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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Coming soon from Paramount Pictures - '''[[Airplane!]] III
'''[[William Shatner]]:''' Wait! That's EXACTLY what they'll expect us to do! }}
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The result of this is that the original ''Foomovie'' will become known as ''Foomovie 1'', and on occasion will actually be rereleased this way (see [[Retronym]]). This is actually a recent practice, beginning in the 1970s.
If the movies in a series were made out of chronological order, the numbering can refer either to the order in which they were made or the order in which they take place. The latter gets you titles like ''[[Resident Evil]] Zero'' and ''[[The Lion King]] 1½''. Very rarely, you'll see a prequel with a negative number. The print version of the webcomic ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' has two prequels, numbered #0 and #-1, and the French comic ''Donjon'' (planned to run from #1-#100) has spinoff series planned to run from #-99 to #0 and #101 to #200.
Some series use Arabic numerals, some use Roman numerals, and some use either. The distinction between Roman numerals and Arabic seems to be the distinction between grand-scale affairs that take themselves very seriously (and thus borrow a bit of grandeur from the western world's most prominent [[Vestigial Empire]]), and stories that either don't take themselves entirely seriously, or have a futuristic bent that makes the Arabic numerals look all sciency and mathematical.
This trope [[Stopped Numbering Sequels|can be subverted]]: The ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series started with ''Marathon'' and ''Marathon 2'' but then jumped to ''Marathon '''Infinity'''''. The subsequent release and open-source development of ''Marathon 2''{{'}}s game engine restored sequential numbering by naming the engine ''Aleph One'', [[Up to Eleven|the next largest infinity]]. (See below.)
This is, if anything, even more common in video games than in movies, although the "Part 2" variation is absent there. Literary examples, on the other hand, are very, very rare.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[100 Bullets]]'' has an interesting twist on this
* ''[[The Ultimates]]'' 2 and 3.
* ''[[Kick-Ass]]'' 2.
== [[Film]] ==
* The first major film to start using this technique was ''[[The Godfather]]'' in ''The Godfather Part II''. It was one of [[Francis Ford Coppola]]'s three demands for working on the sequel. His two other demands were approved, but the studio highly objected to simply following the title with a number. Its success began the tradition of numbered sequels.
** Oddly, enough, this was [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] for ''The Godfather Part III''. Coppola wanted to call it ''The Death of Michael Corleone'' but the studio wouldn't let him.
* The ''[[Rocky (film)|Rocky]]'' series followed this trope until the sixth installment which was called ''Rocky Balboa'' (as if the other movies were about some other guy named "Rocky").
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* ZAZ didn't want to have anything to do with ''[[Airplane!]] II - The Sequel'', (and even claim to this day to have never watched it), even though they'd later make sequels to ''Naked Gun'' and ''[[Hot Shots]]!''. ''Airplane II'' lampshades the trope with the announcement at the end of the credits "Coming soon from Paramount Pictures : ''Airplane III''" followed by William Shatner saying "Wait! That's exactly what they'll be expecting us to do!"
** Speaking of ''[[Hot Shots]]!'': its sequel was ''Hot Shots! Part Deux'',<ref>[[Everything Sounds Sexier in French|French]] for two</ref> with the tagline, "Just [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Deux]] It!"
* The ''[[Ocean's Eleven]]'' remake proved popular enough to warrant a couple of sequels. Instead of using the rather cumbersome ''Ocean's Eleven Two'' or
** And the titles end up being spot-on with the number of people involved in the main heist (12 adds Ocean's wife, 13 adds [[Enemy Mine|the antagonist of the other movies]] and a technical expert).
* Likewise, the second live-action ''101 Dalmatians'' film was titled ''102 Dalmatians''.
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* Many ''[[Star Wars]]'' fans were rather confused when the 1977 original, simply titled ''Star Wars'', was followed by Episode '''Five''', ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]''. A rerelease of the original rechristened it "Episode Four: [[A New Hope]]", paving the way for later prequels.
* For its European release, Italian director [[Lucio Fulci]] heavily re-cut George Romero's ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' to produce what was essentially a completely different movie, which he titled ''Zombi''. After its success, Fulci went on to produce five sequels, which were titled ''[[Zombi 2]]'', ''Zombi 3'', and so forth. ''Zombi 2'' was simply retitled ''Zombie'' for its North American release, but the later sequels shared their numbering on both sides of the pond - meaning that while you can find ''Zombie'', ''Zombie 3'', and ''Zombie 4'' at your local video rental outlet, there is no movie available in North America titled ''Zombie 2''.
** No longer true on DVD. ''Zombie'' is available as ''Zombie''
* According to popular myth, the reason the play ''[[The Madness of George III]]'' was filmed as ''[[The Madness of King George]]'' was in case people avoided it until they'd seen ''The Madness of George'' and ''The Madness of George II''.
** Along similar lines, though this was just a joke, was the story of people wondering how they had missed seeing the nine prequels to Spike Lee's ''Malcolm X''.
