Looking for a good name for your work of fiction? Look no further, just find a number tangentially related to the premise and use that as the title. Supposedly, this makes it sound "mysterious", especially if the number is also used as an Arc Number.
Compare Running Time in the Title. A Super-Trope to Advanced Tech 2000 (the number indicates this is a more technologically advanced version than v1), Annual Title (the number indicates approximate year of release), and Title 1 (the number indicates it is first in a series).
Titles with years go on Sub-Trope: Title by Year. Other subtropes are, Numbered Sequels, N+1 Sequel Title, and "Number of Objects" Title, Time Title. You Are Number Six is a sister trope, for when it's a character rather than a work that's named after a number.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Black Jack 21.
- Daitarn 3
- Eyeshield 21.
- Figure 17 Tsubasa & Hikaru.
- Eureka SeveN. Eureka is the name of the female lead. "Seven" is never talked about.
- Macross 7
- Ranma ½
- Samurai Seven
- Voltes V
- Zambot 3
Comic Books
Fan Works
- Adventures of a Line Hopper has two fics with number title:
- 88719, which is later revealed to be the name of a space police force.
- Four Five Six, named after Torchwood villain 456.
- A Certain Unknown Level 0: Level 0 is a power level ranking, and a Protagonist Title.
- Evangelion 303
- Five Score, Divided by Four: A.k.a "5 * 20 / 4", which equals 25.
- Tantabus Mark II
- Thousand Shinji
Film — Live-Action
- 3, justified as the title of a biopic of Dale Earnhardt, who used the number for most of his career.
- 8½, so called by director Federico Fellini because he had previously directed six features, two shorts, and one film with a co-director—counting the shorts and the collaborative works as half-pictures, that made this one number eight and a half.
- 9 to 5, 1980 Work Com starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton as three office workers taking comedic revenge on Bad Boss Dabney Coleman. The title refers to 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., a typical working day in the U.S.
- 10: 1979 romantic comedy starting Dudley Moore and Bo Derek, about a man obsessed with a beautiful woman who is way out of his league.
- The Russian film 12, a remake of 12 Angry Men.
- 13 is a Foreign Remake of 13 Tzameti. The protagonist is forced to take part in a Deadly Game of Russian Roulette. The players are only known by a number, his being 13.
- Seventeen Again (2000), in which a boy genius accidentally turns his grandparents into 17-year-olds and must change them back due to negative effects of the invention used to make this happen.
- 17 Again (2009) (no relation to the 2000 film of the same name aside from title and plots involving de-aging)
- 18 Again! (1988)
- The movie 21 (2008), which is about a group of students trained to count cards at blackjack.
- 22, a Direct-to-Video Norwegian Slasher Movie. The number being the date of any month when another woman gets killed.
- 42, named after Jackie Robinson's jersey number with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
- 54: Released in 1998, and set in 1979 at New York's legendary disco, Studio 54, focusing on the sex and drugs of the club scene. A 2015 directory's cut restored about 40 minutes of material, in part focusing on gay and bisexual characters.
- 61* attached to Roger Maris; nothing to do with his own number (for most of his career, 9), but it's the number most associated with him (for his breaking of Babe Ruth's 60-homers-a-season record, the asterisk being added because seasons were shorter in Ruth's day).
- 65, about a Human Alien crash-landing on earth sixty-five million years ago.
- 187, also known as One Eight Seven, from 1997, is Samuel L. Jackson's first top-billed role. He plays a teacher who was nearly killed in an assault, and later confronts gang problems. The film's name comes from the California Penal Code Section 187, which defines murder.
- 300, referring to the 300 Spartans defending Thermopylae from the Persians.
- The Korean psychological horror film, 301, 302. The title references the numbers of two adjacent apartments, home to two women obsessed with food. One does not eat at all, the other is a chef and a cannibal.
- 53 Sundays is a comedy-drama named after how long it took one of the characters to write his first novel, which is, incidentally, also called 53 Sundays, and which isn't too relevant to the plot.
- 555 (1988) is a Slasher Movie about a Depraved Bisexual necrophiliac Serial Killer known as the Lake Front Butcher. He kills on the first five days of May (the fifth month), every five years.
- Horror film 976-EVIL (directed by Robert Englund), which gets its name from an evil phone number.
- 1408, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, based on a Stephen King short story. The number signifies a haunted hotel room, with Cusack playing a horror writer investigating it. The digits of "1408" add up to 13, and part of the story includes the idea of buildings "not having" a thirteenth floor.
