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Spirou (left) and Fantasio (right), with the Marsupilami and Spip the squirrel.

Spirou et Fantasio (Spirou and Fantasio) is one of the most successful Belgian comic book adventure series, spawning various spin-off series and adaptations.

Spirou is an intrepid bellhop/reporter. With his sidekick Fantasio and his pet squirrel Spip, he has many adventures over the globe, fighting Mad Scientists and evil dictators, but also doing a fair bit of actual reporting on the side.

This series has the distinction of being one the few "work for hire" franchises of Franco-Belgian comics (most of them are owned by their initial creators or their estate). As such, various authors worked on the main series over the years:

  • Robert "Rob-Vel" Velter was commissionned to create the Spirou character to headline the new eponymous weekly "Le Journal de Spirou" magazine. He wrote and drew Spirou's adventures from 1938 to 1943, after which the war prevented him from continuing; his publisher bought the rights to the series and has had various creative teams work on it ever since. These adventures have never been reprinted and are mainly known for the introduction of Spirou's pet squirrel Spip.
  • Joseph "Jijé" Gillain (already a well-known veteran, now mostly remembered for drawing the Western series Jerry Spring) then took over the series (as well as a lot of publisher Dupuis's strips). He introduced Fantasio, whose garish costumes and gaffes made the perfect wacky Sidekick. Overwhelmed by having to handle too many series at once, he gave most of them to the care of various young artists he had groomed for that purpose.
  • André Franquin took over Spirou et Fantasio around 1946 (though Jijé did a few stories after the formal switchover). He is credited for creating the most well-known parts of the Spirou universe, including Champignac, the Marsupilami, Zorglub, Zantafio, Seccotine and Gaston Lagaffe. At the end of Franquin's run, the series received the input of Michel "Greg" Regnier for plots, grounding Spirou's adventures in a more realistic geopolitical context. By the beginning of the '70s, Franquin grew bored of the character and left the series (though he kept the rights of a few of his creations, including the Marsupilami and Gaston Lagaffe).
  • Young artist Jean-Claude Fournier then took over the series, updating slightly the look of the characters and giving the characters a more militant outlook.
  • In the 1980s, publisher Dupuis found Fournier too slow and started looking into other creative teams, with three of them working at the same time. Nicolas Broca and Raoul Cauvin's contribution (three albums) were quickly abandoned, as well as Yves Chaland's retro take, in favor of Philippe "Tome" Vandevelde and Jean-Richard "Janry" Geurts. They reached a commercial and critical success by updating Franquin's tradition, often with a slightly Darker and Edgier mood. They also launched the spin-off series Le Petit Spirou (about Spirou's youth), which took a lot of their time: after a failed relaunch with a "more realistic" art style (Machine qui Rêve), they left the main series.
  • In the 2000s, Dupuis gave care of the main series to Jean-David Morvan and José-Luis Munuera, who tried including elements from each of the previous authors' runs; the lackluster sales meant they were given the boot after only four albums. Then Fabien Vehlmann and Yoann Chivard (credited simply as Yoann) took over the series and released five new albums since 2009.
  • After Wrath of the Marsupilami, Vehlmann and Yoann halted the series to work on a new spin-off titled Supergroom. Spirou is now a costumed superhero and uses Champignac's drugs to either increase his physical prowess or his intellect. Two releases so far.
  • A series of out of continuity one-shots written and drawn by different artists (Le Spirou de...) started in 2006. Five have been published as of 2009, the more notable being The Diary of a Naive Young Man, an alternative origin story by Émile Bravo in which Spirou is a young bellhop in 1939.
  • A spin-off focusing exclusively on Zorglub, La fille du Znote , written by Munuera, was released in 2017. A sequel, L'apprenti méchantnote  was released in 2018. A third installment, Lady Z, was released in 2019.
  • Another spin-off, focused on a younger Count of Champignac (and titled Champignac), was released in 2019. It counts three books so far: Enigma, Le Patient A and Quelques atomes de carbonenote .
  • Juliette De Sainteloi, the ill girl from the one-shot His name was Ptirou got her own spin-off: Mademoiselle J (Ms. J). This marks the first time a character outside of those created by Franquin has had their own series. His name was Ptirou has been re-edited as a prequel and is followed by I'm never going to get married and Till the end of the world, all with a Time Skip in between.
  • With Yoann and Vehlmann busy with Supergroom, the main series had yet another change in 2022. A new team, formed by Olivier Schwartz (art), Sophie Guerrive and Benjamin Abitan (writing) took over with the 56th album, La Mort de Spirou. Guerrive is the first woman to join the official Spirou author list to date.

The magazine for which this series was created, now titled Spirou, is still being published nowadays. It is now a weekly anthology of various comedy series, as well as serializing various adventure series of Dupuis's catalogue. Throughout the '90s and 2000s, its eponymous series barely appeared in it (due to frequent Schedule Slip), though Le Petit Spirou remained a regular presence. This changed with the one-shots, which have been published at thrice the rhythm of the main series so far.

Cinebook had been translating the books in English since 2009, alternating stories from the Franquin and Tome/Janry era.

There have been two Animated AdaptationsSpirou (1992–1995) and Spirou & Fantasionote  (2006–2009). The French versions of both animated series are available on an official YouTube channel here.

Two video games have been released: Spirou (1995) by Infogrames and Spirou: The Robot Invasion (2000) by Ubisoft.

A Live-Action Adaptation, originally scheduled for early 2017, was released in February 2018.


Spirou and Fantasio provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Acquired Situational Narcissism: Spirou becomes a highly popular movie star in La Grosse Tête. This inflates his ego tenfold and he starts to treat Fantasio like dirt. This ends when the movie producer disown him after the film set was trashed by revolutionary soldiers.
  • Action Girl:
    • Seccotine is capable of kicking asses as much as Spirou, thought this largely depends on the adapation.
    • Aniota in Master of the Black Hosts. She has the fighting skills and the acrobatics to match with her moniker, Leopardwoman.
    • Momo in Spirou in Berlin. She's working with the underground movement in East Germany and is capable of fighting and shooting when needed.
  • The Alcoholic: Dupilon, Champignac's resident town drunk, who is never seen sober.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Cyanure is a highly advanced android who turned against her creator. In the comics, she only appeared once, but is a recurring villain in the Animated Adaptation.
  • Albinos Are Freaks: The Master of the Black Hosts is an African albino. He was treated horribly by everyone from the moment he was born because of it, ultimately leading him to take revenge the moment he had the power to do so.
  • Aliens in Cardiff: The Ksorien aliens from Du cidre pour les étoiles land in the rural area near Champignac in order to study with the Count of Champignac.
  • Alternate Continuity: Lampshaded in Alerte aux Zorkons, in which Fantasio mentions a character from a past adventure whom Spirou has no recollection of, and adds "Well, that was in a different space-time continuum." Fans interpret this as a sign that Fantasio went back, after all the time-travel shenanigans in Aux Sources du Z, and erased the Morvan and Munuera adventures from continuity. A Fourth Wall-breaking one-pager with Spirou and the new artist Yoann having wacky adventures through time until Fantasio and the new writer Vehlmann put a stop to it and pledge to put everything back in order lends some credence to this theory, but the fan dislike of the Morvan and Munuera era also seems to be a factor.
  • Ambiguous Robot: The "clone" or "android" in Machine qui rêve.
  • And the Adventure Continues: Fantasio se marie ends with Spirou getting a call for help from Pâcome and setting off to the rescue with Seccotine.
  • Animal Talk: Extremely inconsistently handled with Spip; in some early stories, Spirou and Fantasio were able to understand him, but later on it was established that while Spip understood humans perfectly well, humans did not understand him. Whether other animals understood him seemed to vary depending on the story, but it is notable that while he was good friends with the Marsupilami, the two were never depicted as having anything resembling a conversation. The rule of thumb seems to be that only the reader understands Spip's comments, but there have been several exceptions.
