While the 1995 Japanese anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion revolves around human-shaped weapons called "Evangelions", the "Neon Genesis" part of the title is neither part of the original Japanese name, nor its direct translation. The Japanese name is 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン / Shin-seiki evangerion, "Evangelion of a new era/century". The series has other non-direct translations too, and apparently this style was approved of the original creators, but it was always a bit of a mystery whether the gap in the interpretation was intentional or not.
However, over two decades later, with the re-boot movie series Rebuild of Evangelion, in the final scenes of the final movie, the protagonist name-drops the words "neon genesis" in appropriate context. I've never grinned as hard in movie theater.
miltonlost 52 days ago [-]
Neon is relating to "new" via neo- prefix, with -n added on because the Western idea in the 90s of Japanese aesthetic was futuristic neon.
Genesis is for as beginning to the new era. It's etymology is Greek for "origin, creation, generation" which is a sort of an "era". Plus a looser translation provides the extra wordplay and thematic heft with the Angels due to Genesis being first book of the Bible.
Not a translator but I write a lot of poetry, and that's what would be going through my mind as I see the difference between the literal translation and the English decision and the additional capabilities this translation gives. In my mind, the initial translator 100% intended this "gap", which is less a gap and more of an additional layering.
GolDDranks 51 days ago [-]
Oh, I 100% agree that the translator intended the "gap", and the original creators approved of it. However, what was not clear, was whether the director Anno Hideaki had in mind the primary(?) meaning of genesis, as in creation of the world, when he was sketching the original plot of the TV series and the translation title wasn't ostensibly decided upon yet.
But in the re-make movie whose plot extended beyond the original series, it's clear he absolutely had that meaning in mind. That made having the title drop a cathartic experience. It felt like it wasn't 100% planned out, but rather a happy accident turned into a bit of a nod towards the global audiences, while still having the "the meaning was there all along" vibes.
Telemakhos 52 days ago [-]
They're both ancient Greek, but different grammatical genders: neon (νέον) is neuter, while γένεσις is feminine. Better might have been "nea genesis" if those two words were to be interpreted together. But, "evangelion" (εὐαγγέλιον) is also Greek and neuter, meaning the gospel, good news, or a reward owed a messenger for his good news. I always figured the "new" of "neon" belonged with the "evangelion," and "genesis" was just kind of hanging around for no particular reason.
stonesthrowaway 52 days ago [-]
> They're both ancient Greek
They are both modern english words even if they have roots in ancient greek.
> but different grammatical genders: neon (νέον) is neuter, while γένεσις is feminine.
νέον and γένεσις are gendered but neon and genesis are not.
nine_k 52 days ago [-]
BTW neon the gas was called so because it was a new discovery (in a well-searched area, the composition of air). The name basically means "a new something", neuter gender, could be "lo nuevo" in Spanish or "das neue" in German.
Since "evangelion" and "genesis" clearly are taken from Greek, so was apparently "neon".
popalchemist 50 days ago [-]
This comment is now the first result on google when you search for "Neon Genesis title drop".
twic 52 days ago [-]
What does the dialogue say in Japanese? Neon genesis or new era?
GolDDranks 51 days ago [-]
ネオンジェネシス, neon jeneshisu
52 days ago [-]
darepublic 52 days ago [-]
Intentionality matters. "It" should not count as a title drop. Nor Barbie (or any movie where the title is the characters name). But I understand it would be way more difficult to run the numbers with such a constraint. But this is a case where, to me, the results are very much tainted and thus I had to stop reading. To me this is like when developers run into a hard issue and somehow play a game of semantics with the wording of a ticket to avoid putting together something useful for the user
TheGeminon 52 days ago [-]
If you read a bit further he excludes instances like that and listed films with only a single (likely intentional) title drop.
zellyn 52 days ago [-]
As noted by other commenters, the author addresses this, although I would have loved to have had a version of all the _statistics_ with name-based drops elided.
cgriswald 52 days ago [-]
I think a case could be made for “It” being a quasi-name and therefore a different word that is spelled the same or, because “it” is a pronoun it only counts when it is used to refer to the thing that the title itself refers to.
GuB-42 52 days ago [-]
While it is somewhat arbitrary, I am sure that "Barbie" is intentional, the somewhat obnoxious repetition of the word "Barbie" fits the theme. Also, maybe you stopped reading a little too early as the case where the title is a character name is specially addressed.
"It" may be the the special case here, as it is a very common word by itself but that a movie is named like this is notable enough for it to be included.
quirino 52 days ago [-]
I was more surprised by the fact that "Barbie" was said more times than "it", even though all of the "wrong" instances of "it" were counted as well.
dkdbejwi383 52 days ago [-]
It's possible there are just more lines of dialogue in Barbie than It, given the conventions around each genre. I haven't seen It, but I can assume with It being a horror film there are longer periods with no dialogue for suspense etc.
GauntletWizard 52 days ago [-]
Barbie also has multiple characters named Barbie; There are times where Barbie is said three or four times in a single paragraph and even a sequence that's just a complete graph of Barbies saying "Hi Barbie" to each other.
vundercind 52 days ago [-]
Including films where the title is a character name makes the data set less interesting. “Barbie title-drops a ton!” yeah ok.
seba_dos1 52 days ago [-]
Have you stopped scrolling once you realized that? The article acknowledges that, and even has a special category of movies named after characters with just a single title drop.
That said, Barbie is a funny case indeed, as it's named after about half of its characters :P
account42 52 days ago [-]
The problem is that there aren't any lists for title drops excluding boring cases like that. So all the lists get dominated by those cases.
