When something in a show receives a Fan Nickname which originated with the show's production team. Doesn't count if it's a technical term which can be applied to unrelated shows. Might be related to a Development Gag.
If the series runs long enough, the term runs a high probability of becoming either canon or an in-universe nickname.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The DC Comics writing staff has a long tradition of referring to Mr. Mxyzptlk as "Bill" to sidestep the issue of how to pronounce his name.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The author has nicknamed the Many "Ghidorah-Flood", she's nicknamed the reanimated Manda "Zombie Noodle", and she's nicknamed the "shed skin" Ni/Elder Brother MaNi. Meanwhile, the infant Manda is never referred to In-Universe as Mandazawa as the author's Tumblr has called him.
Films — Animation
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame:
- The animators decided to nickname Frollo's horse Snowball. This has caught on with fans, thanks to an audio commentary, and retroactively also became the name of Jafar's horse and the monster pulling Hades' chariot.
- The sequence for the song "Hellfire" was nicknamed "Mr. Frollo's Wild Ride" by the animation team.
- For Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the Peter Parker who dies early in the film is dubbed RIPeter in the script. Meanwhile, Peter B. Parker was referred to as Burrito Peter by the artists, as early versions of the film had him eating those instead of pizza when getting teleported to Miles' dimension.
- Turning Red: Ming's Kaiju-sized red panda form was referred to in the film's "art-of" book as "Mingzilla".
- The roach in WALL•E is named Hal
.
Films — Live-Action
- In Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, the Predator was nicknamed Wolf (after Winston Wolf) and the Predalien was nicknamed Chet (after Bill Paxton's character in Weird Science (1985)).
- The Berserker Predator in Predators was nicknamed "Mr. Black".
- The monster bear from Annihilation (2018) was nicknamed "Homerton" as a contrast to Paddington (one is a dilapidated London overground station, the other an impressive underground one).
- The Avengers (2012): Defied. The production team started calling the Chitauri's biomechanical serpentine living weapon "Jumbo". Director Joss Whedon, knowing that would become canon if he let it ride and make it impossible to take the thing seriously, forbade the crew from calling it Jumbo and decisively named it the Leviathan.
- Avengers: Endgame: The merger between Bruce Banner and the Hulk was nicknamed "Smart Hulk" by the filmmakers, which is canon as of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
- The alternate 1985 in Back to the Future Part II was called "Biffhorrific 1985" during production.
- "Clover" for the monster of Cloverfield.
- The creature from "The Crate" segment of Creepshow was nicknamed "Fluffy" (it even illustrated Fluffy the Terrible).
- Slimer from Ghostbusters (1984) was called "Onion Head" during production.
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): King Ghidorah's Multiple Head Case three heads are nicknamed Ichi, Ni and San (the Japanese numerals One, Two and Three), with San additionally being called Kevin.
- "Steve Buscemi", the monster from The Host (2006).
- The shark in the movie Jaws was nicknamed Bruce, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer.
- The rhino that lags behind the stampede in Jumanji was nicknamed "Sneezy" by the effects crew who accidentally created that image.
- The T. rex from Jurassic Park is labeled as "Roberta" in some production notes.
- While filming Manos: The Hands of Fate, Harold Warren's crew called the film Mangos: The Cans of Fruit behind his back.
- The huge battle between Neo and the army of Agent Smith clones from The Matrix Reloaded was nicknamed "The Burly Brawl" after the screenplay Barton Fink was working on. Even the song playing during that scene is named Burly Brawl.
- Saw: Billy the Puppet's name was originally a Production Nickname before it became official.
- Doc Ock's tentacles in Spider-Man 2 were dubbed Moe, Curly, Larry and Joe.
- In The Spy Who Loved Me, the set for Stromberg's supertanker, the Liparus, was nicknamed "the Jonah Set," in reference to the Biblical story of Jonah, who is swallowed by a whale. In the film, the tanker swallows submarines.
- Star Wars:
- The cast and crew of A New Hope obviously had no inkling Star Wars was going to be such a major cultural phenomenon, and casually gave cheap nicknames or even "joke" names to characters who would receive proper names and fleshed-out backstories years later. In one of the more infamous cases, the Tonnika sisters (those two girls with the beehive hairdos in the green jumpsuits we catch a glimpse of in the cantina) were nicknamed "Star Whores" for wearing their underpants outside their clothing.
- In Rogue One, two Imperial Star Destroyers are present at the Battle of Scarif. In-universe, they are the Intimidator and Persecutor – the ILM crew affectionately called them Timmy and Percy.
- Before BB-8's First Order Evil Counterpart in The Last Jedi was officially named BB-9E, he was nicknamed "BB-H8" on-set.
- The Wall: The War-Bird featured in the "Goodbye Blue Sky" sequence was also known as the "Bauhaus Concorde."
