Legend of Korra where the Earth Queen is asphyxiated to death by Zaheer is called “Long Live the Queen”—a term typically used following the death of a monarch.
• Muppet Babies: The episode "Animal and the Little Accident" deals with Animal not wanting to go to the bathroom during his trip to Ratlantis. The title confirms the fact that he doesn't make it in time.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Averted in several episodes that had spoileriffic Working Titles, which were changed before the episode was announced.
    • "Secret of my Excess" was originally called "Attack of the Fifty Foot Dragon", spoiling Spike's rapid growth spurt.
    • "May the Best Pet Win" was going to be "The Tortoise and the Mare", spoiling which animal ends up as Rainbow Dash's pet.
    • "Keep Calm and Flutter On" was initially "Fluttershy's Home for Reformed Draconequi", revealing Fluttershy reforming Discord.
  • The season 2 opening 2-parter, "The Return of Harmony", is a straight example, since the title indicates that Discord is going to lose in the end. Given the format, it's not exactly a twist.
  • The episode in which Apple Bloom gets her cutie mark (and then a bunch more) would have been much more interesting if it had not been called "The Cutie Pox". The title not only gives away that her cutie marks are caused by a disease, but also kills any shock from her gaining the first cutie mark (which would otherwise have been a major development).
  • Subverted for "School Raze" in Season 8, since while it's said that removing the artifacts that were trapping Starlight Glimmer in the school's basement would destroy the school, it doesn't. Instead it restores the magic that was being drained back to Equestria.
  • In the Russian dub, "A Bird in the Hoof" is called "птицафеникс" (Phoenix) and "Party of One" is called "день рождения" (Birthday).
  • In the German dub, "Keep Calm and Flutter On" is called "Discord wird ein guter Drache" (Discord is a good dragon), and "Magical Mystery Cure" is called "Prinzessin Twilight" (Princess Twilight).
• Noddy's Toyland Adventures had an episode called "Noddy Buys A Parasol" in which Noddy works several jobs so that he can earn money to buy a parasol. This is averted in the North American dub for The Noddy Shop, where it is called "Noddy Earns Some Money".
• Phineas and Ferb has an episode called "Candace Gets Busted" where at the end… well, you can guess what happens. The Latin American version averts this, where it is called "Candace's Party".
• There's the Ready Jet Go! episode "Mindy Turns Five", which also happens to be a major Wham Episode. Guess what happens.
• The Recess episode "First Name Ashley" has Randall finding out Spinelli's Embarrassing First Name and threatening to tell everyone if she doesn't do what he says. Guess what it is.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Hair of the Cat", Ren tries to figure out what keeps setting off his allergies. As the title of the episode implies, it soon becomes obvious to the audience that Ren is allergic to Stimpy's hair, something Ren doesn't figure out until the end of the cartoon.
• Parodied in a segment of Sheep in the Big City: The narrator goes: "Where will Sheep spend the holidays? Find out on the next segment, Holidays at Home. Ugh, as if the title doesn't tell you exactly what will happen..."
• Invoked in The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Hit by a Car." It begins with credits showing the episode's name (which the show almost never does outside of specials) a second before Bart gets hit by a car.
• South Park has the episode "Kenny Dies"... although Kenny dies every episode. Nevertheless, this episode is somewhat unusual because instead of a sudden, violent death, Kenny is dying slowly from a currently-incurable disease, and Cartman is fighting to get the ban lifted on embryonic stem cell research in the hope that Kenny can be cured before it's too late. Despite Cartman's efforts, Kenny dies. And instead of being back the next episode like usual, he stays dead for over a year.
• Happened with the French translation of The Spectacular Spiderman. Who is manipulating the events to create a gang war between Tombstone, Silvermane, and Dr. Octopus? Find out in "The Return of the Green Goblin"!
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The episode titles not being displayed in either the episode or the credits means viewers aren't quite as likely to catch these titles, but if they're watching the DVDs or a streaming service, no dice:
  • "Lair of Grievous"' twist that Kit Fisto and company have been lured to General Grievous' secret lair would have been more surprising if the episode had a different title.
  • Since the two previous episodes about members of Domino Squad ("Rookies" and "Clone Cadets") were titled after the clones' ranks at the time, knowing the title of "ARC Troopers" gives away that Fives and Echo are probably getting a promotion long before it happens in the last scene.
  • "Carnage of Krell": Looking at the title, the reveal that Krell was Evil All Along isn't as surprising as it should be.
• Star Wars Rebels: "Jedi Night" is a pun on "Jedi Knight" and the word "night", which is often used to refer to an ending or a death. Once the title was released, it was obvious which of the main characters was getting Killed Off for Real in it even though the marketing avoided Tonight, Someone Dies.
• Steven Universe:
  • In the episode "Mirror Gem", Steven finds a mirror, and the title gives away the fact that the gem on the back of the mirror is, in fact, sentient. Not that Lapis's first appearance was any less of a shocking moment.
  • Defied with "Bismuth", which has a title held off until Steven encounters the title character herself.
  • Days before the finale of Steven Universe: Future aired, all four episode titles were revealed. Even though Steven corrupting technically happened at the end of "Everything's Fine", the next episode's title, "I Am My Monster", spoiled the climax before the finale even aired. However, because everyone had already guessed the climax anyway, no one was upset.
• The Sym-Bionic Titan episode "Tashy 497" which is the name the trio chooses for their deceased pet, a combination of the names Tarax, Mushy, and #497, which each of them wanted to name it.
• The episode "Betrayal" of Teen Titans. Wait, betrayal? But who would betray the Titans? Could it possibly be the new team member who has only made two speaking appearances in the show before this episode, and only had a cameo appearance after becoming a member?
• Totally Spies! has the episode "Evil Boyfriend". We don't find out that Sam's new love is evil until the very end, yet the title has already told us that.
• A repeat broadcast of the G1 The Transformers episode "Dark Awakening" ends with Optimus Prime dying... followed by the narrator saying, "But is this really the end of Optimus Prime? Find out in tomorrow's exciting episode, 'The Return of Optimus Prime'!"
• Winx Club:
  • A Season 1 episode is called "A Great Secret Revealed" ("Meant to Be" in the 4Kids dub). Bloom finds out she's been adopted and she's not from Earth.
  • The 4Kids title of Season 2, Episode 20 is called "The First Charmix". Bloom gets her Charmix powers.
  • Season 3, Episode 6 is called "Layla's Choice" for Cinelume, and "Aisha's Courage" for Atlas Oceanic. Season 3, Episode 7 does this again calling it "The Company of the Light" in the former and "Heroes of the Past" in the latter. Averted for the 4Kids dub where the episodes are called "The Mermaid Queen" and "Royal Behavior", respectively.
  • Season 3, Episode 9's Atlas title is called "Breaking the Mark"; Stella breaks Valtor's spell on Sky.
  • The Season 5 finale is called "The End of Tritannus". Three guesses to the outcome.

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