Terretta 52 days ago [-]
Might acknowledge, but fails to fix. For instance, leading genre is biography since they aren't excluding 'name dropping'.
n2d4 52 days ago [-]
Yes, but it would've been much more interesting to read about title drops where this is not the case. The top titledrops listed that are not names of a character are all names of something else, like locations or objects.
beAbU 52 days ago [-]
I agree, I think this analysis can benefit from some data sanitisation.
It is a silly one to include, because the word it is picked up by their analysis. Need to remove all hits except where the characters are referencing Pennywise directly.
I also noticed that in some cases a namedrop was registered where the eponymous character speaks, e.g. ALIENS: hisses. These need to be removed as well.
Movies where the name of the movie is the name of the leading character needs to be removed as well, or at least filterable from the list.
All of this makes the site a little less interesting imo. A good title drop in a movie is a fun little easter egg, especially if the name a bit more conceptual, e.g. The Phantom Menace. The way this site is set up at the moment makes it a bit more difficult to find those really good title drops.
alach11 52 days ago [-]
This seems like something that could be handled easily with a second-pass on the data using an LLM. And the author has made the dataset available... [0]
Including “It” on the list made it seem like a parody.
jhbadger 52 days ago [-]
Exactly. If they had limited it to cases where "it" is referring to Pennywise, that would be one thing, but not when anyone uses a very common pronoun!
tczMUFlmoNk 52 days ago [-]
I think it's quite interesting to include. Apparently Barbie says "Barbie" more than It says "it", which is fascinating!
loganc2342 52 days ago [-]
I’ve never seen It, but having seen Barbie, it’s not all that surprising lol.
sim7c00 52 days ago [-]
whole conversation makes me just think: But how can we not say it, if we don't know what it is!
Ni!
bryanrasmussen 52 days ago [-]
I guess this is the downside of making a data analysis thing as a side project to hopefully get something going, but not having the time to take care of all potential edge cases.
I guess "Them!" is also affected by this, and maybe The Thing or The Birds...
n2d4 52 days ago [-]
This is IMO one of the coolest use cases of AI. With a half-decent prompt, an LLM is pretty good at tasks like those.
inanutshellus 52 days ago [-]
Both you and GP seem to have stopped reading the article early...
He specifically calls out `"real"` title drops just a few sections later.
quuxplusone 52 days ago [-]
To be fair, the article starts out seeming real for about the first third. It's only after the first list — Barbie, Damini, Sita,... Azhar, It — that it descends into obvious parody. Quote:
"What's interesting about the (Fiction) list here is that it's pretty international: only two of the top ten movies come from Hollywood, 6 are from India, one from Indonesia and one from Turkey. So it's definitely an international phenomenon."
Here the writer slides seamlessly from talking about movies with title drops to talking about movies with single-word titles which are also the name of the main character, but is still saying things like "What's interesting about this list..." and "...an international phenomenon," as if those are remotely the defining characteristics of the list he just gave. (The defining characteristic, again, is "movies named after the protagonist." That's all.)
Then there's a section break. Since the article clearly outed itself as parody right before the break, I think it's totally reasonable for anyone to stop reading it at that point. (Although maybe not 100% reasonable to come back and comment on HN about it, except maybe to express disappointment and save other people the bother of reading that far themselves.)
Anyway, after the break the author says, "You might have noticed [an icon on each movie that is] named after one of its characters." But scroll back up and you'll see that icon is missing from 4 of the movies in that list of 10: "Saina", "Nussa", "Arif v. 216", and "It". Of those 4, 3 are clearly named after a main character. The fourth (like "Ecks vs. Sever") is named after two characters (Arif and 216) but the graph shows that the author is counting instances of the name "Arif" alone, not instances of the phrase "Arif v 216".
So not only is the article trying to be funny, it's not even playing by consistent rules — it's a parody of an academic paper but also just flat-out lying about the data! That's not only annoying but uncool.
I would actually be interested in reading a real article on the phenomenon of title drops in movies, e.g. by someone who'd gone through a bunch of movies and tallied which of them contain title drops. But the linked article is just garbage.
inanutshellus 50 days ago [-]
I think it's just a guy that dug around in some data for fun and wanted to show it to people.
I'll bet he ingested a file full of known real names in order to know whether the title was a character's name, thus "Nussa", "Ecks vs Sever", etc not showing as "titles matching names".
The sibling comment that he should have at least manually checked his top 10 list is VERY fair, however.
c6p 51 days ago [-]
Yes. I would expect the writer to at least check the top 10 movies.
While scrolling, I was surprised by Arif V 216. As I've seen the movie, there is no chance of such a high count of title drops. Skimming the instances, it was just showing the name "Arif." I returned to HN comments to check whether it was mentioned, and only you did.
Cool idea, lazy execution.
cwmma 52 days ago [-]
after doing a naive approach he then drills down into more proper title drops.
tedunangst 52 days ago [-]
I'm imagining some film school student explaining how Barbie would have been a better movie, a real film even, without mentioning the character's name.
wmf 52 days ago [-]
In The Ghost Writer the main character's name is never mentioned.
jachee 52 days ago [-]
Fight Club, either.
aidenn0 52 days ago [-]
It's implied that his name is "Jack," assuming the poetry written from the point of view of Jack's organs were an earlier coping mechanism for the MC.
SliceOfWaifu 50 days ago [-]
Drive as well
zwp 52 days ago [-]
And Layer Cake
bregma 52 days ago [-]
Now watch Rebecca.
whatsgolden 52 days ago [-]
Barbie could be en even better movie if one did a shot each time the name was heard.
dredmorbius 52 days ago [-]
That would make it a Fatal Attraction.
