10 Franchises With The Most Confusingly Inconsistent Movie Titles, According To Reddit

With Halloween Ends set to be the final installment of the rebooted horror franchise when it comes out next month, it will be one of the first times since the beginning of the franchise where the title has been easy to understand. Along with franchises like the Fast and the Furious, it has taken an inconsistent approach to titling the movies that has left unfamiliar fans scratching their heads.

Though the success of those two, as well as equally huge titles like Star Wars that also have an eccentric naming policy, proves that it’s something fans can look past, Redditors enjoyed pointing out some of the most confusing and illogically-named movie franchises in existence.

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Halloween (1978-2022)

With 13 movies released across 5 different decades, it’s not surprising that there isn’t much consistency in how the Halloween movies are titled but it’s still surprising just how confusing they are. No less than three of the movies in the series are called simply Halloween, the latest of which signalled the franchise’s recent reboot in 2018.
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Redditor Fools_Requiem explains another problem with them, which is that with Michael Myers leaving after the second movie, “3 was supposed to be the start of annual anthology style series” and thus began an era of cryptic subtitles before the number disappeared from titles altogether. Halloween Ends promises at least a clear ending point even if it won’t help fans know where to start with the series.

Star Wars (1977-)

Whilst the titles in the main trilogy are helpfully numbered from I to IX, giving a clear order to watch the three central trilogies in, that doesn’t mean it’s a simple and consistent system. For a start, Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story have already undermined this and upcoming Star Wars movies are only likely to make things worse.
Redditor Sylvanmoon adds another way the titles are confusing, pointing out that anyone “watching the Star Wars movies in episodic order” without the context of how they were made would likely be very confused by the “strange leap” in style and quality between the trilogies. With 11 movies and now a whole host of TV series as well, it’s not likely to get any less confusing with time.

Friday The 13th (1980-2009)

Whilst 2022 continues to produce exciting horror movie releases, Friday the 13th has sadly not been one of the older franchises to make a comeback yet. Similarly to the Halloween franchise, the series produced so many movies through multiple decades, including two named simply Friday the 13th, that it’s a nightmare to decipher the names.
Reddit had fun pointing out other oddities in the movie’s various titles, with user WitherWithout remarking that “2 of these films feature the word “final” in it but neither are the final film in the franchise.” Some might also find it hard to ignore the fact that “Part 2” is followed by “Part III” in an inexplicable jump from numbers to roman numerals.

Blair Witch (1999-2016)

It’s more understandable for a movie series with countless titles to end up with inconsistencies but the Blair Witch series only has 3 main series titles and yet hasn’t managed to establish any clear pattern whatsoever. Beginning with The Blair Witch Project and ending with 2016’s Blair Witch, the titles don’t give much to go on either.
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Redditor Kingofthegnome has a particular problem with the original sequel, pointing out that Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 contains “no Book Of Shadows….also not really a sequel to the movie.” The sequel’s loose connection to the first is yet another way the series has never quite seemed sure what it wanted to do, reflected in the titles.

Dirty Harry (1971-1988)

The original hardboiled cop classic starring Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan is still considered one of the best gunslinger movies of all time. Unfortunately, a lot fewer people remember the four other Dirty Harry movies and their titles likely have a lot to do with that fact.
Redditor madchad90 explains it as being because they were made “back in the days when sequels had stand alone titles” and that “reading them off you’d have no idea they were related.” These standalone titles include The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool, which could just as easily be disaster or superhero films as Dirty Harry movies.

Hellraiser (1987-2022)

It’s unlikely that when author Clive Barker wrote the horror novella The Hellbound Heart, he could’ve imagined it would grow into a multimedia franchise with no less than ten spectacularly uneven Hellraiser movies. When Hellraiser, the second movie in the franchise called Hellraiser, releases later this year, that number will go up to 11.
The series has also largely rejected numbers in favor of cryptic subtitles, one of which Redditor MissingPear found particularly silly, saying that there “had to be a better word than Deader” for the 2005 sequel Hellraiser: Deader. This year’s Hellraiser may well revive the series with more easy-to-understand titles but for now, it will only add to the mess.

Jurassic Park (1993-2022)

With Jurassic World: Dominion bringing back some iconic characters from the original series, it secured the connection between the two Jurassic Park trilogies. Unfortunately, the titles don’t do too great a job of showing how the movies are connected, with only the original movie and Jurassic Park 3 keeping things simple and easy to understand.
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Redditor FX114 points out how “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” completely ruins this effect by landing right in between the two, inexplicably making the franchise name the subtitle instead. They also note that “nowadays they tend to avoid doing any numbers on sequels.” Likely to avoid putting off newcomers to the franchise, it certainly doesn’t make discerning the order to watch movies any easier.

Chronicles Of Riddick (2000-2013)

The Chronicles of Riddick are some of the best Vin Diesel movies outside of The Fast franchise and unfortunately the space western has a similar problem – insanely inconsistent titles. One Redditor admits they “thought there was only two riddick movies because of these titles” and they likely weren’t the only one with that problem.
The series began with Pitch Black and, after the short film Dark Fury, followed it up with The Chronicles of Riddick and finally, as if things weren’t already confusing enough, finished off the trilogy with 2013’s Riddick. Though the first movie has the excuse of being made without knowing the franchise it would spawn, the later movies just seem to have been titled without any logic at all

Rambo (1982-2019)

Whilst the first Rambo movie gets forgiven for the enticing yet generic title of First Blood as they can’t have known the franchise it one day grow into, the follow-up titled Rambo: First Blood Part II set the trend of ill-thought-through titles that was to come. The fact that Rambo (2008) came out after Rambo III shows the extent of the issue with the Sylvester Stallone action franchise.
Redditor Rynomite95 points out that the former movie “was almost released as John Rambo” which is somehow even stranger than the actual title. The Guardian reported that the title was changed after internet ridicule. Unfortunately, Rambo isn’t much better as many colloquially refer to the First Blood as simply as “Rambo” as well.

Fast and Furious (2001-)

The Fast and Furious movies might not have the absolute most confusing titles but there’s good reason why one of the biggest action franchises in the world has an unrivalled reputation when it comes to this matter. Some titles omit numbers altogether like Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious (2009) and that’s not even the biggest problem.
Instead, Redditor dima_socks finds they “start to lose track” after Fast Five when, instead of simply proceeding with the “Fast” naming convention, they started changing it up every time with Furious 7, F9, and the barely numbered at all Fate of the Furious some of the most egregious examples. With Fast X the given title for the upcoming sequel, things don’t look to be getting any better for a series that seems to take pleasure in perplexing newcomers at this point.
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