- π The fundamental mathematical value 3.141592653589793... First feature directed by Darren Aronofsky, a Psychological Thriller about an unstable mathematician investigating the number's hidden properties. Much like the number itself, the film is often quite irrational.
- Nine, a 2009 film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name, which was itself an adaptation of Fellini's 8½. An All-Star Cast led by Daniel Day-Lewis as a director with lots of woman troubles.
- The Number 23, a psychological thriller starring Jim Carrey as a killer obsessed with the number 23.
- R100, a riff on Japanese movie ratings. A movie rated "R100" would be unsuitable for viewers under 100 years old.
- Se7en, referring to the pervasive theme of the Seven Deadly Sins.
- The 1979 movie Seven about a Magnificent Seven group of hitmen hired to kill a group of seven gangsters planning to take over Hawaii.
- Thirteen (2003), starring Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. The title refers to the ages of the two young lead characters, who get themselves into some very adult troubles.
- Thr3e, based off the book by Ted Dekker, about a seminary student terrorized by a mysterious bomber called the Riddle Killer.
Literature
- Alfred Bester's Five Million Two Hundred Seventy One Thousand And Nine, which involves a Remittance Man alien.
- Thr3e by Ted Dekker, about a seminary student terrorized by a mysterious bomber called the Riddle Killer.
Live-Action TV
- 18 Again
- 24; and for that matter, The DCU series 52 and the Doctor Who episode "42", as each of these titles is a Shout-Out to 24 due to using Real Time format. "42" was also a Shout-Out to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- The Heroes episode ".07%". This was a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story "The Seven Percent Solution."
- The 4400 science fiction series about alien abductees returned to earth, many of whom manifest superhuman abilities. Also had a Sequel Series in 2021 titled simply 4400.
- 90210 was the 2008 Sequel Series to the original Beverly Hills, 90210. The numbers reference the locale's zip code.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episodes "The 37's" and "11:59".
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "11001001".
- An enormous number of episodes on The West Wing include numbers and don't fit in subtropes, some named for bills or code names used in the episodes, such as "H. Con-172" and "7A WF 83429". The best example of this trope, however, would probably be the fourth season episode "Twenty Five".
- The Lost episode "316".
- The X-Files has episodes called "3" (as it features an "Unholy Trinity") and "731" (after a war crime story
).
- An infamous 1950s game show (along with two revivals) 21.
- Three games with "three": Three on a Match, 3 For The Money (a short-lived NBC show from 1975), and 3's A Crowd (a Newlywed Game clone with the husband's secretary thrown in).
- Others with game shows with numerical titles: Seven Keys, 1 vs. 100, Two For The Money, 50 Grand Slam, It Takes Two and One In A Million.
- Northern Exposure: Grosse Pointe, 48230 and Three Doctors.
- NUMB3RS:
- Nine Wives.
- One Hour.
- Thirteen.
- Atomic No. 33.
- Thirty-Six Hours.
- The Fifth Man.
- 7 Men Out.
- Person of Interest episodes "2-Pi-R" (which involves Finch undercover as a math teacher) and "6,741" (the number's relevance is only revealed at the end of the episode: it's how many times Shaw has gone through Samaritan's Lotus-Eater Machine).
- The 100, which initially referred to the 100 young people sent down to Earth.
- The Dallas episode "90265", which parodied Beverly Hills, 90210.
- The Stargate SG-1 episode "200".
- Walker, Texas Ranger:
- Season 5's "99th Ranger", which details Brookdale, Texas, police officer Bobbie Hunt applying to become a Texas Ranger and shadowing Walker during his workdays after one Ranger is killed in the line of duty, all the while dealing with her abusive ex-husband, Russell Stafford, trying to discourage her from her dream. She ultimately gets the job.
- Season 9's "6 Hours", where Walker and his companions Race Against the Clock (the title says it all) to rescue a billionaire's daughter from her traitorous bodyguard before she is murdered on live TV.
Music
- Band 311, after police code for indecent exposure when a friend of bassist P-Nut was caught for skinny-dipping.
- John Cage's "composition" 4:33, which consists of that exact amount (in minutes and seconds) of complete silence.
- Cage has maintained that the point behind 4:33 is not complete silence, which is unattainable, but rather for the audience to attune itself to the ambient noise of the performance venue itself. This, of course, makes each performance of 4:33 unique.