PittleyDunkin 52 days ago [-]
They could have just named the character and avoided this too
kqr 52 days ago [-]
Indeed, and this contaminates all other analyses as well. Sure, shorter titles are dropped more frequently – but that sounds like it could be just because character names tend to make for short titles.
ramon156 52 days ago [-]
What a pessimistic view.
bananaflag 52 days ago [-]
> So for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring either "Lord of the Rings" or "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as title drops (feel free to hover over the visualizations to explore the matches)!
An unacknowledged partial title drop for that movie is that "Lord of the Ring" (with no s at the end) is uttered.
thaumasiotes 52 days ago [-]
That isn't the same thing. The Lord of the Rings is the One Ring. The Lord of the Ring is Sauron.
chrismorgan 52 days ago [-]
Sauron is twice called the Lord of the Rings in book two.
In chapter one, Many Meetings, Gandalf tells Frodo:
> Yes, I knew of them. Indeed I spoke of them once to you; for the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths, the Nine Servants of the Lord of the Rings.
And in chapter two, The Council of Elrond, Glorfindel says:
> And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it.
In the final chapter (The Grey Havens) of book six, the Red Book is also titled by Frodo “THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING”. Now there’s a title drop.
(Just in case it’s not obvious: I’m talking about the books here, not the movies. Never seen ’em.)
the_af 52 days ago [-]
I don't have my Fellowship at hand now, but doesn't Frodo joke near the beginning he's "the lord of the rings" and Gandalf scolds him by telling him something like "there's only one lord of the rings"?
Found the quote by googling, he was scolding Pippin, not Frodo, and it was "Ring" singular after all:
> "Hurray!" cried Pippin, springing up. "Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!"
> "Hush!" said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. "Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world!"
(Book II, Chapter I)
bombcar 52 days ago [-]
Sauron is referred to as the Lord of the Ring and the Lord of the Rings (second being much more common) multiple times.
The Ring is referred to as The Ring, The One Ring, The Ruling Ring, and a few other things, but I do not think it is ever referred to as the "Lord" of anything.
Kiro 52 days ago [-]
> The Lord of the Rings is the One Ring
Source? I can't find anything.
jachee 52 days ago [-]
”One Ring to rule them all
And in the darkness bind them.”
jimjimjim 52 days ago [-]
and Sauron used/uses that ring as a tool
the_af 52 days ago [-]
The "Lord of the Rings" (plural) is explicitly acknowledged by Gandalf to be Sauron in the book.
Also in Peter Jackson's movie.
jimjimjim 52 days ago [-]
uh, no. I'm pretty sure Sauron is the Lord of the Rings including the one ring. Since he, you know, kind of made them all.
the_af 52 days ago [-]
While you're right about Sauron being the Lord of the Rings, he didn't make all of them.
The three Elven rings were made in secret by Elves, and were untainted by Sauron. Disregard the TV show, which shows a version contradicting Tolkien.
This is the reason at the end of the Return of the King, with Sauron defeated, Gandalf, Galadriel and (Cirdan?) are able to openly wear the three again. Had they been tools of the Enemy, they would never have been worn again.
throwawaycities 52 days ago [-]
In The Rings of Power Sauron is called Lord of the Rings (plural)
account42 52 days ago [-]
I'm not sure why you think fanfiction is relevant to this discussion.
throwawaycities 51 days ago [-]
way to keep hn high quality
adriand 52 days ago [-]
How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what this article purports them to be rather than the name of the film coming from the content and/or dialogue that is contained within it?
An analogy: when someone writes a song and then they need to name it, they will frequently choose a word or phrase that appears in the lyrics. When Leonard Cohen sings “hallelujah” in the song of the same name, is that a “title drop”? I assume not.
latexr 52 days ago [-]
> How sure are we that these so-called title drops are what this article purports them to be
What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
> A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in.
That makes no distinction if the title or the script came first. The article does call out movies who do that in a cringe or obvious way (like Suicide Squad, which had prior art) but also includes movies where that is unavoidable, such as Barbie.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter which came first. As soon as you make a line and a title the same, the line becomes a title drop. The audience sees the final product, not the process.
> An analogy
That analogy doesn’t work. Songs are typically repetitive and a few minutes long. Everyone expects them to name the title. A movie, on the other hand, is an experience that asks suspension of disbelief from you, it tries to engross you in its world over the course of multiple hours. When a character title drops, in a second you’re suddenly and forcefully pulled back from the illusion and reminded you’re watching a movie.
nkozyra 52 days ago [-]
> What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.
In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine, Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the script.
I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need a title."
latexr 52 days ago [-]
> It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.
It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around. While you’re watching the movie, the effect is exactly the same. So even if you took a line of dialog to make your title, it becomes a title drop nonetheless because the audience doesn’t know (nor should they care) which came first.
amp108 52 days ago [-]
> It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around. While you’re watching the movie, the effect is exactly the same.
Certainly not true in the case of a work adapted from another source like a novel. The words "The Fellowship of the Ring" are never uttered in The Fellowship of the Ring, and Peter Jackson's ham-fisted insert there was obvious even to people who hadn't read it, but especially to those of us who have.
And, by that token, if the dialogue suddenly seems awkward and stunted for no other reason than to insert the title, most people would probably conclude that the title came first.
latexr 52 days ago [-]
And as I pointed out several hours ago, that complaint is about bad writing, which can happen in either direction.
> It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around.
I disagree; if it's a quote that serves the narrative and isn't jammed in as a reference it doesn't have the same effect as the meta examples. Less of a fourth wall break.
latexr 52 days ago [-]
That’s just called good writing. You could decide on a title first then skilfully add it as a quote that servers the narrative. Again, as an audience member you don’t know¹, except when it’s glaringly bad. It’s the toupée fallacy.