  • Animated Adaptation: Two of them (one in 1992-1995 based off the Tome and Janry era, the other in 2006-2009).
  • Applied Phlebotinum
    • Almost all of the Count's inventions are based on mushrooms as a main ingredient or an energy source.
    • Also, the Zorglwave, a form of energy designed by Zorglub which can be used to paralyze living things (only the Marsupilami is immune) or to control people's minds.
  • Apocalyptic Log: in La Vallée des Bannis, Spirou finds a very helpful notebook from a previous explorer. Subverted: the guy has actually survived all these years and helps our heroes escape from afar.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: In L'Ankou, Fantasio stubbornly refuses to believe that he's dealing with a supernatural creature.
  • Arch-Enemy:
    • Zantafio to Spirou and Fantasio. Zantafio is the most regular adversary the duo face. Things also get personal for Fantasio since Zantafio is his cousin.
  • Art Evolution: In spades. In a way, that's what you get when you have several different teams handling the series, each one with their own styles and influenced by their own different ages. Still, the evolution within some of the biggest runs is remarkable.
    • Franquin inherited the series from Jijé in 1946 in the middle of a story, with three pages already finished, so he tried his best to imitate his style: huge clothing, exaggerated poses, everything very reminiscent of early 20th century French art. He slowly evolved into highly stylised, tall and thin figures, somewhat inexpressive, which can be seen clearly in his earliest full-length books in 1951, such as Il y a un sorcier à Champignac or Le dictateur et le champignon. Fast-forward to the end of his run, by 1960, and every character is now smaller, rounder and far more expressive, giving the series a comical edge that would have been impossible during the Jijé-esque years. Just compare these three images from each moment in his career.
    • Fournier's earliest depictions of Spirou and Fantasio bordered on Off-Model. He gets gradually more confident with the series over the years.
    • Tome and Janry's last album, the badly received Machine qui rêve, goes for a fully realistic style that is completely different from every other preceding artist, including themselves up until that point.
    • Nic Broca's short run, despite being just three books long, shows a massive improvement from La ceinture du grand froid to Les faiseurs du silence. In part, that's because he came from the world of animation, so he wasn't used to the specific challenges of drawing comics.
    • Morvan and Munuera's run was faithful to Franquin's design, with an Animesque look.
    • There was an art evolution inside Yoann and Vehlmann's run. They started with the one shot Les géants pétrifiés , and then, Yoann's style was influenced by the style that Jamie Hewlett's gave to Gorillaz. Precisely, characters had white of the eyes and large noses. When Yoann and Vehlmann took the main series up, Yoann 's style lined up with Franquin's, with Black Bead Eyes and pointy noses. Then they went on with the spin off Supergroom, and Yoann went back to a more personal style with white of the eyes and large noses.
  • The Artifact: Spirou still wears a variation of his trademark hotel bellboy costume, even though he left that job decades ago.
    • Lampshaded in Des Haricots Partout, when a UN delegate assumes he's the Count's personal bellboy.
    • Spoofed in Le Petit Spirou, where he wears it as a little kid and even his parents own the same outfit.
    • Also lampshaded in the short story Back to the Redac, where Spirou is forced to go back to wearing his bellhop uniform (he had more or less discarded it by the end of Tome and Janry's run, and Morvan and Munuera only had him wear it in flashbacks). Why? Because his contract with Dupuis, the publisher of the comic, obliges him to wear it since he's the face of the company and it is so iconic. The next album, Alerte aux Zorkons features him in full uniform again.
    • The latest books turn this into a Running Gag, each of them having him being forced to wear the uniform for the majority of the story for a reason of another (publicity stunt, losing his other clothes, having a well-meaning host provide him with nothing but those). He comments each time that he hates it.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology: The Visitor from the Mesozoic features a dinosaur with blue, red, yellow and white spots.
  • Asians Eat Pets: Up to parody levels each time Chinese mafia is involved. A Chinese cook is seen pursuing a dog with a rolling pin near the end of Vito la déveine, and Vito states you that you can't trust people who eat sliced dogs. In Luna fatale, a Chinese shop owner mistake Spip for a small dog, and states that "We Chinese people love dogs". In the New York album, members of the Triad actually try to eat Spip, "a tradition", according to them.
  • Author Tract: Whenever currents events are alluded to, but especially L'Ankou, an Anvilicious attack against civilian nuclear power production "defiling" the folklorish lands of Brittany.
    • Most of Fournier's run had a strong ecological vibe.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": Zorglub, of coursenote . In a downplayed examples, other villains created by Franquin (such as Zantafio or Zabaglione) also tend to have "Z" somewhere in their name.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: The Count's frock coat and cravat, over which he occasionally wears a caped greatcoat and a deerstalker.
  • Badass Bookworm: Both Pacôme and Blair are this in the count's own series, Champignac. While they are intellectuals and have no formal training in infiltration or combat, they ventured in Nazi Germany and completed their missions successfully. They took photos of an instruction manual for the Enigma machine. In the second mission, they rescued two scientists who wished to flee and as a bonus, captured a third one that was working on the atomic bomb.
  • Badly Battered Babysitter: Spirou and Fantasio in Panade à Champignac, while babysitting Zorglub.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: Downplayed (somewhat) in The Dark Side of the Z when Were-Spirou is Thrown Out the Airlock but survives on the moon's surface unprotected due to his lunar mutation (Champignac also brings up that some animals like the tardigrade can survive in the vacuum of space) and for having swallowed a micro-respirator from a security member's suit.
  • Beardness Protection Program: Inverted briefly in Machine qui rêve. The comic opens with a bearded man being pursued by the authories, who shaves his beard off in a bar's bathroom because his image is being broadcasted on the news channels. It turns out to be a movie that Spirou and Fantasio are watching.
  • Benevolent Boss: Dewilde is the manager of Moustic Hotel. He's easygoing and treats his employees well with compassion. He also protect Spirou from Entresol, the top porter, who is rude, loud and very much a jerk.
  • Between My Legs: The cover of Who Will Stop Cyanide? shows Spirou and Fantasio through the legs of Cyanide, who is standing in the foreground facing them, feet planted apart.
  • Big Fancy House: In La fille du Z, Zorglub and Zandra live on a private island with a big modern house, a swimming pool and robots for servants.
  • Bilingual Bonus: In La Lumière de Bornéo, you have the art teacher Gisele Farbe ('Farbe' is German for 'Color', and could also mean 'Paint'), and the self-centred artist Egon Ich ('Ich' meaning 'I')
  • Birds of a Feather: In his own series, Champignac and Blair are attracted to each others because of their similar hobbies and interests: reading books, solving puzzles and science.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • In The Diary of a Naive Young Man, WWII has erupted and Spirou is crushed to learn that the girl he loved, Kassandra, is killed in Stalin's purges (In Hope Despite Everything, there may be a hint that she is still alive). On a lighter note, Spirou becomes friend with Fantasio for the first time in this continuity.
    • In Le Groom vert-de-gris Spirou is saved from Nazi guards by a Jewish girl named Audrey. Later, World War II has ended and he decides to ask her out. However, he learns that guards had put her on a train and nobody knows where she is or why they took her. She is revealed to have survived some books later, but not before Spirou turned to alcoholism for a while because of this.
    • In His name was Ptirou, Juliette's medicine has been stolen and she'll die without it. The crew search the cruise ship for it and nothing is found. In desperation and despite the storm, Ptirou and a pilot take a flying boat to New York to fetch some new medicine. When they return, the flying boat can't land so Ptirou has to jump on the ship's safety net. Unfortunately, because of the storm, things don't go to well. Ptirou miss the jump and land hard on the ship while the medicine is lost in the sea. Moments later, Ptirou figures out that the medicine was never stolen in the first place. It fell inside a bed drawer because of the storm. Juliette is saved, but Ptirou dies moments later from his injuries.
