The name originates from a "silly joke" during the promotion of
Hot Fuzz. Wright had written in
Cornetto ice cream as a hangover cure for Frost's character in
Shaun of the Dead, based on his own experiences. At the after party for the film, they received free Cornetto ice creams so Wright and Pegg decided to include another reference to Cornetto in their next film in a failed attempt to get more free ice cream. In
Hot Fuzz, Wright included a couple of brief throwaway scenes that referred to the Cornetto joke in
Shaun. On the promotional tour of
Hot Fuzz during production of ''The World's End'', one interviewer pointed out the use of Cornetto in the first two films, and Wright jokingly said that they represent a trilogy comparable to
Krzysztof Kieślowski's
Three Colours film trilogy. Wright seriously considered the three films as a trilogy, and wrote ''The World's End
to complete themes set out in the earlier films, adding a Cornetto reference to the film. Each film in the trilogy is connected to a specific Cornetto flavour appearing in each film. Shaun of the Dead'' features a red strawberry-flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film's bloody and gory elements,
Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film, and ''The World's End'' features the green
mint chocolate chip flavour (though shown only by a wrapper caught in the wind) representing "little green men" and science fiction. According to Wright,
Wall's, manufacturer of the Cornetto, was "very pleased with the namecheck". Wright considered each of the films a "Trojan horse", "genre films that have a relationship comedy smuggled inside a zombie movie, a cop movie and a sci-fi movie". Thematically, Wright saw each of the films containing common themes of "the individuals in a collective [...] about growing up and [...] about the dangers of perpetual adolescence". Wright reworked the script of ''The World's End
to conclude on these themes. The films are further linked by a common set of actors. Wright, Park, Pegg, and Frost collaborated previously in the TV series Spaced from 1999 to 2001. Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Rafe Spall, Julia Deakin, Patricia Franklin, and Garth Jennings appear in each of the films as well as other projects by Wright and Pegg. Clark Collis observes in Entertainment Weekly'' that the films also feature "a running gag involving garden fences". ==Recurring cast==