¹ I hope it’s obvious I’m excluding cases where someone deliberately seeks behind-the-scenes information. We’re talking about having only the result of the work as context.
cgriswald 52 days ago [-]
It’s like anything in film. The viewer can speculate how it was constructed based on evidence in the work itself. The writing divide is certainly not the only source of evidence.
More generally we are not limited only to the film when trying to categorize based on this distinction. The distinction exists even if it is not always discernible.
That said, I think trying to construct separate lists based on this distinction would be nearly impossible.
metabagel 52 days ago [-]
I don’t think anyone would regard using Barbie’s name in the movie as a title drop.
latexr 52 days ago [-]
The article does:
> Unsurprisingly, movies named after one of their characters have an average of 24.7 title drops, more than twice as much as the usual 10.3.
And this thread started exactly with the point of what the article considers title drops.
The article also highlights the interesting case of “movies named after a character with single title drops”. I’m willing to bet that in those movies, if the name is proffered late enough in the runtime, it may feel like a title drop because the the audience suddenly becomes aware the name had never been said before. When the name is said all the time or once but too early (so you’ll be primed to expect it more often) then the effect is bound to be lessened.
52 days ago [-]
darepublic 52 days ago [-]
The movie "It" neither uses title drops, nor was the title plucked from the script.
jsbg 52 days ago [-]
> it doesn’t matter which came first
imo it does matter and is the difference between cringe (sometimes intentional) and not
latexr 52 days ago [-]
It’s not the order of the writing that determines that, but the quality. Yes, the order can influence it, but it’s not the determining factor.
My favorite "title drop" in a song is in How Soon is Now by the Smiths. After an instrumental break, Morrissey sings, "You say it's gonna happen now? What exactly do you mean..." You can almost hear the next line should be "How soon is now" but there's a pause and then he sings, "See I've already waited too long..." The title captures the mood of the song but is never actually said. It feels intentionally left out.
On the movie front, No Country for Old Men does something similar.
partomniscient 51 days ago [-]
"What exactly do you mean.." -> "When exactly do you mean...?"
throw4847285 51 days ago [-]
Oops. I just dashed it out without looking it up. What you said.
Sebb767 52 days ago [-]
> Similarly, movies named after a protagonist have a title drop rate of 88.5% while only 34.2% of other movies drop their titles.
What is much more interesting is that 11.5% of movies named after their protagonist never mention them by name. I guess I can imagine a few edge cases where this would be usual (protagonists not usually called by their name due to their position, like kings, and movies with little talking), but it's surprising that there are that many.
test1235 52 days ago [-]
sometimes the title is in the script, but isn't actually a line said by anyone:
They even included one in the article. At least I sincerely doubt that "The Scarlet Bond That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" [sic] was dialogue. Given the context I'm fairly sure it's just the title showing up on screen, but subtitled because it's in Japanese.
savef 52 days ago [-]
I was utterly disturbed by a story sent into the Kermode and Mayo radio show many years ago. The listener explained that their family went to the theatre, sat down in their seats to watch the film, and then upon the first utterance of the title of the film they would clap, stand up, and walk out.
I assume this to be a joke. I've never found any reference of anybody doing this online, or anybody even discussing this one story from the show. But holy shit does it make my skin crawl.
Maybe I was (un)lucky, but the only film I've checked was "Inception". It's spoken at 19:24, but the explorer states the title is not dropped at all. I had to actually look it up, as I've doubted my memory for a second.
mk_stjames 52 days ago [-]
Wild, that was the first title I tried as well.
It is such a specific word, hence why I tried it first.
It's actually said eight times in the movie (I ctrl+f'd an .srt file).
The page mentions the methodology was to use opensubtitles.com, but not how which specific version was to be used from that website was chosen (because opensusbtitles.com lists tons of possible files for each language depending on what version of torrent/etc they match). It is possible that the download script used accidentally chose non-English .srt files sometimes for some films.
ggm 52 days ago [-]
Was 'je ne regrette rien' playing when you had that doubt?
Yay, someone posted it before I had to. This skit is 25 years old now!
senjin 52 days ago [-]
First thing I thought of. “Man, I’m just so tired of these Star Wars.”
rurban 52 days ago [-]
I favor those dramatic Gaspar Noe title drops, the title in huge red letters full screen, over characters naming the title. It's huge.
But then opensubtitles couldn't be used to analyse that.
niels_bom 52 days ago [-]
Referenced strongly in 2024’s The Substance.
rurban 52 days ago [-]
Yes, exactly! Good catch
devonsolomon 52 days ago [-]
Just dropping in to say thank you! Fun read, fun idea, well executed.
Smells like the old internet!
Runpee.com for when best to pee during a long film, Mr Skin for nude scenes (Flesh of The Stars in Knocked up fiction) … and titledrops.net for title drops.
FoeNyx 52 days ago [-]
Your list made me remember doesthedogdie.com which lists diverse trigger warnings in movies and other media.
devonsolomon 52 days ago [-]
Ah yes ! Should have included.
shrikant 52 days ago [-]
What a fun read! I should point out though that the movie Saina definitely needs a "name" icon next to it, as it's a biopic of badminton player Saina Nehwal.
throw4847285 52 days ago [-]
How about movies where the title drop is the very last line? I can only think of one (it's not really a spoiler, but SPOILERS I guess).
The last line of My Dinner with Andre is "my dinner with Andre." I think that only works because the whole movie feels like a stage play, and there's something very stagey about that choice.
zb 52 days ago [-]
The one that sprang to mind for me was The Name of the Rose. Oddly it doesn’t show up as a title drop in the data.
throw4847285 51 days ago [-]
Just remembered that Good Time does this as well, and it's heartbreaking.
