Sometimes, the font used for a product or brand may stick out in your mind more than the product or brand itself. A word or two, rendered in the right font, can instantly tell you about a movie, a band, a TV show or the “personality” of a company. Here’s a list of fonts that you’ll recognize from various TV shows, movies, games, bands and brands.

Some of my favs are ‘A Clockwork Orange‘, ‘28 Days Later‘ (one of the few really good zombie movies to come along in a while), ‘Enemy of the State‘ and ‘The Godfather‘. With ‘The Godfather’ (and a few others), I’d say that, because of their close association with the film/show, their use would be limited to something that would be a parody (i.e an ad, a headline, etc.). In other words, some fonts would be instantly recognizable and couldn’t really be effective if they were used in another context.

Further down the list are some fonts used in bands’ logos. Some are relatively simple (and flexible for other uses), like Cheap Trick’s or even Nirvana’s; others, like Orgy’s and Linkin Park’s give you a sense of the band: the sight is the sound.

For game fans, there’s fonts from your favorites. I’ve played Diablo, Riven and, yes, several Intellivision games back in the day.

Rounding out the list are some miscellaneous but very familiar fonts, like IBM, NASA, Xerox and, of course, the Pez font.