Quotes • Headscratchers • Playing With • Useful Notes • Analysis • Image Links • Haiku • Laconic |
---|
This is one of the easiest ways to name a work of fiction. Instead of naming a series after a central location, the name comes from the vehicle that is the focal point of the series. Extra points to those works where the vehicle doubles as the primary setting (ie a good deal of the character interaction occurs onboard), the MacGuffin, or some combination of the two, all of which seem to be more likely if the vehicle is a Cool Ship (no, not that kind of ship) be it spacefaring, nautical, time-traveling, or an airship. As the title suggests, other vehicles, mecha, helicopters, tanks etc. also qualify for this trope.
Examples of Vehicle Title include:
Anime and Manga[]
- Black Lagoon
- Cowboy Bebop (compare Cowboy Bebop at His Computer)
- Fafner in the Azure: Dead Agressor
- Linebarrels of Iron
- Martian Successor Nadesico.
- Mazinger Z
- Megas XLR
- Mobile Suit Gundam and almost every other gundam title since, (excluding 0080, the 8th ms team, 0083, chars counterattack, and SEED)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Outlaw Star
- RahXephon
- Sentou Yousei Yukikaze
- Sol Bianca
- Space Runaway Ideon
- Super Dimension Fortress Macross
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
- Uchuu Senkan Yamato (AKA Space Battleship Yamato, AKA Star Blazers).
- Vandread sort of. The main ship is called the Nirvana, but the series gets it's name from the Vandreads (made by combining Dread fighter-ships Van mecha) all of which are called Vandred (insert female pilot's name here), except Super Vandread a.k.a. Vandread Pyoro (Pyoro being a robot and neither a pilot nor female)
Comic Books[]
- The Haunted Tank in the DCU.
Film[]
- Air Force One sort of.
- The Battleship Potemkin. A film labelled "the most important propaganda film of all time".
- The Big Bus
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- Drive Angry
- Genevieve
- The Hindenberg
- The Hunt for Red October
- K19: The Widowmaker
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
- The Poseidon Adventure and its remake Poseidon
- The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
- Serenity, The Movie of Firefly
- Titan A.E.
- Titanic
- U-571
- The Wackiest Ship In The Army
- PT-109
- The Beast of War, though not calling it by name.
- 3:10 to Yuma
Literature[]
- Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic.
- C. S. Forrester's The Last Nine Days of the Bismark
- And its 1960 film adaptation, Sink The Bismark!
- Stephen King's Christine
Live Action TV[]
- Airwolf (helicopter)
- Andromeda
- Ark II
- Battlestar Galactica
- Fireball XL 5
- Firefly to an extent. While the actual ship was named Serenity, it was a Firefly-class transport.
- The Love Boat was an in-universe nickname for the semi-eponymous cruise liner "Pacific Princess."
- Red Dwarf
- In German-speaking markets Star Trek was originally called Raumschiff Enterprise.
- Although the series itself wouldn't qualify, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had the episodes "Defiant" and "Valiant". Care to guess which ships those episodes revolve around? There was another episode called simply "The Ship" about a crashed Jem'hadar fighter.
- Star Trek: Enterprise
- Star Trek: Voyager, pictured above.
- Supercar
- Supertrain
- The Wackiest Ship In The Army
Music[]
- Good Shp Venus
- Yellow Submarine by The Beatles
Theater[]
- H.M.S. Pinafore
- Duncan Pflaster's play The Starship Astrov
- Subverted in A Streetcar Named Desire as the reference is merely symbolic.
Video Games[]
- Armored Core
- Starship Titanic
- Metal Gear - Only for the first game, where the enemy mecha is simply called "Metal Gear". Afterward, the game titles and the Metal Gear mecha featured in each game no longer matched up.
- Metal Slug. The subtitle for the first game is even "Super Vehicle 001".