- He also wrote a series of "number pieces" which are named after the number of performers and the order in which it was written. For example, the fourth piece for one performer is called One4.
- .Feast's song "5", referring to the five-year period between elections in Indonesia.
- Padi's 2026 album is titled 28, referring to the band's age around the time the album was released.
- The Yes album 90125, which incidentally enough was named after its catalogue number.
- In the same vein, Spliff's hit album 85555 was named after its CBS catalog number.
- Iron Maiden song "2 AM".
- Lenny Kravitz's fifth album, 5.
- Emilie Autumn's "306".
- Billie Eilish's "8", the eighth track of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
- 5:55 is the title of the second studio album by Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as the album's Title Track.
- Ken Laszlo's "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" (as in counting from 1 to 8, serving both as an Epic Riff and part of the song's chorus)
- The Catalogue by Kraftwerk was originally planned to be titled 12345678, too, both hinting at containing Kraftwerk's eight albums from Autobahn on and quoting "Numbers".
- Van Halen's album 5150, named after the police code for an escaped mental patient (which Eddie then decided to employ baptizing his home studio).
- A later instrumental is "316", after the March 16 birthday of Eddie's son Wolfgang (now the band's bassist).
- Toto's albums Toto IV and The Seventh One.
- Anthrax's short instrumental "9" from State of Euphoria.
- "3's and 7's" by Queens of the Stone Age
- Almost all of the songs in the CD "Revés" from the album Revés/Yosoy by Café Tacvba
- Blondie's "11:59" from the album Parallel Lines is a strongly desperation-tinged song invoking When the Clock Strikes Twelve for a relationship figuratively running out of time.
- Sugar Ray's third album, 14:59, an ironic response to critics who believed the band's 15 Minutes of Fame were almost up. (Given the response to their fourth and fifth albums, this title would later prove surprisingly accurate.) If read as a 24 hour time, it also says "1 to 3".
- Coldplay's song "42".
- Likewise, Level 42 named themselves after the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
- The Weezer outtake "367": Rivers Cuomo actually organizes every song he writes into a "catalog of riffs" that goes all the way back to when he was 14, and under this system "367" was his 367th composition.
- The Chicago song "25 or 6 to 4".
- The Harry Nilsson song "One", better known for its cover by Three Dog Night.
- "One" is probably the best-known song from A Chorus Line, about how a star is regarded as a standout from his or her chorus line compatriots.
- "808", a 1999 top-10 hit song by the girl group Blaque (co-written by a group member and R. Kelly).
- All of Russian nu-metal band The Slot's albums - numbered in order of their release - with the exceptions of their English-language compilation, "Break The Code" and their recent anniversary compilation, "#SLOT15".
- One - "Slot1"
- Three - "Тринити" ("Trinity")
- Four - "4ever" ("Forever")
- Five - "F5"
- Six - "Шестой" ("Sixth")
- Seven - Septima
- Black Sabbath's 13, as well as the instrumental "E5150". The latter is sort of a pun in roman numerals - "5 1 50" would be "V I L", so the title means "EVIL".
- The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (from Beatles for Sale), Revolution #1, Revolution #9 (The White Album), One After 909. (from Let It Be). The band even released a compilation album named One, collecting all their number one hit singles.
- Led Zeppelin II and III. The fourth album, which is technically untitled, is commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV.
- The Jethro Tull B-Side "17".
- Biffy Clyro's "27" and "57", as well as the more recent "9/15ths".
- 20/20 by The Beach Boys partially gets its name due to being the 20th overall album the band had released for Capitol at that point, as well as being the final album the band would release for them before their departure for Reprise Records.
- Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno: All tracks have a title that describes which part of the record they can be found on: "1/1", for instance, means the first track of the first side.
- Jean-Michel Jarre:
- On Oxygène, Équinoxe, Magnetic Fields and Chronologie, the tracks all have the same title as the album with a "part number" attached to it, for example "Oxygène (Part IV)", later also simply called "Oxygène 4".
- Zoolook has "Ethnicolor (Part II)" as a follow-up to the opener, "Ethnicolor".
- Rendez-vous has "First Rendez-vous" through "Fifth Rendez-vous" and "Last Rendez-vous". "Second Rendez-vous" is sub-divided into four numbered parts, "Fifth Rendez-vous" into three; the parts have always been separate tracks on CD.
- "Industrial Revolution" on Revolutions is sub-divided into an "Overture" and three numbered parts.
