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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Confusing term for story titles that don't really work at all, and thus are changed."''|'''''[[
The first step in the creative process is an idea. That part is obvious. Coming up with what to ''call'' that idea can be troublesome. And if you don't have a name for it, then talking about it is a chore. And even when you are working all alone, you will need to call your new novel-in-progress something when you save it on your computer.
This is why a lot of things go through a number of names between production and release. The end result may be that you hear actors talk in an interview about a movie they're doing, only to find it came out under a different name all together.
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Not to be confused with the British production company affiliated with [[Universal]].
See also [[Market
{{examples
== [[Anime]] ==
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== [[Card Games]] ==
* ''[[Magic:
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Watchmen (
== [[Documentaries]] ==
* ''[[
* ''[[
== [[Fanfic]] ==
* When ''[[
== [[Film]] ==
* ''The [[Toxic Avenger]]'' was filmed under the working title ''The Monster Hero'' - which gets a number of [[Title Drop]] moments, as it was changed at the last minute.
* [[Ed Wood (
* Subversion: Everyone ''thought'' that ''[[Cloverfield]]'' was just a working title. Then the movie came out under that name.
* Inversion: A number of [[B
* ''[[Star Wars]]'': ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' had "Blue Harvest" as a working title to keep the production hidden - asides from overeager fans, they really didn't want to repeat the experience of being overcharged by location managers for ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]''. When ''[[Family Guy]]'' made their ''Star Wars'' special, they called it ''Family Guy: Blue Harvest''.
** ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' had the working title Jar Jar's Big Adventure, even though he isn't there nearly as much as [[The Phantom Menace|last time]].
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* Earlier titles for the ''[[Wallace and Gromit]]'' film ''Curse Of The Were-Rabbit'' included ''The Vegeburglars'' and ''The Great Vegetable Plot''.
** ''A Matter Of Loaf And Death'' was originally to be named ''Trouble at T'Mill''. The original name was kept for the British release, but changed because no one else would get the joke.
* ''[[The Invention of Lying]]'' was originally going to be called ''This Side of the Truth''. Ricky Gervais's blog would indicate that this was a voluntary attempt to get the point across better, but that hasn't stopped people from [[
* The two ''Matrix'' sequels were shot back to back under the codename ''The Burly Man''.
* ''[[October Sky]]'' is an interesting case. The working title, "Rocket Boys"
* Subverted with ''[[Snakes
* ''[[Live Free or Die Hard]]'' was first announced as ''Die Hard 4.0'', tying into the films cyber-terrorism plot. When shooting actually began, [[Twentieth Century Fox]] announced the title would be ''Live Free Or Die Hard.'' Though the film was released everywhere but America as ''4.0'' Director Len Wiseman and star [[Bruce Willis]] can be heard on the DVD commentary mocking the change.
* ''[[The Thief and
** Not to mention the early period when it was about Mulla Nasruddin, and has names such as "''Nasruddin!''", "''The Majestic Fool''" or "''The Amazing Nasruddin''".
* ''[[Tron
* ''[[
* [[Woody Allen]]'s films usually have generic working titles during production, such as "Woody Allen Fall Project" or "Woody Allen London Project". In one case, the working title simply remained and became the film's actual title: ''[[Manhattan Murder Mystery]]''.
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** ''"Shiver"'' for Fragile Eternity
** ''"Skin Starved"'' for Radiant Shadows
* The first book in ''[[The Hunger Games (
== [[Live Action Television]] ==
* The Australian drama series ''headLand'' had the working titles of ''Away From Home'', ''Campus'' and ''Ten Degrees South''. The first title is explained by the fact it was orginally intended as a [[Spin
* The UK version of ''[[Who Wants to Be
* ''[[High School Musical]]'' was meant to be a working title, but the title was still being used in post-production and it stuck.
* ''[[The Worst Witch|Weirdsister College]]'' had a working title of ''The Worst Witch: The College Years'' (and ended up being used in an autumn CITV promo).
* ''[[That '70s Show]]'' had the working titles ''The Kids Are Alright'' and ''Teenage Wasteland'', but everyone just kept referring to it as "that '70s show" and the title stuck.
* During development, ''[[Power Rangers Operation Overdrive]]'' was originally titled ''Drive Force'' and later ''Relic Hunters''.
** ''[[Power Rangers Jungle Fury]]'' was titled ''Beast Fist'' early on in its development.
* When ''[[VR Troopers]]'' was still in development as a one-hero show, it was going to be titled ''Psycon''. Later it was renamed ''Cybertron''. It was probably changed after that to [[Transformers|avoid stepping on Hasbro's toes]].
* ''[[Torchwood
* Many episodes of ''[[
** In his ''[[
* ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'' was originally conceived as ''Ready, Willing and Wired''. When Stephen Stohn suggested the eventual title, apparently Linda Schuyler disliked the sense of rehashing past successes and felt the ''Trek'' reference sounded forced at first. But, since name recognition both in the U.S. and abroad is always an uphill battle for a [[Canadian Series]], tying it in with the [[Degrassi Junior High|still-popular]] [[Degrassi High|previous efforts]] made good business sense.
* ''[[Perfect Strangers]]'' was originally called "The Greenhorn", likely in reference to how new and exciting was for [[Funny Foreigner|Balki]].