    • In L'Homme qui ne voulait pas mourir, the two native lovers who had been fighting in opposite sides of the war in Guaracha are reunited and the water of the eternal life revives them. In turn, Tanzafio, Fantasio's uncle, dies, and the water cannot revive him after becoming tainted by the blood of the two lovers.
  • Black Like Me: Played anviliciously straight in Le Rayon noir, when Spirou is turned black by some of the count's phlebotinium (in the album, in addition to darkening his skin and hair, it turns the latter curly and makes his lips thicker; the animated version only keeps the palette swap). Though pretty hilariously, after half of the town's been turned black and back, people comment how the milkman is still black. His answer: "But I've always been!"
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: In the Blue Gorgon, Seccotine is the blonde, Kay MacCloud the red-headed and Coralie Blaukopf the black-haired one.
  • Body Double: Lenin's body as displayed in his mausoleum is one, the real one being too fragile.
  • Bookworm: Champignac and his love interest Blair Mackenzie were both into books and intellectual endeavors, setting them apart from the rest of their entourage.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • Spip would occasionally do this in Fournier's stories, acknowledging that he was a comic book character, lamenting his lot as an animal sidekick and even occasionally going into rants on how Spirou and Fantasio were lousy comic book heroes.
    • In 2022, La mort de Spirou was the first album in the series to be released after a 7-year hiatus. Coincidentally, another one of Franquin's characters, Gaston Lagaffe, was also slated to reappear at the same time, after decades without any new stories. So, in La mort de Spirou, after Fantasio suffers a clumsy accident with one of his inventions, Spip says "I thought this was the relaunch of The Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio, not Gaston Lagaffe".
  • Breakout Character:
    • Marsupilami later had his own comic book and cartoon series.
    • Zorglub too eventually received his own series, in which we were introduced to his daughter Zandra.
  • Breakout Villain: Cyanure is a bizarre case. In the comics, she was a one-shot villain, but in the earlier animated series, she became one of the most recurring villains, to the point of gaining Joker Immunity.
  • Break the Cutie: Audrey, the Jewish girl who saved Spirou in Le Groom vert-de-gris was last heard being deported in Nazi's death camps. In later albums, Spirou found her alive much to his relief. Unfortunately, the poor girl has PTSD and say she isn't ready to go out on a date with Spirou yet.
  • Brick Joke: Spip being gagged in Spirou à Moscou
  • Broken Aesop: In Virus, an evil corporate is secretly manufacturing viruses for biological warfare business. A contamination accident prompt the owner to cover-up the whole thing by having everyone involved killed, while Spirou and Fantasio are trying to cure the employees. To defend themselves, Spirou and Fantasio use the weaponized viruses against their attackers.
  • Broken Pedestal: Both literally and figuratively with Momo's parents. She explained that her parents were sculptors and staunch communist supporters. They built many statues after communist leaders. Years later however, they became delusioned with the regime and destroyed the statues which led to their disappearance.
  • Brought to You by the Letter "S": Zorglub will brand every last device he owns with a Z, sometimes covering the whole length of the hull. Even his shoes are adorned with a Z.
  • Bumbling Dad: After having an argument with his daughter, Zorglub accidentally activated the Z-Ray, causing him to panic. When Zandra asks him what it does, he replies that he doesn't know, because it's still experimental. We find out moments later that it's a Wave-Motion Gun and it's firing on a populated city.
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • In 2013, Dupuis purchased the company Marsu Productions, which had the rights to Franquin's creations like Gaston and the Marsupilami. Since then, they have started re-appearing together with Spirou and Fantasio in promo images and suchlike. Most notably, in the 75th-anniversary issue of Spirou, Marsupilami made a surprise appearance in a four-page story named Le Conte de Champignap. He reappears in the series proper in book #55, Wrath of the Marsupilami, with an explanation to where he's been all this time, and, more importantly, why nobody commented on his absence. Turns out Zantafio used the Zorglwave to make the main characters forget about him. The Marsupilami is rather pissed about it.
    • The Turbotraction reappears in La mort de Spirou for the first time in as many decades, without any acknowledgement (so far).
    • Cyanure is revealed as The Man Behind the Man in La mort de Spirou and La mémoire du futur.
  • Butt Biter: Spip, albeit he's skilled at biting bad guys's fingers as often.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Vito Cortizone, whose bad luck reaches abysmal levels. Justified by the fact that he's been cursed by his Chinese mafia rival.
    • Charles Atan and Renaldo in L'Abbaye truquée.
  • Call-Back: Plenty of those during Tome and Janry's run, mostly to the Franquin era.
    • The dinosaur from Le voyageur du Mésozoïque earns a key role in Alerte aux Zorkons, over 50 years later.
    • The first half of L'Homme qui ne voulait pas mourir is a big one to Spirou et les Héritiers.
  • The Cameo:
  • Canon Discontinuity: Facilitated by the various creative teams working on the series with their own directions, often ignoring their predecessors' work. Due to the lack of reprints, most people think the series started with Franquin's run (Rob-Vel and Jijé's contributions are rarely acknowledged).
    • Because of a strange editorial edict, Nic and Cauvin could not use Franquin's supporting cast, making their short run very easy to ignore.
    • In Alerte aux Zorkons it's implied that Fantasio went back in time and prevented the events of Morvan and Munuera's Aux Sources du Z from happening.
  • Canon Foreigner: The second Animated Adaptation features a character named Zaoki, an Ambiguously Brown Wrench Wench who was the daughter of Zorglub (who was the Big Bad of the series, despite his Heel–Face Turn in the comics). She was probably added due to there only being one recurring female character in the comic proper.
  • Captain Crash: Madflying, the Australian pilot-for-hire in Kodo le Tyran and Des haricots partout.
  • Captain Ersatz:
  • Cement Shoes: Bad guys attempted this at least four times on heroes, but always failed for some reason.
    • In the short story Spirou et les hommes-grenouilles (Spirou and the frogmen), Spirou, by the seashore, watches a diver busy to search for sunken merchandise. But he's caught by criminals, after the same merchandise, who decide to throw him in the sea with a stone tied to his neck. But only the stone, and the broken rope, fell into water when tossed. Spip managed to gnaw it away from prying eyes. The criminals proceed to do it again with a new rope and stone, but they are interrupted by Fantasio who order everyone to hands up.
    • In La ceinture du grand froid (The big cold ring), Fantasio is captured by sailors who stole him his special shoes, designed to walk on water. Then he's tossed into sea with a stone tied to his neck. However, Fantasio managed to discretely exchange his shoes with the ones of a sailor, and he still wear the special pair. Then he walk back to safety on water, but with a quite handicapping weight tied to him.
    • In Vito la déveine (Vito Misfortune) Vito Cortizone crashes his seaplane along with its freight off the coast of a Polynesian atoll. After he spent weeks on a deserted island, along come Spirou and Fantasio with their boat near this island. Vito forces Fantasio to bring back to the surface the crates from the freight for a few days. Once he have them all, Vito try to get rid of the two heroes. He makes them go into their inflatable boat, with rope and two crates. Then he demand, under the threat of a weapon note , that Fantasio tie up Spirou 's hands. After that Vito planned to tie Fantasio's hands as well, attach each of them to a crate, and toss them into the sea. However, Fantasio is still in the middle of the task of tying up Spirou's hands when a Chinese mafia's boat arrives, and they are after Vito. The latter panics, and finally cut Spirou's bonds, while begging the two heroes to help him against the Triad instead.
    • In the end of Le groom de Sniper Alley (Sniper alley's bellboy), Spirou and Fantasio, back from the treasure 's hunt Vito Cortizone forced them to do, explain that they found a parchment. Cue to Spirou, Fantasio and Spip chained to concrete blocks and ready to be tossed by mafiosi into the Hudson river, as Vito is not happy with a Worthless Treasure Twist. However, Spirou and Fantasio have time to explain that the parchment lead to about thirty treasures' hideouts, and Vito finally let them go.