- Oxygène 7-13 itself, a variant on the Numbered Sequel. Also, as the album title indicates, the track numbers continue Oxygène's numbering. "Oxygène 7" is sub-divided into three parts again.
- Sessions 2000 has dates for titles. The album title itself fits more into Advanced Tech 2000 territory, though. It's also an Annual Title in the sense that it was recorded in 2000; it was released in 2002, however.
- Oxygène 3, not to mention that the track numbering continues from "Oxygène 14" to "Oxygène 20".
- Unofficially, "Oxygène 5", "Equinoxe 8" and "Magnetic Fields 1" are sub-divided into two, two and three parts respectively. "Equinoxe 8 Part 1" is more commonly known as "Band In The Rain".
- Excuse 17: Excuse 17 were named by vocalist and guitarist Becca Albee's habit of arranging ideas and thoughts into chronological order.
- Death Cab for Cutie's "405", named after I-405, a stretch of freeway in Seattle, Washington.
- Butthole Surfers' "1408", after a home address the band once shared.
- Aphrodite's Child's New Sound Album 666 combines this trope with The Number Of The Beast.
- "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis is actually a physical property of Earth.
- "Genesis Ch.1 v.32" by the Alan Parsons Project looks like a reference to a Bible verse, but Genesis chapter 1 has only 31 verses.
- "19th Nervous Breakdown" by The Rolling Stones.
- Slipknot's Self-Titled Album starts with Album Intro Track "742617000027", named after the album's catalog number.
- The 2018 Sting/Shaggy collaboration 44/876 (which opens with a Title Track) takes its name from the international calling code for Sting's native UK and the NANP area code for Shaggy's native Jamaica.
- Julio Iglesias' 1984 album 1100 Bel Air Place, which marked his breakthrough in the English-speaking world, was his then-current Los Angeles address.
- Taylor Swift:
- Fearless has a track named "Fifteen," dedicated to her best friend whom she met in high school.
- One of the singles from her fourth album Red is named "22", her age at the time of the album's release.
- Her fifth album is titled 1989 after her birth year.
- Crossing over with Self-Referential Track Placement, the first, seventh, and, eighth tracks from her eighth album folklore are "the 1", "seven", and "august" respectively.
- Rick Astley's seventh album "50" was released in 2016, the year Rick celebrated his fiftieth birthday.
- Aphex Twin:
- Richard D. James Album has the track "4".
- Subverted for Selected Ambient Works Volume II: while the tracks from don't have a name (except foor "Blue Calx") and are identified by their track number, this is not on purpose, and the fans tend to identifiy the tracks with Fan Nicknames from the album's illustrations.
- Jonghyun has "1000" from Story Op. 2, a song he wrote to celebrate 1,000 days of hosting the radio program Blue Night.
- Mili has "Nine Point Eight", a song about a girl deciding to commit suicide so she and her dead lover can be Together in Death. The song's title refers to the approximate meters per second of gravity acceleration.
Theater
- 13: About a Jewish boy moving from New York to Indiana at age thirteen, the time of his bar mitzvah.
Video Games
- Cassette 50, which is named after the 50 games that were included on the tape.
- The puzzle game 3 in Three.
- FE000000, which is actually 2.008e19728, the number of eternity points for a complexity and complexity points for a finality. You can see it with the Hex notation.
- The huge number of games for the Nintendo 64 (which itself is an example) that end in the number 64. Famous examples are:
- XIII
- One (1997)
- 140
- 19 (Neunzehn), a Turn-Based Strategy game for the Famicom.
- Tennis for Two: Name incorporates the expected number of players.
Visual Novels
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors for the DS, which is also known as 999.
Web Videos
- Numberphile: As a creator of math / number-focused videos, well, here's some of them:
- "11.11.11", about November 11th, 2011.
- "255 and Pac-Man".
- "16".
- "11.11.11"
- The Spiffing Brit: The video, "0 - 1 Million : Cities Skylines Timelapse Part 1", where the description defines those numbers as referring to population.
Webcomics
- Lotus Cobra Is Evil: "Starting again from zero"◊, which is used for a Shout-Out to The Familiar of Zero.
Western Animation
- 9 refers to both the full-length feature and the original short on which it was based. Post-apocalyptic dystopian stitchpunk about a group of living ragdolls fighting for survival. 9 is both the number of stitchpunks, and the name of the film's hero. For good measure, it was released on 09/09/09.
- 6teen: Canadian animated sitcom about a sextet of 16-year-olds.