Title drops in movies

549 pointsposted 8 days ago
by gaws
(titledrops.net)

167 Comments

GolDDranks

8 days ago

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

8 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

7 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

8 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

7 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

8 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

5 days ago

This comment is now the first result on google when you search for "Neon Genesis title drop".

twic

8 days ago

What does the dialogue say in Japanese? Neon genesis or new era?

GolDDranks

7 days ago

ネオンジェネシス, neon jeneshisu

darepublic

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 days ago

Might acknowledge, but fails to fix. For instance, leading genre is biography since they aren't excluding 'name dropping'.

n2d4

8 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

8 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

7 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]

[0] https://www.titledrops.net/

onionisafruit

8 days ago

Including “It” on the list made it seem like a parody.

jhbadger

8 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

8 days ago

I think it's quite interesting to include. Apparently Barbie says "Barbie" more than It says "it", which is fascinating!

loganc2342

8 days ago

I’ve never seen It, but having seen Barbie, it’s not all that surprising lol.

sim7c00

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

6 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

7 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

8 days ago

after doing a naive approach he then drills down into more proper title drops.

tedunangst

8 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

8 days ago

In The Ghost Writer the main character's name is never mentioned.

jachee

8 days ago

Fight Club, either.

aidenn0

8 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.

zwp

8 days ago

And Layer Cake

bregma

8 days ago

Now watch Rebecca.

whatsgolden

8 days ago

Barbie could be en even better movie if one did a shot each time the name was heard.

dredmorbius

8 days ago

That would make it a Fatal Attraction.

PittleyDunkin

8 days ago

They could have just named the character and avoided this too

kqr

8 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

7 days ago

What a pessimistic view.

bananaflag

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

7 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

8 days ago

> The Lord of the Rings is the One Ring

Source? I can't find anything.

jachee

8 days ago

”One Ring to rule them all

And in the darkness bind them.”

jimjimjim

8 days ago

and Sauron used/uses that ring as a tool

the_af

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 days ago

In The Rings of Power Sauron is called Lord of the Rings (plural)

account42

8 days ago

I'm not sure why you think fanfiction is relevant to this discussion.

adriand

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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

8 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.

nkozyra

8 days ago

> 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

8 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

8 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

8 days ago

I don’t think anyone would regard using Barbie’s name in the movie as a title drop.

latexr

8 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.

darepublic

8 days ago

The movie "It" neither uses title drops, nor was the title plucked from the script.

jsbg

8 days ago

> it doesn’t matter which came first

imo it does matter and is the difference between cringe (sometimes intentional) and not

throw4847285

7 days ago

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

7 days ago

"What exactly do you mean.." -> "When exactly do you mean...?"

throw4847285

7 days ago

Oops. I just dashed it out without looking it up. What you said.

Sebb767

8 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

8 days ago

sometimes the title is in the script, but isn't actually a line said by anyone:

Aliens (1986)

(Aliens hissing)

https://www.titledrops.net/explorer?movies=tt0090605&title=

contravariant

8 days ago

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

8 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.

darekkay

8 days ago

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

8 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

8 days ago

Was 'je ne regrette rien' playing when you had that doubt?

rurban

8 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

8 days ago

Referenced strongly in 2024’s The Substance.

rurban

8 days ago

Yes, exactly! Good catch

devonsolomon

8 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

8 days ago

Your list made me remember doesthedogdie.com which lists diverse trigger warnings in movies and other media.

shrikant

8 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

7 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

7 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

7 days ago

Just remembered that Good Time does this as well, and it's heartbreaking.

bardan

7 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

8 days ago

“That’s the name of the movie!” - most Pitch Meeting videos

gowld

7 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.

https://popculturalstudies.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/in-defen... highlights some examples.

bombcar

7 days ago

Now I wonder how many title drops are the last line or near enough as such ...

evil-olive

8 days ago

one of my favorites is Robocop 2 (1990):

> 00:23:19 it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, Robocop 2

Rebelgecko

8 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.

https://youtu.be/BkPxZLWeTBg

xsmasher

7 days ago

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

8 days ago

A pointed reversal of this is "We Need to Talk About Kevin", which went unsaid through the movie.

miltonlost

8 days ago

Which is why it's such a great title. All that irony

cezart

8 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.

jml7c5

8 days ago

There's a parody account on Twitter that I dearly love for these. In particular: https://x.com/Saythetitle/status/909933269982105605

(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.)

redundantly

8 days ago

"What, we some kinda... Suicide Squad?" (◔_◔)

frmersdog

8 days ago

The hardest name drop of the last decade has got to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln6ZxXSnMwg (Massive spoilers for Last Fiction 16).

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

7 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

8 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

8 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.

gnrlst

8 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.

mhh__

8 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

8 days ago

"The only way for me to solve this crisis is to be Superman 4 - The Quest for Peace"

r0bbbo

8 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?

mkl

8 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

8 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?!

locusofself

8 days ago

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

8 days ago

The narrator, Ron Howard, also appears in an episode while still doing the narration and referring to himself.

xsmasher

7 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."

latexr

8 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!”

¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_(TV_series)

undebuggable

8 days ago

It's actually well executed how they managed to say exactly once "Amadeus" or "Patton" in their biographical films.

gothroach

7 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.

KTibow

8 days ago

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

epolanski

8 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_

8 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

8 days ago

You're right, I rewatched the video!

It's even worse than I remembered.

olddustytrail

8 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

5 days ago

It's still forced, just in the source material instead of the adaptation.

mobeigi

8 days ago

Wow I love the presentation of this website, very nice!

racl101

8 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

8 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

8 days ago

Brokeback Mountain apparently has 0 title drops, even though all Ennis and Jack have is Brokeback Mountain!

MPSimmons

8 days ago

Oh my god this seems like so much work. I'm exhausted on their behalf.

julianeon

8 days ago

The one in Hot Tub Time Machine will never stop being funny to me.

sidcool

8 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.

yieldcrv

8 days ago

Sometimes the title is added after the script

edgineer

8 days ago

Unfortunately he'll miss e.g. "I'm sick and tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane."

nickdothutton

7 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

8 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

8 days ago

"I'm just so tired of all these star wars"

Avlin67

8 days ago

what is title drops ? what doest it mean ?

latexr

8 days ago

The first line¹ of the article explains it. It even has “title drop” in bold.

¹ Literally

gield

8 days ago

The article explains it very well.

JimmyWilliams1

8 days ago

well educative for people from creative fields

alehlopeh

8 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.

stavros

8 days ago

You should, perhaps, read the article.

alehlopeh

8 days ago

I obviously read at least some of the article.

_puk

8 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

8 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

8 days ago

There's a section in the article regarding how to handle colons.

lmm

8 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

8 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