  • Censor Box: In Le gri-gri du Nikolo-Koba, the diamond of Koli can make people disappear (they come back when it is placed in its special sheath), but it doesn't affect clothes. When a male villain is returned, the frame includes a narrator box with a pointless line (which reads "this is a white square"), conveniently waist-height. This is an allusion to the carré blanc that was used for 30 years on French TV to signal programs that may feature content inappropriate for children.
  • Characterization Marches On: Early in Franquin's run, Fantasio shifted from a total goofball to The Comically Serious. With the obvious irony of later having to handle total goofball Gaston Lagaffe.
  • Character Tics: Franquin-era Spirou had a tendency to chew on things and fidget with his foot when agitated or anxious.
  • Chaste Hero: Spirou (Fantasio, not so much). This is lampshaded in "Luna Fatale", when Don Cortizone discovers that his men are killing each other because of their infatuation with a young, female Triad agent. Deciding that Spirou is the only one he knows who can resist such a Honey Trap, he kidnaps the duo and forces Spirou to go undercover and investigate.
  • Chekhov's Skill: In Fantasio se marie, when Spirou asks Seccotine what she'd do if they need to fight, she says she knows karate. Later, she flips and pins Carinne when she starts firing inside the hospital.
  • The Chew Toy:
    • Fantasio in several of Tome and Janry's stories. If a leg needs to be broken, you can bet it'll be his. Also in many Franquin stories. The premise of several of them are based on "Bad shit happens to Fantasio" or feature a huge element of this in the story. A recurring plot is to have Fantasio be the victim of events outside his control. See La Mauvaise Têtenote , Les Héritiersnote , Z comme Zorglubnote ... That makes him turn Genre Savvy when submitted to madness by the mosquito of La Vallée des Bannis.
    • Also Vito Cortizone, who has literally been cursed with bad luck.
  • Chick Magnet:
    • Spirou in the recent stories, the one-shots in perticular: Audrey, Kassandra, Mieke, Christina, Flanner, Elena and Seccotine herself just to name a few.
    • Fantasio in the Panique en Atlantique one-shot.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Spirou will aid anyone who needs help, while Fantasio much less so. This becomes heartbreaking for him in Dans les griffes de la Vipère when an old lady asks him to help her cross the street, as he's being hunted down by secret agents. He panifully turns her down, but comes to her rescue when she's about to be ran over by a bus.
  • Chronic Villainy:
    • A minor case, but Zantafio actually gave up on his uncle's legacy at the end of Spirou et les Héritiers, and left Spirou and Fantasio on good terms, having decided to make his own life in Palombia. Comes Le Dictateur et le Champignon, it turns out he ended up becoming a ruthless dictator in Palombia about to cause a War for Fun and Profit, putting him into a villainous role again. Since then, all his following appearances have despicted him as one of the vilest antagonists in the whole franchise.
    • Notably subverted with Zorglub in the comic; he exactly turned back to evil only once after his initial appearance, but was rather quick to turn good again, and after that his Heel–Face Turn sticked.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • The Marsupilami was a major character during Franquin's run, but when Franquin left the series he kept the rights to the Marsupilami and decided not to allow him to continue appearing in Spirou et Fantasio. Marsupilami appeared for the last time in Fournier's first story, but after that he vanished without any sort of in-universe explanation. The same happened with Gaston, who had been a minor recurring character in the comic (and Fantasio had been Gaston's main foil in Gaston's own comic, with Spirou making sporadic appearances) but now remained exclusively in his own comics.
      • They both reappeared after the publisher bought the rights to Franquin's characters. The Marsupilami reappears in La Colère du Marsupilami (2015) and Gaston (along with the rest of the cast from that series) reappear in La Mort de Spirou (2022).
    • Seccotine disappeared during Fournier's run with the series only to reappear in one of Tome and Janry's story. Her replacement, Ororéa, left the series with no explanation.
  • Circus Brat: Ptirou worked in a circus as an acrobat with his mother, until she died in an accident (due to the circus being unable to update their gear and equipment because of the poor economy). In his journey to reach America, Ptirou puts his circus skills to good use.
  • Cliffhanger: Hope Despite Everything is a story in WWII broken in four albums and has three cliffhangers:
    • During the Occupation of Belgium, Fantasio leaves Spirou behind to find work in Berlin. Spirou tries to change his mind as Fantasio has already boarded a train.
    • Spirou lies to the Nazis about being a Jew and is taken prisoner. He is placed on a train full of Jews on the way to Auschwitz.
    • Fantasio is about to blow up a bridge just as a train of Nazis is about to cross it. Spirou realize in horror that it's actually a convoy full of Jews prisoners and his friend Felix is onboard.
  • Clone Angst: The Reveal in Machine qui rêve. The Spirou we've been following is actually a clone of the original, and proceeds to angst over whether he's a real human being or not.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Fantasio in his early appearances.
  • Coat Cape: Zorglub likes this style. Until Spip decides to chew on the fur-lined leather coat he wore out that way, that is.
  • Les Collaborateurs: Any work with Spirou and Fantasio set during WWII will feature this in their albums:
    • Le Groom vert-de-gris show many elitists profiting from the occupation. When liberation day comes they are all arrested and publicly humiliated. Spirou and Fantasio mutually accuse each others of working for the Nazi. In truth, they are secretly working for two different cells of resistance and are unaware of each others' secrets.
    • In Hope Despite Everything, there's a lot of them:
      • Lucien, one of Spirou's friend, has a pro-Nazi father. He is later killed off-screen by The Resistance.
      • Kern who sell forged papers only to denounce his clients to the Nazi.
      • Staf, a youth obessessd with law and order who joined the Nazi's army against his countrymen.
      • Jacques, a resistance infiltrator that cause the death of many recurring characters.
  • Combat Pragmatist: When Spirou faces off against the Triad's martial artists, one of them show off his prowess and proficiency with a weapon. Spip simply bite his leg causing him great pain.
  • Combo Platter Powers: The Marsupilami is an extremely versatile animal. He is not only quite clever (while still having a somewhat normal animal intelligence), extremely strong and with a perfectly prehensile 7 metres-long (25 feet) tail, but he is also revealed over the course of the series to be amphibious, able to home on Spirou and Fantasio across a whole country, capable of speech like a parrot, able to burrow underground, immune to the Zorglwave... And its spin-off turns this up to eleven.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Zandra is shocked and doesn't understand how she could fire beams from her eyes. Her father Zorglub says she probably blew up a fuse because she got angry, followed by a Not-So-Innocent Whistle. That was definitely not the proper answer to give her.
  • Comic-Book Time: Sure since it's a long runner.
    • Lampshaded in L'Homme qui ne voulait pas mourir, where Spirou notes that, unlike Fantasio's uncle, they don't need the Water of Life to stay young forever.
    • Extremely glaring in Aux Sources du Z. Spirou travels back in time to his earliest adventures, over 60 years earlier. His past self looks younger, several characters comment on how Modern Spirou looks older and more experienced, and he acknowledges the effect of the passage of time on technology (phones, ID cards) and things like the introduction of the Euro in 2002, several decades after those early stories. Of course, Modern Spirou doesn't look anywhere near 60 years older than back then- and the Count, who was already an old man in those very early stories, is alive and well in the present time.
    • In Champignac, a prequel to the Count's early life, Pacôme is seen in his younger years, but the rest of the townfolk, the mayor and Dupilon, all look exactly like themselves.
  • Confirmed Bachelor: Much to her father's chagrin, her daughter Juliette doesn't want to get married. Ptirou's death greatly affected her and she couldn't see herself being with someone else. In her adulthood, she met a great man named Raymond and was going to marry him, until she finds out that he only wanted her late father's stocks. She then reaffirmed her vow to never get married.