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* In the [[Jerry Stiller]] film ''[[The Independent]]'', long-time exploitation film director Morty Fineman is asked by the filmmaker—it's a [[Mockumentary]] about Fineman's fictional career—if it's true he invented the sequel. Fineman corrects that, saying he invented the roman numeral after the title. The film then shows the title card from his post-nuclear sequel, ''World War III II''.
* The ''[[Pokémon]]'' movies go like this: "Pokémon: The First Movie", "Pokémon The Movie 2000", "Pokémon 3 The Movie", "Pokémon 4Ever", and then they stop trying to incorporate the numbers into the title and just go to straight subtitles.
** Made absolutely ridiculous by the fact that the subtitle of "The First Movie" is "Mewtwo Strikes Back", clearly implying that it was a sequel. (This had long been what we Americans had been told, but it turns out that this is not totally true, as ''The Origin of Mewtwo'' was just a short featurette of the same length as those ubiquitous Pikachu specials.) The origin story, which had been removed from the American theatrical release of ''Pokemon: The First Movie'' in order to preserve the G rating, was eventually packaged on the direct-to-video release Mewtwo Returns. So we have a "Strikes Back", and then we have a "Returns". Is anyone else sensing a ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Homage]] here?
* The ''[[Shrek]]'' films seem to be using the same system as ''[[Blackadder]]'' as an [[Homage]]: ''Shrek'', ''Shrek 2'', ''Shrek the Third'', and ''Shrek Forever After''.
** They were supposedly reluctant to use the title "Shrek 3," lest it create confusion with the short "Shrek 3-D" which was released in a box set with the first two films. Apparently [[Viewers are Morons]].
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* The ''[[Saw]]'' film series went from 1 to 6 (using Roman numerals for the second to sixth films). Then an [[Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo|Oddly Numbered Sequel]] (at least over here) is the seventh movie, known as ''Saw 3D''.
* ''[[King Kong]] Lives'' was released as ''King Kong 2'' in several countries.
* The
* The first three ''[[Mission: Impossible (film)||Mission Impossible]]'' films do this. Then the fourth was ''Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol''.
* ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'' has two sequel, but the first uses Roman numbers (''Men In Black II'', stylized ''MIIB'') and the latter Arabic ones (''Men In Black 3'', stylized ''MIB<sup>3</sup>'').
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* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'', which consists of the [[Assassin's Creed (video game)|original game]], ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', and the upcoming ''[[Assassin's Creed III]]''. Also includes a pair of sequels, ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' and ''[[Assassin's Creed: Revelations]]'' to the second game.
* The three Compile-developed sequels to ''[[Puyo Puyo]]'' have puns on numbers. ''Tsū'', the Japanese word for expert, also sounds like the English word two; ''SUN'', when pronounced in English, sounds like the Japanese word for three; and the "yon" in ''Puyo Puyo~n'' means four.
* Namco [[Four Is Death|really, really didn't want to make a fourth game]] in the ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series. When they had to, it was only under condition that its number was padded to ''[[Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies]]''. They finally [[Stopped Numbering Sequels|gave it up]] after ''[[Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation]]'', only to bring it back with ''[[Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown]]'', having released several games in between.
* ''[[Gauntlet (1985 video game)]]'' was followed by ''Gauntlet II'', ''Gauntlet: The Third Encounter'' and ''Gauntlet IV''. ''The Third Encounter'' is an oddball not only in title; it was only released for a handheld system, namely the [[Atari Lynx]].
* The ''[[Ys]]'' series had two different fourth installments produced concurrently: ''Ys IV: Mask of the Sun'' for the Super Famicom and ''Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys'' for the [[TurboGrafx-16]]. Only the former seems to be canonical, though.
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=== Sports ===
* Each [[Super Bowl]] is known by its Roman numbered ordinal. This began with Super Bowl III in 1969, after the first two were simply known as the "AFL-NFL Championship Game" and later retconned into Super Bowls.
* The [[Olympic Games]] are officially referred to by number. The 2008 Summer Games in Beijing were the Games of the XXIX [29th] Olympiad of the modern era. (it's worth noticing the ones cancelled due to World Wars still count.)
* In boxing and mixed martial arts, rematches between notable competitors are often numbered, such as Ali-Frazier 2.
* The [[Mixed Martial Arts|Ultimate Fighting Championship]] began using numbered sequels after the first event, which was retroactively renamed "UFC 1: The Beginning." Interestingly, there was much fanfare over UFC 100, even though it was actually the 105th UFC event due to the fact that five previous events did not follow the traditional numbering scheme. The smaller Ultimate Fight Night series of events used a numbering scheme until UFN 6, after which they were usually named after their headliners. The Ultimate Fighter reality series is numbered based on season. A new{{when}} line of free events airing on the Versus channel is set to debut{{verify}} with "UFC Live on Versus 1," a rare instance of a work receiving a number before it has any sequels. Many other mixed martial arts promotions have followed suit by numbering each of their events.
{{reflist}}
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