The film adaptation of a certain best-selling erotic novel is shortly to hit the screens in the UK. Whatever you think of the subject matter, or the quality of the prose, it’s clear Fifty Shades of Grey has at least one thing going for it: a catchy and versatile title.

Much like the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, ‘Fifty Shades of…’ lends itself to an endless number of adaptations, variations and parodies (or ‘creative linguistic variation’ as Artificial Intelligence research Tony Veale calls it), from ‘Fifty Shades of Dre’ to ‘Fifty Shades of Grape’.

And that’s surely no bad thing.

To illustrate just how creative writers, advertisers and bloggers have been with ‘Fifty Shades of…’, I used an online corpus search engine to crawl the web looking for examples. Here are the results: in no particular order, fifty of the seventy-five or so examples that I found – if you will, fifty shades of ‘Fifty Shades of…’.

The list includes the replacement of ‘Grey’ with other colours (‘Green’, ‘Pink’), with proper names (‘Miley’ as in Cyrus), with rhymes (‘Spay’, ‘They’), and even with food-stuffs (how about cookbook ‘Fifty Shades of Kale’?). Notable mentions go to ‘Fifty Shades of Bacon’ (apparently, and somewhat intriguingly, an ‘erotic cookbook’) and ‘Fifty Shades of Gravy’ (whatever that is). Of course, there will be many other examples out there, and plays on ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ aren’t restricted to replacing the final word (for instance, who can resist the garden-based parody ‘Fifty Sheds of Grey’?). If you know of any better ones, do stick them down below.

So, without further ado, here they are.

Enjoy!

1. Fifty Shades of Green
2. Fifty Shades of Buscemi
3. Fifty Shades of Dre
4. Fifty Shades of Kale (a recipe book)
5. Fifty shades of Brown (on race and politics)    
6. Fifty Shades of Green (a whole foods market)
7. Fifty Shades of Beige (about set design)
8. Fifty Shades of Graying Workers (on the elderly labour market)
9. Fifty Shades of Men (an advert for ‘male revue catering’)     
10. Fifty Shades of Grape (wine sellers)
11. Fifty Shades of Dubstep (compilation CD)
12. Fifty Shades of Chocolate (a book)
13. Fifty Shades of Matt Gray (sunglasses)
14. Fifty Shades of Van
15. Fifty Shades of Rust (a book)
16. Fifty Shades of Cacao (health tips)
17. Fifty Shades of Grace (a guide to Christian living)
18. Fifty Shades Of Chocolate
19. Fifty Shades of Miley (Miley Cyrus, who else?)
20. Fifty Shades Of Lego
21. Fifty Shades of Spay (apparently, February is ‘spay and neuter month’)
22. Fifty Shades Of White With A Touch Of Red
23. Fifty Shades of Deadly
24. Fifty Shades of Putin
25. Fifty Shades of Ink
26. Fifty Shades of Glow
27. Fifty Shades of Pain
28. Fifty Shades of Rust
29. Fifty Shades of Johnjay!
30. Fifty Shades of Ray
31. Fifty Shades of Me
32. Fifty Shades of Silver
33. Fifty Shades of Grain
34. Fifty Shades of Beer
35. Fifty Shades of F*cked Up
36. Fifty Shades of Saffron
37. Fifty Shades of Racism
38. Fifty shades of Pink
39. Fifty Shades of Gravy
40. Fifty Shades of They
41. Fifty Shades of Bacon (an ‘erotic cookbook’)
42. Fifty Shades of Geek
43. Fifty Shades of Gay
44. Fifty Shades of EWWWW!!!
45. Fifty Shades of Funny
46. Fifty Shades of Gary
47. Fifty Shades of Black
48. Fifty Shades of Jigglypuff
49. Fifty Shades of Finance (‘financial erotica’)
50. Fifty Shades of Milk Tray