  • Continuity Nod: All over the place. Every other story includes a couple of references to past adventures and a note pointing out to the relevant book.
    • Morvan and Munuera adore this trope. L'Homme qui ne voulait pas mourir includes references to Rob-Vel, Le Petit Spirou, Spirou et les Héritiers, La Corne de rhinocéros, Le dictateur et le champignon, L'ombre du Z and Spirou à Moscou, including a redrawn panel straight from 1951.
    • In Attack of the Zordolts Zorglub accidentally causes the whole ordeal by breaking the test tubes of the fast-growing proliferating moulds that were used to dismantle his bases in Z is for Zorglub and Shadow of the Z. The living dinosaur from The Visitor from the Mesozoic also returns to play an important role in the battle against the Zordolts, and in the ending the mutant animals that aren't destroyed by the de-growing formula are sent to live on its island.
  • Continuity Porn:
    • In Dans les griffes de la Vipère, the mayor of Champignac says he hasn't seen Spirou in well over a decade. Incidentally, that was his first apparition since Le rayon noir, well over a decade earlier.
  • Contrived Clumsiness: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Fantasio stops Seccotine from recording the secrets of the crypt by "accidentally" knocking her Spy Cam out of her hands and stepping on it.
  • Cool Car: The Turbotraction (which somehow disappeared just after Franquin left). Pénélope in the Animated Adaptation. The first model was crashed by Ibd-Mah-Zoud in Vacances sans histoires to be replaced by the second model; in Panade à Champignac, Franquin replaced it altogether with a small Honda coupé. Fournier, who took over, kept the same small car. After that, Spirou and Fantasio would always drive small, cheap cars — Franquin said it first in Vacances sans histoires and Tome and Janry hammered in that Spirou and Fantasio are far from being rich in Spirou à New York. That makes the Turbotraction border Improbably Cool Car, except from the fact that it's actually the first road-worthy pre-series prototype given to them by the auto maker as thanks (first model, the Turbo-Rhino). The disappearance of the second model was never explained in-universe... until 2013, in the album Dans les griffes de la Vipère. Here it's revealed, in an almost offhand way, that the Turbotraction broke down and since it was an experimental prototype Spirou couldn't afford to have it fixed.
    • Just for it to reappear in La mort de Spirou without any explanation.
    • Noemie in the Fournier books. A pre-war car belonging to the Count (but far classier than what he drove in his first appearance) that has been modified to run on sugar thanks to a special mushroom, allowing it to reach comfortable speeds with a single lump.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive:
    • Basile de Koch, CEO of Farmarm in Virus.
    • And the Viper from Dans les griffes de la Vipère.
    • Mrs. Gallantine in Fantasio se marie. She's willing to use dirty tactics to get what she wants.
    • Mr. Noirhomme in Ms. J, volume 2. The man is ready to make dealings with the Nazis and the Soviets as long as he can make a huge buck. When things don't go his ways, he uses immoral and illegal tactics.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, after the Zorglumobile crashes, the count works on fixing it while Fantasio has a subplot about trying to get oil for it from a nearby village. He goes through all kinds of trouble for it, and in the end, returns to the vehicle to find that the count found a can of oil in the trunk.
  • Covers Always Lie:
    • The cover of Fantasio se marie shows Fantasio fawning over a beautiful model, making readers think he's going to marry her. The model does appear in the story and Fantasio does finds her attractive, but she is not Fantasio's bride.
    • The cover of Dans les griffes de la Vipère, Spirou is standing in front of his new luxury house and a Cool Car. In story, he doesn't care about the house and the car because he's held prisoner in a Gilded Cage and wants to escape.
    • The cover of Wrath of the Marsupilami has the Marsupilami damaging a car and hurl it at Spirou and Fantasio. The Marsupilami did so in story, but but one was around when he did.
    • The cover of Spirou in Berlin shows Spirou and Fantasio escaping from Berlin by riding a car that jumps over the Iron Curtain. That scene never took place in the story.
    • The promotional material for L'homme qui ne voulait pas mourir (notably covers for Spirou magazine) would often feature images of Fantasio grabbing Spirou's legs while the later is piloting the fantacopter. But such a scene do not happens in the comics. Instead, Tanzafio once pilot the fantacopter while Spirou hold on tight his legs (and Fantasio is grabbing his). It's inverted in the movie where such a scene is depicted on the poster, and actually happens in the movie.
  • Cowboy Cop: The undercover policewoman in Fantasio se marie. She's trigger happy and violently pursue her quarry. We later find out she's working for Mrs. Gallantine and isn't a real cop.
  • Crash-Into Hello: How Spirou and Kassandra met the first time. Spirou was late for his job at the Moustic Hotel and ran without watching where he was going. He accidentally bumped into Kassandra who was very displeased, until she saw the bruises on Spirou's face. She thought she cause them, but Spirou actually got them from a fight with kids earlier.
  • Crapsack World:
    • La Vallée des Bannis features a Lost World with Everything Trying to Kill You (including liberal amounts of Schmuck Bait). If you manage to survive the initial confusion, the madness mosquitoes will turn most of you into raving maniacs all killing each other.
    • Also demonstrated to be true for the rest of the world in Dans les griffes de la Vipère, where a clique of extremely powerful people is revealed who can launch and win frivolous lawsuits, rewrite laws, force people into contracts that essentially equate to slavery, and set the CIA on random people; all to serve shallow whims.
  • Creator Cameo: In His name was Ptirou, Robert "Rob-Vel" Velter, the original creator of Spirou is present and his meeting with Ptirou greatly influence him in the creation of Spirou. Paul Dupuis, head of Spirou magazine is also present and narrate the story to his nephews.
  • Daddy's Little Villain:
    • Luna, Vito Cortizone's daughter. She disapproves of some of her father's methods but still ends up on his side in the end.
    • Completely averted with Zandra, the daughter of Zorglub. She's isn't evil, but she still cares for her father.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • A general trend for the series as a whole, and inside nearly each creative run. Machine qui rêve, Tome and Janry's last album, tried reinventing the series as an ultra-serious (and decompressed) techno-thriller. It didn't work.
    • The early episodes drawn by Franquin were actually quite dark at times, with violent deaths, doomsday devices, and borderline horrific scenes (lightened with absurd resolutions), up to and including torture scenes in QRN sur Bretzelburg complete edition.
    • Some of the out-of-continuity stories have been this, especially those happening during World War 2. One of their subplots involve a young Jewish girl, possibly Spirou's first love, being deported and Spirou turning into alcoholism because of this. She's revealed to have survived, but a few books later.
    • The Un Cadavre Exquis comic jam also counts. The opening is already very serious, showing that Spirou had to fake his death without being able to tell anyone, not even Fantasio or Spip. While the comic eventually becomes less serious, in the first half there's some really dark moments, including a baby transforming into a violent ape-like creature before its mother's eyes and then mauling her to death, and even Fantasio trying to take his own life when unable to cope with Spirou's apparent death.
  • Darkest Africa : Spirou and Fantasio go to Congo in Master of the Black Hosts. At the time, the country is still a colony of Belgium, but it has a Nazi-like rebellion, a voodoo sorcerer and a hostile tribe of leopardwomen.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Kodo le tyran is arguably this for Fantasio. In most stories he's either the equal partner to Spirou or the sidekick who fades into the background for long chunks of the episode. In this one, though, he's the one moving the plot forward and hogging the camera as Spirou shows up once every few pages to remind us that he's around. The second part of the story, Des haricots partout, balances the focus, although Fantasio is still acknowledged as the real hand behind the events.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    • Spip is the most consistent example of this, but notably in Tome and Janry's early run of the series (he stopped speaking altogether in their later albums).
    • Depending on the Writer, Fantasio indulges a little snarking now and then as well.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: It took him two days of constant hitting on its head with a tree trunk, which was a mere stick to the beast, but Marsupilami managed to knock a dinosaur out.
