Examples:

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (the book)

And before you say “alternate title”, since these supposed alternate titles are included in the full version of the main title (even if it’s usually not listed in full), how does this differ from “true” alternate titles that replace the entire main title?

Example:

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey vs Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

Into the Deep vs Yakamoz S-245

And then there’s the standard sub-titles, for example:

Captain America: The First Avenger

(Sorry for my lazy title choices but I couldn’t think of any others)

It seems like we have 3 things here: an “or” title in the name (alternate title which is included in the full version of the main title), a completely different alternate title that replaces the main one, and a subtitle following a colon after the main title. Are there different names to distinguish these different types of titles??

Also can we talk about how sub-title is used to mean closed captions as well as “sub-name” (sub-title used in this context)? It makes it impossible to search about because most people understand subtitle to mean closed captions, I think.