51 days ago [-]
bardan 51 days ago [-]
Nearest thing to a name drop is the end, but isnt a name drop (also spoilers):
"And yet, now that I am an old, old man, I must confess that of all the faces that appear to me out of the past, the one I see most clearly is that of the girl of whom I've never ceased to dream these many long years. She was the only earthly love in my life, yet I never knew, nor ever learned, her name."
nighthawk454 52 days ago [-]
“That’s the name of the movie!”
- most Pitch Meeting videos
gowld 52 days ago [-]
and "Roll Credits" in CinemaSins
One thing they deem to be a movie “sin” is the fact that movies will often have a line of dialogue in which they'll say the title of the movie. Whenever a movie does this, the CinemaSins Narrator will exclaim “Roll Credits,” as though the title of the film can only be mentioned in the absolute last line of dialogue.
> 00:23:19 it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Robocop 2
Rebelgecko 52 days ago [-]
Deathstalker 2 is probably my favorite instance of a sequel number being incorporated into the title drop. Not only is it one of the first lines of the movie, the timing is impeccable.
Robocop 2 is a critique of sequels - everything must be bigger and better, designed by committee, with every idea (directive) shoved into the box until it becomes unworkable.
NiloCK 52 days ago [-]
A pointed reversal of this is "We Need to Talk About Kevin", which went unsaid through the movie.
miltonlost 52 days ago [-]
Which is why it's such a great title. All that irony
cezart 52 days ago [-]
The Elephant (2003) has my favorite Title drop, and of course, is not marked in this database. As I remember it, at some point in the movie we are shown a drawing of an elephant randomly hanging in the room of one of the protagonists. Both the drawing, and the main protagonists are easy to ignore, yet are the main subjects of the movie.
(It's a shame there's no nice way on Twitter to sort by number of favorites. You can approximate it by searching for "from:<accountname> min_faves:<number>", but it doesn't correct for the number of followers the person had at a given point. Which is a problem with subreddit "top" sorting, come to think of it, as it strongly weights recent posts when the subreddit was more popular. Always wished they'd fix that.)
Yes, it's a game, but from one of two series that cemented video games as a cinematic medium, when developers so desire. 35 years of build-up, and a love letter to the whole series, including (especially) the ones people derided (FNC). Also, interesting because it's not a direct quote of the title, but still something that everyone who got to this point recognized immediately.
failbuffer 52 days ago [-]
Hmmm... I nominate Mortal Kombat (1995) for the cringiest title drops. Instead of being used once for a climatic fight scene, they keep dropping it over and over (10 times according to the article).
bux93 52 days ago [-]
Some movies have a working title and the release is different. We may never know how many title drops are in those. Although we know that the working title for "The Dark Knight" was "Rory's First Kiss".
SideburnsOfDoom 52 days ago [-]
The working title of the project is often public, e.g. on signs to the location shoot, and as such is often cryptic so that that the casual observer won't know that e.g. "Rory's First Kiss" is a Batman movie.
mhh__ 52 days ago [-]
Patrick, you're the American psycho!
I really like a credit drop a la Gaspar Noe just rolling the credits mid way through Climax.
I like the idea of a surrealist scene in a restaurant where the credits are just tucked away in a menu. Maybe it's been done
benoliver999 52 days ago [-]
"The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman 4 - The Quest for Peace"
gnrlst 52 days ago [-]
I remember about 12-15 years ago, as a weekend project, I reached out to the creator of OpenSubtitles dot org and asked him for a dump of all the subtitles, which he promptly and happily provided. I then indexed them all in elasticsearch (it was a pretty nascent tech at the time), and created a movie quote finder, with timestamps. E.g. you could search for "i love you" and it would tell you all the movies and timestamps that phrase would be uttered. My lazy ass didn't go beyond a localhost version, but I still remember fondly of having gotten that working, it felt like magic at the time.
r0bbbo 52 days ago [-]
There was an Instagram account or YouTube channel that used to make funny videos of the films ending with the credits rolling at the exact point the title of the film was said—anyone have any recollection of that?
One of my favorite title drops is in Arrested Development:
Michael Bluth: "Your average American male is in a perpetual state of adolescence, you know, arrested development"
Narrator: "Hey! Thats the name of the show"
extraduder_ire 52 days ago [-]
The narrator, Ron Howard, also appears in an episode while still doing the narration and referring to himself.
xsmasher 52 days ago [-]
The show is more meta than Deadpool.
> Chachi: "Look, this is not the first time I’ve been brought in to replace Barry Zuckerman. I think I can do for you everything he did, plus skew younger…"
> Narrator: "No one was making fun of Andy Griffith. I can't emphasize that enough."
mkl 52 days ago [-]
A bug: In "Highest title drops by decade", 1960, "Best rated (at least 1 drop)", it lists Psycho with 0 drops. It really does seem to be 0, so shouldn't show up here.
mook 52 days ago [-]
A different bug in the article: It lists That Time I Got Reincarnated… (awfully long title) as having one, but I'm pretty sure that's just a translation of the title card:
73
00:13:32,095 --> 00:13:34,055
No... Look!
74
00:13:47,068 --> 00:13:47,600
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
75
00:13:47,610 --> 00:13:49,987
<b>The Scarlet Bond</b>
<b>That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime</b>
76
00:14:04,627 --> 00:14:05,992
Find him?!
badmintonbaseba 52 days ago [-]
Fake title drops is one of my favorite memes, which is a screenshot from a movie/series with fake subtitles. Example:
edit: oops, just noticed the article also mentions the meme
latexr 52 days ago [-]
Reminded me of a scene in Barry¹ where the title character gets a small part in a movie and while his washed-up teacher is reviewing the script he sees Barry’s single line of dialogue and exclaims “That’s the name of the movie! They can’t cut that!”