  • Deface of the Moon: Zorglub's pet project was to demonstrate his genius by writing a brand name in giant letters on the Moon. It worked, but not quite the way he expected.
  • Defiant to the End: In Spirou in Berlin, the Count refuses to cooperate with the Communists, even under the threat of Fantasio's death.
  • Delicate and Sickly: From the one-shot His name was Ptirou, the young girl named Juliette has a heart failure condition. She has to take her medicine regularly and her father has a caretaker to look after her.
  • Depending on the Writer: The tone, plotlines and settings, and other aspects have varied wildly with the rotating creative teams.
    • Fantasio's sexuality has varied. He's been everything from straight (Yoann and Vehlmann) to effeminate but interested in women (Morvan and Munuera) to gay and blatantly pining for Spirou (Yann and Tarrin) to straight-leaning-on-bisexual (Tome and Janry).
    • Spip's intelligence, speech, and overall helpfulness vary a lot between creative teams. In an out-of-continuity story, he actually plots to extinguish the human race by starting World War 2.
  • Did Not Get the Girl: With all the Ship Tease Spirou got over the various stories, he'll always end up alone.
    • Audrey survives the Holocaust, but is traumatized by her ordeal and says she's can't be with Spirou.
    • In the last issue of Hope Despite Everything, Kassandra survives the horrors of WWII and the death camps, but is left a completely changed person. She writes a letter to Spirou explaining she's leaving for Palestine with other Jews.
    • Despite all the Ship Tease between Spirou and Mieke, she moved on from Spirou and ended with someone else.
    • Elena leaves with her parents as the Pacific Hotel is engulf by a giant wave. She looks sadly at Spirou as her car sped away.
  • Dirty Communists: Spirou in Berlin has Spirou and Fantasio going to East Germany to rescue the Count of Champignac. Inevitably, they run into the Secret Police and dissatisfied locals who yearn for freedom.
  • Dismantled MacGuffin: The magical necklace in Fantasio se marie is broken in three parts and various parties are trying to get it back together for their own benefits.
  • Distant Reaction Shot: Downplayed in Fantasio se marie. When Spirou visits Fantasio at his new place, Fantasio takes him to the kitchen, where he gives him some unpleasant news. The next panel shows everyone in the living room looking up in alarm as Spirou yells.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: In Fantasio se marie, when Seccotine comes out of the bathroom wearing just a towel, Spirou is stunned and tries to avoid staring at her.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": Spip literally means "squirrel" in Walloon dialect (and so does Spirou, by the way).
  • Doomed by Canon: The Champignac prequels, focusing on the youth of the Count of Champignac, have him fall in love with a free-spirited girl named Blair McKenzie, who has never been referenced in the previous books chronologically set after this era. She dies shortly after WWII from a botched abortion.
  • Double Take: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, as the characters make their way toward the princess's resting place, Fantasio snarkily points out "signs" that they are nearly there, such as sand in his shoes, dust in his eyes, and a princess in a preserving jar. A Beat Panel passes as he realizes the last thing he said, and he grabs Spirou, stammering that he saw the princess.
  • Downer Beginning:
    • Le Groom vert-de-gris begins in the middle of World War II with Belgium being occupied by the Nazi. Spirou works as a bellhop in a hotel used by the Gestapo as their HQ. Because of this, Fantasio has disowned his friend, not knowing he is secretly a member of the Belgium Resistance.
    • The third Champignac book, Quelques atomes de carbone, begins with the death of Champignac's Love Interest Blair, a main character in the two previous books, from a botched abortion. This is followed by a page of completely black panels before the actual story begins.
  • Dystopia Is Hard: The Kingdom of Bretzelburg under the dictatorship of General Schmetterling, who rules through the puppet king Ladislas. As a result of Bretzelburg's arms race with Maquebasta, the country's economy has all but collapsed, with long lines of people outside grocery stores due to the lack of food in the shops, bus passengers forced to pedal to move the bus due to fuel restrictions, people wearing newspapers as clothes and beer being replaced with tap water. The secret police is everywhere, with even the slightest expression of dissent meriting arrest and "re-education." Meanwhile, the copious amounts of weapons acquired as a result of the arms race are themselves shown to be useless: oil barrels are stuck together to appear like rockets and grenades are made from food tins... with the contents still inside.
  • Drives Like Crazy
    • Seccotine is the classic terrible woman driver. In the second animated series she's best called "reckless", dodging through traffic and leaving cars behind her slamming the brakes.
    • Also the oil sheik Ibn Mah-zout, who turned Spirou and Fantasio's car into scattered pieces of scrap metal in just a few minutes of driving it.
  • Easy Amnesia: Zorglub in Panade à Champignac. He gets hit over the head and all his memories come back. Then he gets hit over the head another time and they all disappear. And let's not forget the fact that he's acting like an 8-month-old in the first place.
  • Elixir of Life: The "spilling from the Fountain of Youth" variety is the macguffin in The Man Who Did Not Want to Die. The titular Man is Fantasio's old adventurer uncle Tanzafio, who found the Fountain of Youth and brought back copious amounts of its waters (the Elixir) in large bottles. Decades later what remained of his supplies is accidentally lost and he has to return to the Fountain in time before ever-fastening Rapid Aging gets him...
  • Elseworld: In the one-shot Z Foundation, the series is set far in the future with space travel, but with a unique aesthetic that can be described as a cross between Jules Verne's writings and The Fifth Element. Spirou is a dissatisfied Office Drone. Seccotine is Spirou's sister and has joined the Rebellion against the government known as "the Administration". Fantasio is an Administration field agent who wants to recover his lost memory. Spip is a small shapeshifting creature capable of computer hacking. Our heroes want to uncover the secrets of the mysterious Z Foundation who collect various organic life and its ties with the Administration. The Z Foundation is run by Spirou's granfather, who is the Count of Champignac. Joining him is Zorglub and Zantafio. The final reveal is that the Foundation has artificially recreated the planet Earth before space travel. It will serve as an esoteric prison for troublemakers of the Administration. Our heroes and Zantafio have their memories re-written and Spip is locked into the form of a squirrel. When Spirou and Fantasio wake-up, they decide to visit the town of Champignac...which will eventually lead to album #2 of Spirou and Fantasio, meaning that this story is really a PREQUEL to the series.
  • Escaped Animal Rampage: In the story "Le Voyageur du Mésozoïque" a dinosaur escapes from the Count of Rommelgem's laboratory and causes havoc in the city.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Poildur says that he may be a thug and a thief, but he wont betray his country to the Nazis.
  • Everyone Has Standards: In His name was Ptirou, the cruise ship suffers from a storm, sabotage and someone has stolen Juliette's medicine, who also happens to be the cruise CEO's daughter. The saboteurs were union members who has a bone to pick with the cruise's CEO because of jobs' cuts. When they learn of the girl's medicine going missing, the workers are disgusted and turned their attention toward the union leader. The union leader denies having anything to do with the theft. He turns himself to the ship's captain so the real thief can be found.
  • Everyone Went to School Together: Spoofed in La Jeunesse de Spirou (which has a drunk Unreliable Narrator), averted in Le Petit Spirou (which has none of the other regular characters).
  • Everybody Is Single: Albeit the Count of Champignac is stated to be a widower.
  • Evil Chancellor: General Schmetterling, the commander of Bretzelburg's military and the de facto ruler of the small kingdom. He keeps King Ladislas docile by regularly giving him medication to "calm his nerves," thereby enabling him to run the country and escalate the ruinous arms race with Bretzelburg's neighbor Maquebasta, which he uses to embezzle copious amounts of government funds.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: The Marsupilami usually gets suspicious of bad guys even before they are known as such. This usually means he seems to attack a random stranger without provocation.
  • Evil Is Petty: Having lost once again against Spirou and Fantasio, Zantafio uses the Zorglwave to make the two forget about the Marsupilami. Not only that, Zantafio has the pair sell the Marsupilami to a rich collector of exotic animals.
