Spooky Cactus

I'm looking for some badass codenames.

The set-up is this; a writer/director and a bunch of actors want to make a heist movie about stealing diamonds from a museum, but they don't have the money, so, in a crazy combination of creative movie-funding and method acting, they decide to steal some diamonds from a museum. They call each other by their codenames from the movie, which is basically a mish-mash of every heist movie ever written (the whole thing is practically metafiction).

I've got some ideas for themes for their codenames, but I'd appreciate more, as well as opinions on these:

* Reservoir Dogs take-off - Mr Purple, Mr Green, Mr Red, Mr Grey, etc.

* Shakespeare characters ('cause they're actors) - Hamlet, Macbeth, Juliet, Puck, etc.

* Characters from different movies (currently my favourite idea, but I don't have many ideas for actual names to use yet) - e.g. Neo, Maverick, Q and Mr Pink. Ideally I wanted to do names just from heist movies, but I can't think of enough that people would have heard of. I just like the idea of there being a Mr Pink so we can get the Reservoir Dogs reference in.

Like I said, any other themes you can think of are good too - in case it helps, there are five actors (three guys and two girls) and the director who acts as their boss (a girl). The characters the actors portray are:

Leader guy (standard chinny action movie hero onscreen, rather camp offscreen)
Violent guy (actually leader guy's boyfriend)
Weaselly smart guy (think Mr Pink)
Femme fatale girl/love interest/getaway driver
Lookout-who-is-actually-an-undercover-cop girl

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Olly Buckle

How about names of movie good guys/action heroes rather than bad guys?

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seigfried007

I suppose you're looking for themes, so I may not be much help.

The only codenames I've used so far were derived from fairytales--"Little Miss Riding Hood, this is Granny. Do you require Woodcutter? Over."

Oddly enough, most people would consider that group of people having 'codenames' for names considering they're all named things like Goober, Oreo (my biggest, baddest badass, possibly, who also incidentally has some homosexual tendencies), Qwerty, Reno, Tonka. They're also fond of having racial slurs for names or naming themselves for notable people (philosophers, humanitarians, business magnates, and, of course, criminals).

I'll second Olly-- I could just see a bunch of guys arguing over who gets to the Lone Ranger, or even naming themselves for toher action stars (Willis? Come in Willis. This is Kevin Sorbo.)

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archer88iv

Well, they call the ops manager here "the Wise Man."

It's common enough that I don't even remember his real name right now.

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Sam Winchester

In one of my books, I had codenames for different members of my anti-terrorist squadron. I think I can remember some of them.

JACKAL
NITRO
COBRA
SABRE
REAVER
WOLF
BLACKBIRD

I never actually used them because it felt too cliched to me. Maybe they'll benefit you.

Sam.

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slayerofangels

H-uh, I always thought a codename should be something meaningless and unassuming so you don't give the game away. *shrugs* reservoir Dogs is probably closest there.

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seigfried007

What about Monopoly pieces?

"Hey, Boot, what's for dinner?"
"I don't know. Whatever you're making, I guess, Car."

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Poor people are crazy, Jack--I'm eccentric

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Malone

Medication conditions.

Hernia, this is sculliosis, come in.

Or:

Crabs, this is Herpes. Ghonnerea is down. Over.

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Sam Winchester

Brilliant, Malone. Very funny. I could see it working.

Sam.

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To those who live by and never stray from the creedo of "show, don't tell," here's a thought - it's called storytelling not storyshowing.

lin

I'm sure you;re thinking heavily of Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown etc, from Reservoir Dogs


"Fuckface, grab the money, Shit4brains, tie that guy up while Dipshit and Asswipe get the cameras"

"How come I have to be Fuckface, when you get to be LongDong?"

"Shut up and grab the money, asshole."

"Asshole's out waiting in the car, you dumb cunt."

"U. DumCunt's on second base."

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Serendipity

Or you could go with something that describes the person:

I saw the word "shrugs" used in a previous post - why not have the guy go by that (bc maybe he just doesn't know

I also read a book recently where the author changed up some commonly used words and used them as names:

Rhage
Tohrment
Wrath
Vishous
Phury
Zsadist

Not to say you should use these, but look how easy it was to make names from words we commonly use

Best of luck to you

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lin

I wouldn't think. Bad enough anybody did.

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Sam Winchester

Are you purposely spelling those names wrong?

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To those who live by and never stray from the creedo of "show, don't tell," here's a thought - it's called storytelling not storyshowing.

lin

There;s a right way to spell "Zsadist"?

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papertears

i had to name a lot of computers on subnetworks, and we liked to have themes to make it easier to make looking up where the machine was physically located. there were just under a thousand and we started getting desperate. some of the naming schemes must have appealed to people more than others because groups would get in fights over who got which ones.

i have no idea if this will help but the popular schemes i recall were (oddly):

• Bond girls and yes we had an Octopussy and PussyGalore was a DNS server cleverly hidden in a closet so management wouldn't notice and get their panties in a wad about it. (for those of you that speak unix, you can imagine how many giggles the guys had typing out long command lines including "finger" and "touch" directed to a server named pussygalore...) *chuckle*
• weapon makers/brands/models mostly looked up from a guy's vast collection of Soldier of Fortune and like catalogs *shiver* (not my idea but it was large subnet with about 50 machines)
• superheroes (someone mentioned this one)--we had one each subnet for The Sandman, Marvel, DC, and I know I'm forgetting another one
• the "Dead Presidents"
• mixed drink names that weren't too long (screwdriver, margarita, dirtymartini, cosmopolitan, pinacolada, etc...)
• beer brands
• whiskey brands
• scotch brands
• sports car brands
• variations on the terminology for marijuana (that lasted 3 weeks, but oh it was fun) those were replaced with:
• characters from Monty Python
• semi-disturbing/offensive (categorizing them under that term was not my idea) cartoon characters: Pinky & The Brain, Ren & Stimpy, Cousin Sven, Itcy & Scrachy (?), the whole cast of the Simpsons, Captain Caveman, Felix the Cat, Invader Zim, Gir, Gaz (there was a fist-fight over Gaz and Gir), Dib, Pig, the mad scientist father (can't think of his name), Beavis, Butthead, and the Family Guy cast.
• desserts that consist of one word names
• muppets - again people fought over the theSwedishChef, Beaker and Animal...
• Star Trek races/species (I don't watch ST so i'm not entirely sure what they were)
• Star Wars characters
• first names of pin-up girls from the late 60's and early-mid 70's (mostly Charlie's Angel's) it was a small subnet
• last names of Nobel Prize winners in Physics and Chemistry
• villians from the James Bond movies

cheers and best of luck!

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