Evil Anagrams

In screenwriting trends that we can do without, I've read not one but two scripts this week that hinge on characters realizing that something is going on because someone's name is an anagram of another name.

In one, the villain turns out to be a grown kid from the main characters' childhood, the letters in his name rearranged. In another, the main character realizes that he is in some version of Hell because the names of everyone there are anagrams of his name.

The problem with this? It isn't really that clever, or plausible, and it doesn't really work on screen, where the audience (unlike someone reading the script) doesn't constantly have the names in front of them.

It's also pointless. In both scripts, the bad guy doesn't want the main character to learn the truth, so having this clue lying around doesn't make any sense. Neither script has the sense that the villain is using this to somehow taunt the main character.

(It does amuse me to think of the Devil sitting around, figuring out two dozen anagrams of the main characters' name for no reason, as if he has nothing better to do. Maybe he uses Scrabble tiles.)

So if you have something like this in your script, you've been warned. It's out there already, in ways that are dumb.

I think the Simpson's did it best in an episode, when Lisa goes to the house of a smarter girl and their intellectual family, who like doing name anagrams for fun. They give Lisa "Jeremy Irons", and she gives them a vague look, and says "Jeremy's Iron"?

I like word puzzles, but I think she should have beat them all with a tire iron. Jeremy's tire iron.