  • Evil Twin: Zantafio to Fantasio, although he's actually Fantasio's cousin.
  • Extreme Omnivore: The Marsupilami will try to eat anything that smells good, and is usually able to digest it without too much trouble. Spirou and Fantasio were able to capture him in the first place because he got drunk after drinking their entire supply of methylated spirit and suffered only from a hangover from it. In another book he eats Fantasio's tobacco. And a wild Marsupilami's diet is mainly composed of live piranhas (and the occasional whole coconut).
  • The Faceless:
    • Number 2 in Du glucose pour Noémie and the Big Bad in Cauvin's stories.
    • The mysterious corporate leader during Nicolas Broca and Raoul Cauvin's run with the series. The only thing we see of him is his arm and he's always sitting in a chair which the reader can only see from behind.
  • Fake-Out Make-Out: Used by Spirou on Ursula in Le Groom vert-de-gris to avoid a patrol of Nazis.
  • Faking the Dead: Former dictator Iliex Korda has his death faked in a Staged Shooting so he can have a quiet retirement.
  • Family-Friendly Firearms: In La Corne du Rhinocéros, the censorship commission made Franquin remove most of the bad guys' guns, which meant they were now pointing their finger at everything.
  • Fat Bastard: Mr. Noirhomme is obese and a very corrupted businessman.
  • Fictional Country: Quite a few over the years, due to Spirou and Fantasio tendency to visit these rather than real places. It includes Palombie and Guaracha, Bretzelburg and Maquebasta, Tora Torapa, Çatung, Touboutt-Chan, Marmelade islands, Urugondolo and Aswana. The movie has added Gantagwa to the list (an obvious stand-in for Morocco).
  • Fighting Your Friend: Spirou is forced to do this after Fantasio becomes infected by a Hate Plague in Vallée des Bannis.
  • First Kiss:
    • Spirou had to wait to be technically 57 to kiss a woman (Luna in Luna Fatale in 1995). Albeit if Le petit Spirou is taken into account, it chronologically happened to him before.
    • For Fantasio, it took nearly 30 more years to be kissed by Seccotine in Le triomphe de Zorglub in 2018. It was the first time in-story, and for those two characters, but also for Fantasio at large. You can tell it from his reaction, close to the one of a preteen effectively experiment it for the first time ever: he have a Luminescent Blush, a Post-Kiss Catatonia, and Something Else Also Rises (the propeller of his fantacopter), all in the same panel.
  • Foil: In Hope Despite Everything, Father André and Father Philippe are different as night and day. The former is authoritarian and is openly racist against non-whites and non-Christians, while the latter is easygoing and far more tolerant. Later, Father Philippe secretly provides forged papers to help people escape. The Gestapo enventually caught him and is likely dead. Meanwhile, Father André complains that Spirou hasn't paid his rent and denounce him to the Nazi.
  • Food as Bribe: During WWII, Fantasio hasn't paid his rent for six months and the landlord threaten him to throw him out. Fantasio then gives her a large piece of meat and she allows him stay for another month.
  • Foreshadowing: At the end of Wrath of the Marsupilami, the narrtor teases a Nazi-theme nightmare for Spirou and Fantasio. However, the main series seems to be on hiatus, as Vehlmann and Chivard work on a spinoff named Super Groom instead.
  • Fountain of Youth: The necklace in Fantasio se marie can be used to de-age people with a special ritual.
  • French Jerk: Colonel Chester from the French army in Hope Despite Everything. He openly brags about the superiority of the French army over the British and Belgian ones. After the French army is routed, we next see Colonel Chester barring fleeing Belgian refugees from reaching France's border, saying that the invading Nazis aren't any of his problem.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • It's hard not to feel sorry for the Master of the Black Hosts. Being an African albino, he was abandoned in the jungle by his mother. An elderly Belgium nun found him and harshly raised him as a catholic. After her death, he lived on the streets and was ostracized by everyone. He tried to enroll as a priest, but the church rejected him. In the end, he was found by a sorcerer who made him his pupil. With his new found powers, he went on a vengeful crusade against Belgians and Africans-alike.
    • In his own series, Zorglub revealed that he was mocked during his early life and led a lonely existence. So turned he to science and villainy to gain respect.
  • From Bad to Worse:
    • Émile Bravo's take on Spirou, The Diary of a Naive Young and its sequel Hope Despite Everything. Peace talks break down and WWII hit Belgium. Fantasio lose his apartment in a aerial bombing and is fired from his job. Spirou also lose his job when Hotel Moustique is destroyed. Both are struggling to survive with Nazis patrolling the streets, curfews, propaganda and anti-jews sentiment rising.
    • Meanwhile, Kassandra is taken back to USSR by force. Later, Stalin have her deported to Germany on the grounds that she is German-Jew. Spirou, desperate to reunite with her, allows himself to be captured and is shipped to Poland along with other Jews. Little does he know that the final destination is Auschwitz.
    • In part three of Hope Despite Everything, Spirou and Fantasio are on the run from the Gestapo. Unbeknownst to Spirou, Fantasio has secretly been working for La Résistance since the early months of the occupation. Fantasio's cell has been dismantled and many of his friends are dead.
  • Fungus Humongous: In Le prisonnier du Bouddha (Buddha's prisoner) and Alerte aux zorkons, under the influence of the GAG device and an accelerated evolution's law, giant plants grow in the count 's garden, and in the jungle surrounding Champignac, respectively. Which include huge mushrooms.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Fantasio in his early appearances. Including the mostly forgotten Fanta-Copter: a functional one-person helicopter backpack! Fantasio remains a gadgeteer all along, sometimes giving Champignac a hand in building his inventions (he's seen working on the submarine). Champignac eclipsed him as a real genius, but Fantasio sure knows his way around a toolbox : in Aventure en Australie, he's seen fixing a train with a plane's engine.
  • Gas Siphoning: In L'ombre du Z, Zorglub flies his group of Zorglcopters from Champignac to Palombia over the Atlantic Ocean. As the copters do not have enough fuel for a non-stop flight, he mind-controls the crew of a United States Navy carrier and steals theirs.
  • Girls vs. Boys Plot: Briefly in Fantasio se marie. Spirou doesn't believe that a girl like Seccotine has what it takes to be his adventuring partner, so she challenges him to a soccer game with the neighborhood kids — Seccotine and the girls on one side, Spirou and the boys on the other. Spirou tells the boys to take it easy on the girls; the boys end up getting trounced.
  • Grave Clouds: The graveyard scenes in Un Cadavre Exquis all take place in the pouring rain. Spip lampshades this at one point, wondering: 'how come it's always raining in graveyards?'
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: In one-shot His name was Ptirou, the story is far more gray than the usual for the series.
    • Mr. De Sainteloi is a stern businessman and made lots of job cuts, but only because he was under pressure from his shareholders. He is shown to be a devoted father and a Reasonable Authority Figure.
    • The union workers are unhappy of being laided-off by Mr. Sainteloi just days before Christmas. They are willing to threaten Mr. Sainteloi and sabotage the cruise ship, but they will not go as far as endangering his daughter, Juliette.
  • Grim Reaper: In L'Ankou, Spirou and Fantasio get to meet the eponymous collector of souls. Because of their unfamiliarity with Breton folklore, they aren't nearly as scared as they ought to be.
  • Hack the Traffic Lights: Fantasio equips an old car with a device allowing him to remotely control the traffic lights so they are always green for him. He later gives it to an oil magnate who, being colourblind, misuses it and turns all lights red for him.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Fantasio, so much so that at the end of La Vallée des Bannis, the hospital staff did not realize he was no longer violently insane.
  • Hate Plague: Fantasio becomes infected by one of these in La Vallée des Bannis and spends the volume trying to murder Spirou.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: The latest books and the one-shots make Zorglub this. Lampshaded at one point by Fantasio, who comments that he can't remember if he's supposed to be with them or against them.