* ''[[Soap]]'' was only supposed to be the working title but after getting the show done they couldn't think of a better title so left it.
** The same thing happened to ''[[
== [[Music]] ==
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* Speaking of ''[[My Fair Lady]]'', its working title was ''Lady Liza'', but the song of that name was cut.
* The musical ''Something For The Boys'' began production as ''Jenny Get Your Gun''. It's no coincidence that the same star and same writers next joined forces on ''[[Annie Get Your Gun]]''.
* ''[[Oklahoma!]]'' began production under the title of its source play, ''Green Grow the Lilacs'', but started its out-of-town tryouts as ''Away We Go''.
== Toys ==
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* Valve went through this A LOT for ''[[Half-Life]]'' and ''Half-Life 2''. In fact, Gordon was originally Ivan (nicknamed Ivan The Space Biker). Breen was The Consul, Eli Vance was Eli Maxwell and had no relation to Alyx, Mossman wasn't named Judith, and countless others. It all changed between E3 and the launch of ''Half-Life 2''.
* As a shout out to Half-Life, [[Left 4 Dead|William "Bill" Overbeck]] originally had the last name Calhoun.
* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' was originally to be called ''Heroes'' (no relation to [[Heroes (TV series)|the TV show]], though that might be why it changed).
* ''[[Twisted Metal]]'' was originally ''High Octane'', as seen in the original FMV endings.
* The first ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' game had the working title of ''Real Bout'', which had several [[Title Drop|title drops]] thorough the backgrounds of the game's stages. It was eventually used as the actual title for a later sub-series of ''Fatal Fury'' games.
* ''[[Final Fight]]'' was original titled ''[[Street Fighter|Street Fighter '89]]'', but was changed after play testers criticized the game of being a [[Dolled
* ''[[Resident Evil 3: Nemesis]]'' was originally intended as a side-story to the series and was known under a variety of working titles such as "Biohazard Gaiden" (not to be confused with the later Game Boy Color game of the same name), "Biohazard 1.9/2.1" and "Biohazard: Last Escape". The "3" was added to the last title, as Capcom wanted to release a final numbered Resident Evil game before moving on to the next-generation platforms.
** ''[[Resident Evil Code: Veronica]]'' was originally titled "Biohazard 3" during its early drafts, until Capcom decided to keep the numbered installments on the [[
* ''[[
** The original plan for ''[[Metal Gear
** ''[[
** During the early development of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2
* ''[[Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi]]'' (''The Sword of Seal''), the first Game Boy Advance game in the series, was originally titled ''Fire Emblem: Ankoku no Miko'' ("The Maiden of Darkness").
* The first ''[[Alone in
* ''[[Battalion Wars]]'', a [[Nintendo
* [[Konami]] initially planned to release ''[[Contra|Contra Spirits]]'' in America as ''Contra IV'', since they originally intended to market ''[[Dolled
* Almost all of [[Nintendo]]'s gaming platforms had codenames during development that were different from the names Nintendo actually used on the market. The model numbers of most of the hardware that Nintendo has released more often than not reflect the original codename of the platform (i.e. every [[Game Boy]]-related hardware has a model number that begins with the letters "DMG").
** Every piece of [[NES|Family Computer]] hardware has a model number beginning with the letters "HVC", which stands for "Home Video Computer" (the original name for the Famicom). Oddly enough, [[SNES|Super Famicom's]] model number begins with SHVC, even though Nintendo already rejected the name for the original Famicom. The western Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super NES averted this by choosing model numbers that reflected the system's final names (NES and SNS respectively).
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* The codename for the [[Sega Genesis|Genesis 32X]] was "Project Mars", following the Solar System motif of the [[Sega Saturn]] (thus, the unreleased Genesis/32X hybrid would've been the Neptune, which is where the protagonist of ''[[Neptunia]]'' got her name from, by the way).
* Two competing architectures were developed by Sega to become the basis of the [[Sega Dreamcast|Dreamcast]]. One was called [[Katanas Are Just Better]] and the other was called [[Virtua Fighter|Dural]]. Sega decided to use the Dural design, but 3Dfx, the company that made that design's GPU, leaked its specs so they chose the Katana to be the Dreamcast instead.
* [[
** The name "[[
** In actuality, this game already had a ''different''
* ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'' were originally known as ''[[Numbered Sequel|Pocket Monsters 2]]: Gold and Silver''.
** ''[[Pokémon Crystal]]'', the [[Updated Rerelease]] to the aforementioned ''[[
* ''[[Fallout]]'' had a [[Zig
* ''[[Darwinia
* ''[[Mortal Kombat
* ''[[Super Mario 3D Land]]'', ''[[Mario Kart]] 7'', and ''[[
== [[Web Original]] ==
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* ''[[Fantasia]]'' had the rather plain title ''The Concert Feature'' while in production. A contest was held to find a better title and the musical term ''fantasia'' (meaning a free-form composition using familiar themes) seemed the most appropriate. Its sequel ''Fantasia 2000'' was originally going to be called ''Fantasia Continued''.
* When it was first pitched in 1992, Andrew Stanton's film ''[[WALL-E]]'' was known as ''Trash Planet''. And while we're on Pixar...
** ''[[
** Pixar's next two projects are ''[[
* The sequel series to ''[[
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Title Tropes]]
[[Category:Working Title]]
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