Baccano is Italian for noise, but light novelest Narita translates it as "stupid commotion" in the literary source of this series. Each of the stories in the series involves several unrelated plots intersecting and crossing each other as events spiral farther and farther out of control. Immortal alchemists, mafia operated speakeasies, and many other elements of pulp fiction are mashed together for a world straight out of the movies.