Literature
- While writing the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling mentally used the term "The Big Seven" to refer to Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Luna, and Draco.
Live-Action TV
- The Pepperpots (Pythons in old lady drag) in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
- Star Trek, starting with The Next Generation, has "Okudagrams" – the displays on the touchscreens and monitors – after their creator Michael Okuda.
- The engineering access tubes were dubbed "Jefferies tubes", which was a Canon name by TNG.
- Irving A. Feinberg was the property master for Star Trek: The Original Series. The little gizmos he came up with for the show (such as the medical scanner and the laser scalpel) were nicknamed "Feinbergers" by the cast and crew. The usage later spread to the fanbase.
- Similarly, the wall panels were often labeled with seemingly nonsensical phrases, like "GNDN435". This actually stood for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing", indicating the just-for-looks nature of all the pipes and wires in the Enterprise's interior.
- The term "D-7 battlecruiser" was an in-joke originated by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy mock-arguing on-set one day. As with Jefferies tubes, this eventually became the canon designation for TOS-era Klingon warships.
- Caprica-6 from Battlestar Galactica, although that eventually made it into the show dialog as well.
- HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses) in Heroes.
- The concentration face Hiro Nakamura makes in order to travel through time or space is apparently called the "squishy blinky" by the production crew.
- The pterodactyl in Torchwood was referred to in production as Myfanwy, but never received a name on-screen. The name was eventually made official in the Torchwood (Big Finish) story Fall to Earth.
- The Barracks on Lost are called "New Otherton" by production, which spread to fans and then incorporated into dialogue as Sawyer's nickname for the place.
- On Stargate SG-1, "kawoosh" was a production nickname used to describe the "unstable vortex" formed when a Stargate opens. The term wasn't used on the show until the episode "Crusade", in which it was coined in-universe by Samantha Carter:
Mitchell: I'm sorry, the what?
Carter: The unstable vortex of a forming wormhole. Kawoosh!
Mitchell: Don't think I've ever heard you call it that before.
Carter: Really?
Mitchell: Don't get me wrong, it's good.- It is never said in-series what the GDOs (the wrist-mounted devices that allow SG teams to send their code so SG-C staff will know it's them and open the Iris) stand for, but for Production they stand for Garage Door Opener.
- In the movie, the stargate had a conical vortex coming out the back of it while active, which was called "the strudel" in one of the featurettes. The strudel was dropped in the TV series.
- Doctor Who:
- Several Doctors get nicknames based on the character concepts going around the production office when discussing how the new Doctor should be played:
- The Cosmic Hobo: The Second Doctor.
- The Bohemian: The Fourth Doctor.
- "Fungoid Fred", "Toadstool Taffy" and "Mushroom Malone" are the names of the Fungoids in "The Chase".
- "Fred" was also the name of the stupid Dalek in "The Chase".
- "Bafflegab" is what Robert Holmes called what we on this wiki call Technobabble.
- A "loop" is a name coined by Terrance Dicks to refer to a story in which the characters get captured, escape and then get captured again by the same people to extend a story to six episodes. Not to be confused with a "Moffat loop", which is the nickname coined by Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman to refer to the kind of Temporal Paradox Stable Time Loop plot that is favoured by Steven Moffat.
- Russell T Davies nicknamed the Ninth Doctor's theme composed by Murray Gold "Flavia's Theme" as an fanboy In-Joke referring to President Flavia from "The Five Doctors", as he'd imagined the One-Woman Wail the theme used was sung by Flavia from some ethereal place beyond time for the Doctor whenever the Time Lords came up in discussion.
- Several Doctors get nicknames based on the character concepts going around the production office when discussing how the new Doctor should be played:
- On the set of The X-Files, the Scully Box was referred to as the "Gilly-Board", referring to actress Gillian Anderson.
- The RoboCop nickname for John Cable after he become a RoboCop in RoboCop: Prime Directives first came from the production staff. In the series itself, he's either referred to by his real name or "Crime Prevention Unit 002".
Video Games
- Portal:
- Portal 1: The portal maneuver was called "flinging," and the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid was dubbed the "fizzler". The absent character who left behind dens and scrawlings on the walls was named the Rat Man (for his scrounger-in-the-wall habits). Later, he was promoted to a first-order character via an interquel comic book. His real name is Doug Rattmann.
- In Portal 2, GLaDOS when turned in a potato battery is called PotatOS by the developers. Also, Wheatley in GLaDOS's body is called WheatDOS in the name of the developer commentary sound file that discusses him. The "different" turret you can save from the Redemption Line is called the "Oracle Turret," since everything it says is Foreshadowing.
- The developers of New Super Mario Bros. Wii allegedly nicknamed Yellow Toad and Blue Toad Ala-Gold and Bucken-Berry respectively.
