How to show file names instead of metadata title in VLC?

Solution 1:

Just untick in Tools/Preferences/All/ Playlist untick "Automatically preparse items" save & exit / restart VLC and all titles will now be the filenames as found in folder.

Or you can wipe the metadata from all your videos with either MKV Optimizer 2 for mkv files and MP3tag for .mp4 files.