I would've liked 2d charts or at least stacked bar charts for the correlation ones to see if the correlations are different for ones with only one drop or many drops
gothroach 52 days ago [-]
Does this not take in to account lyrics in musical movies? I looked up Across the Universe and it reported zero name drops despite there being at least a dozen.
epolanski 52 days ago [-]
Most ridiculous one has to be "I have my 50 shades of grey" or something like that dropped in the same movie.
I only know this because of the fun honest reviews made of it.
Cthulhu_ 52 days ago [-]
"I'm 50 shades of fucked up" if I recall correctly, which was as much forced as it was cringe. I never watched the film or read the books thankfully.
epolanski 52 days ago [-]
You're right, I rewatched the video!
It's even worse than I remembered.
olddustytrail 52 days ago [-]
No, you're both wrong, nothing was "forced".
That dialogue is from the book. The book gets its title from the dialogue. The film has the same title and dialogue because it's based on the book.
There is no point where script writers are sat down trying to figure out how to work the title into the dialogue.
jcotton42 50 days ago [-]
It's still forced, just in the source material instead of the adaptation.
mobeigi 52 days ago [-]
Wow I love the presentation of this website, very nice!
racl101 52 days ago [-]
For as cheesy as the Fast and Furious movies are they still haven't really done this with the exception of Tokyo Drift I think.
G_o_D 52 days ago [-]
Indian Movies had this trend since early days till lates 90s
Every movie has
1 dialogue
1 song
That says title of movie
-t0mm 52 days ago [-]
Brokeback Mountain apparently has 0 title drops, even though all Ennis and Jack have is Brokeback Mountain!
52 days ago [-]
arethuza 52 days ago [-]
Isn't "Dune" said once in both of the Villeneuve movies?
Oh my god this seems like so much work. I'm exhausted on their behalf.
sidcool 52 days ago [-]
Happy to see Damini movie in that list. It's an excellent Bollywood movie from the 90s. I know the list is not indicative of the quality of the movie. But still happy to see this obscure Indian movie. Worth a watch. Highly rated on IMDB too.
julianeon 52 days ago [-]
The one in Hot Tub Time Machine will never stop being funny to me.
yieldcrv 52 days ago [-]
Sometimes the title is added after the script
edgineer 52 days ago [-]
Unfortunately he'll miss e.g. "I'm sick and tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane."
nickdothutton 52 days ago [-]
“A View to a Kill (1985)” The database does not recognise when the movie name is spoken by 2 people. In this movie 1 character begins the sentence “what a view…” and a 2nd character completes the line: “…to a kill”.
jonplackett 52 days ago [-]
I just came here to say I love the bulgy animation as you scrub through the movie to see the drops.
This is a fun idea but I also appreciate the extra effort to make it nice to explore!
jdlyga 52 days ago [-]
"I'm just so tired of all these star wars"
52 days ago [-]
Avlin67 52 days ago [-]
what is title drops ? what doest it mean ?
latexr 52 days ago [-]
The first line¹ of the article explains it. It even has “title drop” in bold.
¹ Literally
gield 52 days ago [-]
The article explains it very well.
TheRealNGenius 52 days ago [-]
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TheRealNGenius 52 days ago [-]
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JimmyWilliams1 52 days ago [-]
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alehlopeh 52 days ago [-]
The movie It doesn’t have as many title drops as I would’ve expected. Also I don’t recall anyone ever saying The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in that film.
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
alehlopeh 52 days ago [-]
I obviously read at least some of the article.
_puk 52 days ago [-]
I think the GP's point (badly made) may be that the Lord of the rings example is addressed explicitly in the article.
"titles containing a colon are split and either side counts as a title drop. So for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring either "Lord of the Rings" or "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as title drops"
PittleyDunkin 52 days ago [-]
How would the commenter know to bring it up without reading the article? This feels like dodging the question of "why is the determination of a title drop so bad?"
throwaway314155 52 days ago [-]
There's a section in the article regarding how to handle colons.
lmm 52 days ago [-]
Why should colons be such special case? Why not treat commata or dashes the same way? (And conversely, did they count the one in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie title?)
PittleyDunkin 52 days ago [-]
Yet again, this feels like dodging the question of "why is the determination of a title drop so bad?"
C'mon it was half the content of my comment and you still refused to acknowledge it. What do you want
However, over two decades later, with the re-boot movie series Rebuild of Evangelion, in the final scenes of the final movie, the protagonist name-drops the words "neon genesis" in appropriate context. I've never grinned as hard in movie theater.
Genesis is for as beginning to the new era. It's etymology is Greek for "origin, creation, generation" which is a sort of an "era". Plus a looser translation provides the extra wordplay and thematic heft with the Angels due to Genesis being first book of the Bible.
Not a translator but I write a lot of poetry, and that's what would be going through my mind as I see the difference between the literal translation and the English decision and the additional capabilities this translation gives. In my mind, the initial translator 100% intended this "gap", which is less a gap and more of an additional layering.
But in the re-make movie whose plot extended beyond the original series, it's clear he absolutely had that meaning in mind. That made having the title drop a cathartic experience. It felt like it wasn't 100% planned out, but rather a happy accident turned into a bit of a nod towards the global audiences, while still having the "the meaning was there all along" vibes.
They are both modern english words even if they have roots in ancient greek.
> but different grammatical genders: neon (νέον) is neuter, while γένεσις is feminine.
νέον and γένεσις are gendered but neon and genesis are not.
Since "evangelion" and "genesis" clearly are taken from Greek, so was apparently "neon".
