The 10 Best Movies Where Characters Say the Name of the Movie

There’s a very specific rush of adrenaline we get whenever we hear a movie’s title spoken aloud in the movie itself. This technique is called a “title drop” and it can happen at any point within a film’s runtime — beginning, middle, or end — and is always funny, no matter the genre. There’s an air of confidence to a good title drop, as if the writers are saying, yeah, we came up with a title so good, we’re gonna make one of our characters say it to you.

There are lots of movies whose titles appear in the film that don’t exactly count as a title drop. We’re obviously not talking about movies named after a character or a place — someone saying “WALL-E” to WALL-E in WALL-E is not a title drop — but rather movies whose titles are unique enough to stand out when spoken aloud. Sometimes a title drop can provide more context for the title, explaining what it actually means. Sometimes it just makes a funny title funnier. Hot Tub Time Machine pokes fun at this very phenomenon.

Whatever the reason, it’s always funny to hear a movie character say a phrase they probably would not be saying if the film was called something completely different. It’s like they’re reaching through the screen to give the audience a high-five for paying attention, or snapping a finger in our face to get our attention. Title drops are so fun we wish we could do them in real life. What is this, some kind of… screen crush??

Back to the Future (1985)

Marty McFly finds himself in a bit of a conundrum at the beginning of Back to the Future. After accidentally traveling 30 years back in time in his eccentric mad scientist friend Doc Brown’s souped-up DeLorean, he must find and convince the younger version of Doc to return him to the present. The scene in Doc’s living room includes a whopping three iconic Back to the Future lines, including its title drop — the others, “1.21 gigawatts!!” and “Great Scott!!” you’ve surely heard a million times. When Marty and Doc finally figure out how to charge the DeLorean with a bolt of lightning, Doc triumphantly exclaims, “Next Saturday night we’re sending you back…to the future!” He even points directly at the camera as he says it, so the audience won’t miss the big moment.

Goodfellas (1990)

What exactly is a “goodfella”? It kinda sounds like an old-timey gangster term, and, in a way, it is. In his voiceover, wannabe mobster Henry Hill describes the way he and his gangster friends would refer to each other as comrades: “You know, we always called each other goodfellas. Like you’d say to somebody, ‘You’re gonna like this guy, he’s alright. He’s a good fella, he’s one of us.’” A “goodfella” was the same thing as a “wiseguy,” a fellow man-at-arms that those who knew the code could assume was a part of the family, a person to be trusted. The twist is that the characters in the movie are actually bad fellas, who got up to a lot of serious criminal activity, so the term and the title are a bit of a misnomer.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

The title drop in Star Trek: First Contact may be the sweatiest of all time. Stuck on Earth in the mid twenty-first century and attempting to prevent the Borg from assimilating the entire planet before the first warp flight introduces humanity to the extraterrestrials, the crew of the Enterprise decide to cut their losses and explain the stakes point-blank to Zefram Cochrane, the jaded inventor of the warp drive. When he’s finally convinced that the people he’s talking to are indeed spacefarers from the future, Cochrane sums it up: “And you people, you’re all astronauts on some kind of… star trek?” It’s so forced you half-expect all the actors to wink into the camera.

Face/Off (1997)

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After breaking out of a high-security prison, FBI agent Sean Archer, wearing the face of his target, the criminal mastermind Castor Troy, infiltrates Castor’s headquarters and shares a few drinks with his goons while secretly laying a trap for the real Castor, who is currently wearing his face. (It makes a lot more sense when you’re actually watching it.) What are they going to do when they catch “Archer,” his henchmen ask? “I’d like to take his face…off,” fake-Castor says, gesturing at his own face and then miming throwing it away to further illustrate his point. Then they repeat it a few more times so everyone gets what the title of Face/Off really means, if they haven’t already.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The group of soldiers on the rescue mission at the center of Saving Private Ryan spend most of the film resenting the fact that they’re risking their lives to save someone they don’t even know. When they finally find the man they’re looking for, he refuses to leave his post in a small French town because he doesn’t believe himself any more deserving of getting out of the war early than anyone else. While John Miller, the commander of the troop, decides whether to stay and help or cut their losses and leave, his friend Mike Horvath suggests it might be more worth it to stay: “Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful s—y mess.” Horvath’s actor Tom Sizemore even puts in a little pause before and after the title drop for effect.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

All three of the Lord of the Rings movies have title drops in them, but neither of the other two are as much of a rush as the first. Smack in the middle of the movie, at the climax of the council of Elrond scene when all the main guys have assembled to escort Frodo and the One Ring to Mount Doom, Elrond himself delivers the drop. “Nine companions, so be it,” he says as the theme swells in the background. “You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring.”

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

The title of Snakes on a Plane was the first and only reason Samuel L. Jackson agreed to star in it. It’s delightfully goofy and wonderfully descriptive, telling you everything you need to know about the movie in just four words. Jackson even gets to do the title drop at the climax right before he depressurizes the airplane by shooting out a bunch of its windows with a gun. “Enough is enough!” he screams standing in the aisle. “I have had it with these mother f—ing snakes on this motherf—ing plane!!” The censored-for-TV version is, somehow, even better, with Jackson’s swears elegantly dubbed over: “I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!!”

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight saves its title drop for the very end of the movie. To clear the name of Harvey Dent, who was driven insane by the Joker and went on a killing spree, Bruce Wayne tells Commissioner Gordon to tell everyone that he, Batman, committed Dent’s crimes, to save Gotham City from the knowledge that their golden boy had been corrupted. The last lines of the movie are a monologue Gordon delivers to his son James, the only other person who knows the truth, explaining why the police have to treat Batman as a criminal. “Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now,” Gordon says. “So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A dark knight.”

Suicide Squad (2016)

Star Trek: First Contact might be the sweatiest, but the title drop in Suicide Squad is so dumb it became legendary. As Rick Flag is putting together a team of metahumans to combat supernatural threats following Superman’s death, he offers a spot to master marksman Floyd Lawton a.k.a. Deadshot. As Flag explains the dangerous nature of the work, a skeptical Deadshot quips, “So, that’s it? What, we some kinda… suicide squad?” If only every movie was as ham-handed with its title drops as this one. What is this, some kinda… Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice??

Get Out (2017)

The title drop in Get Out is somewhat unique, because before it happens, you’ve probably spent most of the movie wondering what its title means. Obviously, it’s a message to the protagonist, who definitely should have left his girlfriend’s bizarre family estate the moment her mother tries to hypnotize him, but it’s still a little vague — until the scene. When a bunch of family friends arrive at the house for a garden party, protagonist Chris encounters Logan King, a young Black man married to a significantly older white woman whose behavior strikes Chris as odd. When Chris tries to inconspicuously take a photo of Logan, the flash causes Logan to snap, stumbling towards Chris and frantically telling him to “Get out!” The rest of the family claims it was nothing more than a minor seizure, but Chris soon discovers it’s because these people are stealing Black people’s bodies and tossing their minds into the Sunken Place.