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Most TV series have titles for the individual episodes. They seem to always be unique, but is this actually the case, or is there a show which have used the same title more than once?

You might think a unique title is needed to identify an episode. But they are more commonly referred to by season and episode number. They also have individual production codes.

With some shows having hundreds of episodes and with changing staff throughout the years, it seems likely that the same title could come up again eventually. Or is someone in the production responsible for making sure the title haven't been used before? Perhaps it could even be done intentionally.

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    They can't simply forget the previous titles, I'm pretty sure someone from production have it written down somewhere.
    – Luciano
    Mar 14, 2018 at 9:54
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    " But they are more commonly referred to by season and episode number." - I always refer to episodes by title.
    – M. A. Golding
    Mar 16, 2018 at 22:53
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    Do reboots/reimaginings/remakes/adaptions count? E.g.there were episodes titled "The Hand of God" in both Battlestar Galactica series.
    – Acccumulation
    Mar 22, 2018 at 14:52
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    Doctor Who was going to do this accidentally, but they realized it and avoided it--they were going to do a second "Seeds of Death," but changed it to "Seeds of Doom."
    – user24353
    Feb 7, 2019 at 3:48

4 Answers 4

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It's actually quite common. Here are some examples I found in the top 200 TV shows on TheMovieDB:

Naruto Shippūden

  • Parting: E148 (S07) and E260 (S12)
  • Meeting: E172 (S08) and E257 (S12)

Dragon Ball Z

  • Sacrifice: S01E25 and S05E14

Gunsmoke

10 duplicates that I found including:

  • Blood Money: S03E03 and S13E09
  • Homecoming: S09E34 and S18E16

Baywatch

  • Homecoming: S05E14 and S08E09

Reality TV

Duplicate episode titles are extremely common in reality TV as each season follows a similar formula:

Survivor:

  • A Closer Look: S05E11, S08E09, S12E07, S13E07 and S23E07
  • Reunion: Final episode of each season

American Idol:

  • 11 Finalists Compete: S10E20, S11E19...

The Voice:

  • Blind Auditions, Part 1: S01E01, S02E01...

Talk Shows

Talk and news satire shows usually have episodes named after any guests appearing in them. As such there are hundreds of duplicate episode names for shows such as The Daily Show, The Late Show and The Colbert Report.

And the winner is...

Casualty! Not only for using duplicate titles over 50 times, but also for having two episodes titled Déjà Vu:

  • First Impressions: S09E02, S18E13, S20E33 and S28E45
  • Only The Lonely: S09E10, S16E21, S25E04 and S28E33
  • Déjà Vu: S11E19 and S17E01

And many more...

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  • They could at least have called the second one "Déjà Vu all over again"
    – GordonBennett
    Nov 20, 2019 at 13:44
  • @GordonBennett Déjà Déjà Vu?
    – Darren
    Nov 20, 2019 at 16:16
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Oh, yes.

The anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya does this as part of its notorious "Endless Eight" arc. The arc consists of eight almost-identical episodes, depicting successive iterations of an endless time loop. All eight episodes are simply titled "Endless Eight", as confirmed by the show's Wikia:

enter image description here

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Parks & Rec had two episodes titled "Galentine's Day".

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  • Thanks for your answer. Can you add a reference for what you have put in the answer? It enhances the quality of the answer. Currently, it looks like a low quality one.
    – Nog Shine
    Mar 18, 2018 at 3:37
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    @NogShine -- done.
    – Michael Lorton
    Mar 19, 2018 at 4:21
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Children's TV also gives some examples. For instances, Thomas and Friends had "Dirty Work" in seasons 2 and 11.

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