"It" may be the the special case here, as it is a very common word by itself but that a movie is named like this is notable enough for it to be included.
That said, Barbie is a funny case indeed, as it's named after about half of its characters :P
It is a silly one to include, because the word it is picked up by their analysis. Need to remove all hits except where the characters are referencing Pennywise directly.
I also noticed that in some cases a namedrop was registered where the eponymous character speaks, e.g. ALIENS: hisses. These need to be removed as well.
Movies where the name of the movie is the name of the leading character needs to be removed as well, or at least filterable from the list.
All of this makes the site a little less interesting imo. A good title drop in a movie is a fun little easter egg, especially if the name a bit more conceptual, e.g. The Phantom Menace. The way this site is set up at the moment makes it a bit more difficult to find those really good title drops.
[0] https://www.titledrops.net/
Ni!
I guess "Them!" is also affected by this, and maybe The Thing or The Birds...
He specifically calls out `"real"` title drops just a few sections later.
"What's interesting about the (Fiction) list here is that it's pretty international: only two of the top ten movies come from Hollywood, 6 are from India, one from Indonesia and one from Turkey. So it's definitely an international phenomenon."
Here the writer slides seamlessly from talking about movies with title drops to talking about movies with single-word titles which are also the name of the main character, but is still saying things like "What's interesting about this list..." and "...an international phenomenon," as if those are remotely the defining characteristics of the list he just gave. (The defining characteristic, again, is "movies named after the protagonist." That's all.)
Then there's a section break. Since the article clearly outed itself as parody right before the break, I think it's totally reasonable for anyone to stop reading it at that point. (Although maybe not 100% reasonable to come back and comment on HN about it, except maybe to express disappointment and save other people the bother of reading that far themselves.)
Anyway, after the break the author says, "You might have noticed [an icon on each movie that is] named after one of its characters." But scroll back up and you'll see that icon is missing from 4 of the movies in that list of 10: "Saina", "Nussa", "Arif v. 216", and "It". Of those 4, 3 are clearly named after a main character. The fourth (like "Ecks vs. Sever") is named after two characters (Arif and 216) but the graph shows that the author is counting instances of the name "Arif" alone, not instances of the phrase "Arif v 216".
So not only is the article trying to be funny, it's not even playing by consistent rules — it's a parody of an academic paper but also just flat-out lying about the data! That's not only annoying but uncool.
I would actually be interested in reading a real article on the phenomenon of title drops in movies, e.g. by someone who'd gone through a bunch of movies and tallied which of them contain title drops. But the linked article is just garbage.
I'll bet he ingested a file full of known real names in order to know whether the title was a character's name, thus "Nussa", "Ecks vs Sever", etc not showing as "titles matching names".
The sibling comment that he should have at least manually checked his top 10 list is VERY fair, however.
While scrolling, I was surprised by Arif V 216. As I've seen the movie, there is no chance of such a high count of title drops. Skimming the instances, it was just showing the name "Arif." I returned to HN comments to check whether it was mentioned, and only you did.
Cool idea, lazy execution.
An unacknowledged partial title drop for that movie is that "Lord of the Ring" (with no s at the end) is uttered.
In chapter one, Many Meetings, Gandalf tells Frodo:
> Yes, I knew of them. Indeed I spoke of them once to you; for the Black Riders are the Ringwraiths, the Nine Servants of the Lord of the Rings.
And in chapter two, The Council of Elrond, Glorfindel says:
> And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it.
In the final chapter (The Grey Havens) of book six, the Red Book is also titled by Frodo “THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING”. Now there’s a title drop.
(Just in case it’s not obvious: I’m talking about the books here, not the movies. Never seen ’em.)
Found the quote by googling, he was scolding Pippin, not Frodo, and it was "Ring" singular after all:
> "Hurray!" cried Pippin, springing up. "Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!"
> "Hush!" said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. "Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world!"
(Book II, Chapter I)
The Ring is referred to as The Ring, The One Ring, The Ruling Ring, and a few other things, but I do not think it is ever referred to as the "Lord" of anything.
Source? I can't find anything.
And in the darkness bind them.”
Also in Peter Jackson's movie.
The three Elven rings were made in secret by Elves, and were untainted by Sauron. Disregard the TV show, which shows a version contradicting Tolkien.
This is the reason at the end of the Return of the King, with Sauron defeated, Gandalf, Galadriel and (Cirdan?) are able to openly wear the three again. Had they been tools of the Enemy, they would never have been worn again.
An analogy: when someone writes a song and then they need to name it, they will frequently choose a word or phrase that appears in the lyrics. When Leonard Cohen sings “hallelujah” in the song of the same name, is that a “title drop”? I assume not.
What does the article purport them to be? Right at the top I see:
> A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they're in.
That makes no distinction if the title or the script came first. The article does call out movies who do that in a cringe or obvious way (like Suicide Squad, which had prior art) but also includes movies where that is unavoidable, such as Barbie.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter which came first. As soon as you make a line and a title the same, the line becomes a title drop. The audience sees the final product, not the process.
> An analogy
That analogy doesn’t work. Songs are typically repetitive and a few minutes long. Everyone expects them to name the title. A movie, on the other hand, is an experience that asks suspension of disbelief from you, it tries to engross you in its world over the course of multiple hours. When a character title drops, in a second you’re suddenly and forcefully pulled back from the illusion and reminded you’re watching a movie.
It seems to imply a concerted effort to mention the title of the movie in the script in a meta, fourth wall breaking sort of way.
In some cases that's obviously true - Hot Tub Time Machine, Suicide Squad from their examples - but other times an untitled script just needs a title and it's plucked from the script.
