Clever and Funny book, chapter, or episode titles based on other works

This is really common, I know – several of the books in Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mystery series have such punning titles (A Fistful of Collars, Scents and Sensibility, etc.). This is just for ones that stand out as memorable (at least to you)

1.) An episode of the TV series The Odd Couple where Felix Unger ends up in the boxing ring. It was The Fight of the Felix (clearly riffing on the novel and movie The Flight of the Phoenix)

2.) The Rocky and Bullwinkle series about Bullwinkle finding an Arabian Dhow encrusted with rubies and labeled “Omar Khayyam” – The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam (A joke on The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam)

3.) Alan King (or his co-writer/ghost writer) gave a title to the first chapter of his book Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery!, the one about dealing with getting up in the morning and dealing with modern appliances. They entitled it Morning Becomes Electric. It was many years before I realized that this was a parody of the title of Eugene O’Neill’s play trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra.

What are yours?

It’s been a while since I read it, but IIRC every chapter title in John Varley’s “Millennium” was a reference to some other work of science fiction.

I Remember Mama was a serious stage play, made into 2 theatrical films and several TV movies.
I Dismember Mama was a horror film.

“Eye of newt” was a line from Shakespeare.
“I of Newton” was a short story and then a Twilight Zone episode.

Every version of Star Trek loved using Shakespeare quotes as episode titles, but “The Conscience of the King” is the only one I remember offhand.

“By Any Other Name” is another.

“This Side of Paradise” was one from F Scott Fitzgerald

The grammar book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” is cleverly titled after the punchline of a well-known joke.

The Simpsons and Futurama are full of clever episode titles of the sort. Some of my favorites from Futurama are “The Problem with Popplers” (a send-up of the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”) and “Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles.”

You’re gonna have to help out us troglodytes with details.

I recognize “By Any Other Name” as coming from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet “A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), but what is "BY Any Other Name a title of? Is it a book, and play, a movie, and episode? And by who?

As for “This Side of Paradise”, I had to look it up to learn that it’s from a poem by Rupert Brooke. Then I had to look up Rupert Brooke (The poem is titled Tiare Tahiti, in case you didn’t know. I didn’t)

And are these really your choices for best and cleverest examples? There is an almost infinite number of works of art whose titles are drawn from other works. Listing them all would be impossible, which I why I was looking for ones that particularly stood out.

Bob’s Burgers has many punny/rip off episode titles as well—

" The Belchies"—The Goonies,
“Bob Day Afternoon”—Dog Day Afternoon
“Ear-sy Rider”—Easy Rider
“Mutiny on The Windbreaker”–Mutiny on The Bounty
“The Unbearable Likeness of Gene”–The Unbearable Likeness of Being
“O.T.: The Outside Toilet”–E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

among others.

Rick and Morty uses punny titles that refer to other titles, with the names of characters as part of the pun. For instance, “Lawnmower Dog,” “Rixty Minutes,” “Ricksy Business,” “Total Rickall,” “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty,” and “Bethic Twinstinct.”

I was referring to the titles of episodes of Star Trek, as per the previous post.

I had never heard of the poem of the same name (or its author) until now, just the Fitzgerald work.

The show “Frasier” was good for this:

Miracle on Third or Fourth Street

Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast

You Can’t Tell a Crook by His Cover

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Frasier Crane’s Day Off

My Coffee with Niles

Death Becomes Him

Fortysomething

And these were all from just Season One.

mmm

Simpson’s season 1.
The Crepes of Wrath.

I haven’t looked, but I bet there are dozens of Simpson episodes that qualify

Local L.A. radio station has a long-running music show called Morning Becomes Eclectic.

I just read the synopsis, and I thought Bart’s captors’ names sounded like the names from Manon of the Spring (they were) – that’s pretty obscure.

In That '70s Show, episodes in later seasons are named after songs by prominent 1970s rock groups. Season 5 episodes are named for Led Zeppelin songs; Season 6 episodes are named for songs by The Who; Season 7 for Rolling Stones songs; and Season 8 for Queen songs.

NewsRadio had a string of episodes in the (I think) second season that were all named after Led Zeppelin albums, for no apparent reason.

Harry Harrison’s novel of human-dinosaur interaction is titled West of Eden, a twist on Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

A good share of Simpson’s episodes would fit the OP: In season 1, we have “Homer’s Odyssey”, “Moaning Lisa”, and “The Crepes of Wrath”.

I just finished binge-watching the complete medical drama “St. Elsewhere”. Almost all of their episode titles were either puns, titles of other works, or puns on titles of other works.

Some of the puns on other works include:

A Pig Too Far (A Bridge Too Far)
Murder, She Rote (Murder, She Wrote)
Bang the Eardrum Slowly (Bang the Drum Slowly)
When You Wish Upon a Scar (When You Wish Upon a Star)
Jose, Can You See? (first line of the Star Spangled Banner)
Ewe Can’t Go Home Again (You Can’t Go Home Again)
Night of the Living Bed (Night of the Living Dead)
Heaven’s Skate (Heaven’s Gate)
The Naked Civil Surgeon (The Naked Civil Servant)

My favorite episode title from the show is this pun:

No Chemo, Sabe?

So the first four episodes were called, I, II, III and IV?

And note that the phase “East of Eden” is actually a Bible quote.
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden

By the way, folks, I think the OP doesn’t want titles that are simply quotes from earlier works, it wants titles that are PUNS on quotes. So the Star Trek episode This Side Of Paradise wouldn’t count, but the Sliders episode This Slide of Paradise would count. The Sliders episode Prince Of Wails is a pun, but wouldn’t count, because it isn’t punning on a literary quote.

Tom Holt has some good ones.

  • Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?
  • Paint Your Dragon
  • Snow White and the Seven Samurai
  • Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages

They did have episodes titled “Led Zeppelin”, “Led Zeppelin II”, and “Zoso”. But the episodes weren’t named in LZ album order, just kind of random, and nothing to do with the actual episodes.

The Good, the Bad, and the Emus
Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon
The Hen of the Baskervilles
Gift of the Magpie
and a few other books in the Meg Langslow mystery series by Donna Andrews. Almost all of the book titles (#32 will be out this fall) are bird-based puns, though most don’t fit the OP’s request.