- The main character of the Wing Commander series originally had no default name, but the production crew called him Bluehair. He was later given the name Blair* as a nod to this.
- The creature in Psychonauts that teleports Raz between different locations in Mental Worlds is called Oatmeal by the developers, after a scene in Frosty the Snowman where one of the kids suggests the name "Oatmeal" for Frosty.
- Guybrush Threepwood, hero of the Monkey Island franchise, was named Guybrush from the file containing the "guy-brush" the developers used to animate his sprite. It stuck as his name.
- Combining this trope with Theme Naming, most of The Legend of Zelda games produced in the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U generation are internally named after playing cards. Breath of the Wild is called "U-King", The Wind Waker HD is called "Cking", Ocarina of Time 3D is called "Queen", A Link Between Worlds is called "Jack", and Majora's Mask 3D is called "Joker". Tri Force Heroes, on the other hand, is called "Alice".
- Similarly, Kirby games are internally named after desserts: Kirby: Triple Deluxe is called "Parufe" (parfait), and Kirby Star Allies is called "Eclair". Breaking the pattern, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is called "Seven", probably referring to the seven colors of the rainbow used for the game's seven worlds. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is called "Balloon".
- Mainline installments for the Fire Emblem series, starting with New Mystery of the Emblem, all uniformly have the internal production codename of "Iron", with a number acting as a suffix or prefix, as a reference to "FE" being the symbol for iron on the periodic table of elements. New Mystery of the Emblem is called "12Iron". Fire Emblem: Awakening is called "14Iron", as internally Intelligent Systems considers the cancelled Fire Emblem Wii to be the true 13th installment. Fire Emblem Fates is called "Iron15", starting the trend where the numbers are the suffix instead of the prefix. Fire Emblem Engage is called "Iron19", with there only being a single reference to the unknown "Iron18" in the game's code.
- The unreleased game many fans know as Fallout: Van Buren was never actually planned to be released under that name. It would have been called Fallout 3 had Interplay not gone under, and a proper Fallout 3 didn't come out until Bethesda revived the franchise in 2008.
- Final Fantasy VII:
- The poor unnamed Red Shirt accompanying Cloud, Tifa and Sephiroth and Zack who dies on the bridge in the Nibelheim mountains was affectionately named 'Zako' by Nojima. 'Zako' is a Japanese slang word referring to Mooks and also works as a pun on 'Zack'.
- The Ultimania guide contains concept artworks naming and assigning ages to various characters who are not named or aged in the story. This includes names and ages for Tifa's father (Brian Lockhart, 40) and Cloud's mother (Claudia Strauss – 33 – note also she's got a different surname to her son).
- The unnamed protagonist for Saints Row was referred to as "Mikey" (pronounced "Mickey") during the development of the first game.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: The various incarnations of Springtrap tend to be given "-trap" names, either by fans or the code. Scraptrap was named by the fans and later became an Ascended Fan Nickname. Glitchtrap was named based on the files, and became widely used by the community even though Scott Cawthon disliked the name. Burntrap and The Blob were also named based on the files, although the character encyclopedia notably states that those aren't their canon names, and the latter was later renamed in the files to The Tangle.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Orbot's was SA-55, a Letters 2 Numbers rendition of "sass". Likewise, Cubot's was shown in comics to be IDI-07, "idiot".
Webcomics
- Unsounded: Silverfish is the name Ashley was using for Starfish's First Silver reanimated corpse while working on the pages, and was taken up by readers as well since he/it has no specific name in the story.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- The One-Winged Angel form of the Ocean Spirit in Avatar: The Last Airbender was called Koizilla during production. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that calls it anything else. Heck, it's a 90-foot carp. Half the people using the term probably coined it independently.
- The giant spirit form that Korra takes at the end of Book Two of The Legend of Korra is labeled "Cosmic Korra" in the art book.
- Bob's Burgers: The town where the Belchers live is somewhere in New Jersey, according to a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "It Snakes a Village", but has no official name. It's known to the cast and crew as "Seymour's Bay", after the show's film editor Mark Seymour, and as of the season 9 premiere it seems to have become official.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Maul's Mandalorian warriors were nicknamed "Mauldalorians" by fans. When the show was revived for Season 7, art from production calls them the "Mauldalorians" and their Twitter hashtag to promote the show also calls them "Mauldalorians", though this is not used in-universe.
- Steven Universe:
- Storyboard artist Jesse Zuke (then known as Lauren Zuke) dubbed the unnamed Mystery Girl resembling Rose Quartz in "Last One Out of Beach City" "Sheena". All that is known is that her name starts with "S".
- Steven's Gem half after White Diamond rips out his gem in "Change Your Mind" is never named in the show or even the credits, but is called "Pink Steven" on his model sheet.