I think there's a distinction there, because the latter is less of an Easter Egg sort of thing and more "ok now we need a title."
It makes zero difference to the movie watching experience if the script line came from the script or the other way around. While you’re watching the movie, the effect is exactly the same. So even if you took a line of dialog to make your title, it becomes a title drop nonetheless because the audience doesn’t know (nor should they care) which came first.
Certainly not true in the case of a work adapted from another source like a novel. The words "The Fellowship of the Ring" are never uttered in The Fellowship of the Ring, and Peter Jackson's ham-fisted insert there was obvious even to people who hadn't read it, but especially to those of us who have.
And, by that token, if the dialogue suddenly seems awkward and stunted for no other reason than to insert the title, most people would probably conclude that the title came first.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062800
I disagree; if it's a quote that serves the narrative and isn't jammed in as a reference it doesn't have the same effect as the meta examples. Less of a fourth wall break.
¹ I hope it’s obvious I’m excluding cases where someone deliberately seeks behind-the-scenes information. We’re talking about having only the result of the work as context.
More generally we are not limited only to the film when trying to categorize based on this distinction. The distinction exists even if it is not always discernible.
That said, I think trying to construct separate lists based on this distinction would be nearly impossible.
> Unsurprisingly, movies named after one of their characters have an average of 24.7 title drops, more than twice as much as the usual 10.3.
And this thread started exactly with the point of what the article considers title drops.
The article also highlights the interesting case of “movies named after a character with single title drops”. I’m willing to bet that in those movies, if the name is proffered late enough in the runtime, it may feel like a title drop because the the audience suddenly becomes aware the name had never been said before. When the name is said all the time or once but too early (so you’ll be primed to expect it more often) then the effect is bound to be lessened.
imo it does matter and is the difference between cringe (sometimes intentional) and not
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42062800
On the movie front, No Country for Old Men does something similar.
What is much more interesting is that 11.5% of movies named after their protagonist never mention them by name. I guess I can imagine a few edge cases where this would be usual (protagonists not usually called by their name due to their position, like kings, and movies with little talking), but it's surprising that there are that many.
Aliens (1986)
(Aliens hissing)
https://www.titledrops.net/explorer?movies=tt0090605&title=
I assume this to be a joke. I've never found any reference of anybody doing this online, or anybody even discussing this one story from the show. But holy shit does it make my skin crawl.
It's actually said eight times in the movie (I ctrl+f'd an .srt file). The page mentions the methodology was to use opensubtitles.com, but not how which specific version was to be used from that website was chosen (because opensusbtitles.com lists tons of possible files for each language depending on what version of torrent/etc they match). It is possible that the download script used accidentally chose non-English .srt files sometimes for some films.
But then opensubtitles couldn't be used to analyse that.
Smells like the old internet!
Runpee.com for when best to pee during a long film, Mr Skin for nude scenes (Flesh of The Stars in Knocked up fiction) … and titledrops.net for title drops.
The last line of My Dinner with Andre is "my dinner with Andre." I think that only works because the whole movie feels like a stage play, and there's something very stagey about that choice.
"And yet, now that I am an old, old man, I must confess that of all the faces that appear to me out of the past, the one I see most clearly is that of the girl of whom I've never ceased to dream these many long years. She was the only earthly love in my life, yet I never knew, nor ever learned, her name."
One thing they deem to be a movie “sin” is the fact that movies will often have a line of dialogue in which they'll say the title of the movie. Whenever a movie does this, the CinemaSins Narrator will exclaim “Roll Credits,” as though the title of the film can only be mentioned in the absolute last line of dialogue.
https://popculturalstudies.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/in-defen... highlights some examples.
> 00:23:19 it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Robocop 2
https://youtu.be/BkPxZLWeTBg
(It's a shame there's no nice way on Twitter to sort by number of favorites. You can approximate it by searching for "from:<accountname> min_faves:<number>", but it doesn't correct for the number of followers the person had at a given point. Which is a problem with subreddit "top" sorting, come to think of it, as it strongly weights recent posts when the subreddit was more popular. Always wished they'd fix that.)
Yes, it's a game, but from one of two series that cemented video games as a cinematic medium, when developers so desire. 35 years of build-up, and a love letter to the whole series, including (especially) the ones people derided (FNC). Also, interesting because it's not a direct quote of the title, but still something that everyone who got to this point recognized immediately.
I really like a credit drop a la Gaspar Noe just rolling the credits mid way through Climax.
I like the idea of a surrealist scene in a restaurant where the credits are just tucked away in a menu. Maybe it's been done
The closing music choices are excellent.
Michael Bluth: "Your average American male is in a perpetual state of adolescence, you know, arrested development"
Narrator: "Hey! Thats the name of the show"
> Chachi: "Look, this is not the first time I’ve been brought in to replace Barry Zuckerman. I think I can do for you everything he did, plus skew younger…"
> Narrator: "No one was making fun of Andy Griffith. I can't emphasize that enough."
https://preview.redd.it/in-the-netflix-original-series-resid...
edit: oops, just noticed the article also mentions the meme
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_(TV_series)
I only know this because of the fun honest reviews made of it.
It's even worse than I remembered.
That dialogue is from the book. The book gets its title from the dialogue. The film has the same title and dialogue because it's based on the book.
There is no point where script writers are sat down trying to figure out how to work the title into the dialogue.
https://youtu.be/r99hB4FzhXw?&t=153
This is a fun idea but I also appreciate the extra effort to make it nice to explore!
¹ Literally
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
"titles containing a colon are split and either side counts as a title drop. So for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring either "Lord of the Rings" or "Fellowship of the Ring" would count as title drops"
C'mon it was half the content of my comment and you still refused to acknowledge it. What do you want