  • He Knows Too Much: Two instances in Ms. J, volume 2.
    • Mr. De Sainteloi finds out from his daughter, Juliette, that the Nazi businessman who wishes to buy his share of the company also plans to use his cargo ships to send Soviet's oil to the Nazis. Alarmed, Mr. De Sainteloi goes to warn his business partner, Mr. Noirhomme, not knowing he's fully aware of the plot. After Mr. De Sainteloi leaves to warn the authorities, Mr. Noirhomme takes precautions to get rid of him.
    • Juliette's best friend, Léa, finds out that her lover Lucien and Juliette's fiancé, Raymond, are cheating on them. Worse, their relationships was just a scam to get a hold of Juliette's stock for Raymond's grandfather. Léa tries to quietly leave the scene, but is caught by Lucien who disposes of her in the river.
  • Hero Stole My Bike: When trying to chase Zantafio's car, Spirou takes a motorist's motorcycle. Later, he returns it to the owner and tells him to write any complaint to Le Journal de Spirou.
  • Heroic BSoD: Although we never see him in this state, Spirou tells Seccotine in La Grosse Tête that Fantasio has been ill with depression after his book only sold twenty-something copies note . It's not mentioned again after that, but when Fantasio shows up again he appears to have recovered from it.
  • Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Zorglub's Zorgmen. The upper-part is grey with red pants and white boots. All the mooks are shaved.
  • Historical Domain Character:
    • Both Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming show up in Champignac. The latter assisted Champignac and Blair to infiltrate occupied France. Both characters and their mission served as an inspiration for Fleming to create James Bond. In the sequel, Champignac and Blair cross path with Adolf Hitler, Von Braun (Nazi rocket scientist) and Dr. Morell (Hitler's personal physician). The third books has Champignac meet with Margaret Sanger (suffragette and founder of the birth control movement), Gregory Pincus (inventor of the birth control pill), and Katharine McCormick (who funded Pincus' research).
    • In Hope Despite Everything, Spirou befriends Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum and his wife Felka Platek.
  • Honest Corporate Executive: In Ms. J, Mr. De Sainteloi is a harsh businessman, but strongly believes in making money by the rules.
  • Honey Trap: The whole scheme of Ms. J, volume 2. Mr. Noirhomme wants Juliette's share of her father's company. When she refuses, he sends his grandson, Raymond, to seduce her, marry her and take her stocks.
  • Honor Before Reason: Spirou's boss and hotel manager, Dewilde, prefer to quit his job rather than serving Nazis at their hotel.
  • Hope Crusher: In Hope Despite Everything, the story is set in WWII and there's little heroic actions from Spirou and Fantasio. For good reason, Spirou is just a young teen and Fantasio is out of job. The Nazis control everything and everyone is struggling to survive during the Occupation.
  • Hopeless Suitor: In Hope Despite Everything, Mieke has a crush on Spirou, but he can only think of Kassandra. In the end, she gets over him and moves on. Mieke's younger sister, Christina, also has the hots for Spirou, but he ignores her as well. She eventually settles for a young acquaintance of Spirou named Lucien.
  • Hotter and Sexier:
    • In works by Tome and Janry. Until them the series was quite chaste, but femmes fatales such as Cyanure or Luna Cortizone started to pop up, as well as Ship Tease despite the celibate heroes (with the aforementioned Luna, or Seccotine). In the Luna Fatale album, Fantasio stage an exhibition of his nude women pictures. This is reflected in Le Petit Spirou, with a cast full of pretty women, and where the titular hero have a girlfriend and is a Dirty Kid.
    • The one-shot Spirou and the Blue Gorgon is this. Drawn by famed Belgian comic writer Dany, you can except lots of sexy girls. The first pages has a movie star in a bikini shooting a commercial. Later pages has Spirou and Fantasio at the beach and with lots of girls in skimpy swimsuits in the background. And we get shots of Seccotine in a g-string. Naked women can actually be seen sunbathing by, or swimming in the pool of the villain (who appear naked as well, but in his case, it's more Fan Disservice). Not to mention the Count’s new medicine, intended to boost male virility, by using mushrooms with a quite suggestive shape.
    • The mini series Le groom vert de gris. In the first volume, it's mainly thanks to Ms. Fanservice Ursula, the German secretary, who appears twice in her underwear. The first time, she tries to woo Spirou in it, with no success, and despite he's visibly underage (albeit he'll effectively do a Fake-Out Make-Out with her later). The second time, it's because she just had sex with Fantasio. The first time in the comics, by the way, that characters sleep together with no ambiguity. Glu-glu, Fantasio's girlfriend, is seen in her underwear as well, with the strong implication they are used to have sex too. Spirou and Fantasio are the targets of many Mistaken for Gay errors or jokes, while a lost Scottish parachutist may actually be gay. While reunited with La Résistance, the Scottish is seen patting the rear end of another British parachutist...who likes it apparently.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen:
    • Zantafio was once the dictator of Palombia, only to be forced to live as a vagrant after being thwarted by Spirou and Fantasio.
    • Kodo the Tyrant. He's the undisputed dictator of a fictional country in Asia named Catung. Fantasio and Spirou ruin him by destroying his opium fields and replacing his weapons shipments with agricultural vehicles. A year later, our heroes find him selling vegetables in a open market in Europe.
    • The revolutionary leader and his general in The Master of the Black Hosts. They both fail at overthrowing the Belgium colonists and were forced to hide in the jungle. A Catholic missionary take them in and they are forced to make slapstick movies for the rest of their days.
  • Human Popsicle: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, the ice princess was put in a deep sleep in a preserving jar so that she could be awakened someday in the future.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: A particular tragic variant where the people of Champignac are forced to hunt their friend Spirou by the Viper.
  • Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Ms. Jones is Viper's lawyer and bodyguard since she has a black belt in karate. She also handles various administrative tasks and acts as a field agent.
  • Hypno Ray: The Zorglwave can completely influence the minds of people (the Marsupilami is the only known creature able to resist it). It is also quite versatile in its uses, from turning its victims into perfectly obedient Slave Mooks to giving them the urge to buy some soap or prevent them to recognise Zorglub.
  • Hypocrite: Father André is a priest and yet he's prone of violent oubursts. His sin is clearly wrath.
  • Hypocritical Humor: The Count calls out Zorglub's violent mood swings. This is immediately followed by Zorglub angrily shouting that he dosn't have violent mood swings.
  • I Am Not Weasel: Due to how an unusual pet he is, Spip is frequently mistaken for something else. Villains often call him a rat, out of spite. Others persons innocently mistook him for a stone marten, a weasel, a field mouse, or even a small dog. In Alerte aux Zorkons, Spip protest that he is not a flying squirrel, or a hamster, when thrown away or put into a wheel.
  • I Can't Hear You: In Fantasio se marie, Seccotine calls out to Spirou as she gets settled into his place, but he's in the bathroom and can't make out what she's saying.
  • Iconic Outfit: Spirou's outfit, of course. His hat in particular has been used as a logo of sorts for representing the series.
  • Identical Grandson: sort of:
    • Aurélien de Champignac looks exactly the same as his uncle the Count of Champignac, except his moustache points up instead of down.
    • Zorglub's descendant from Le Réveil du Z looks exactly the same as his ancestor, except he's a dwarf.
    • Fantasio and Spirou also have identical family members in Le Réveil du Z, and much to their ancestors' shock, they are Zorglub's descendant's Elite Mooks.
  • Idiot Hair: Fantasio has the eight strands of hair that pop up on top of his head.
  • I Have Many Names: Zantafio uses many names:
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Zandra wished she has a normal life like all the other teenagers. She mentions that she lives on a private island with her dad, a bunch of robots and she's the only who goes to school in a UFO.
  • Immediate Self-Contradiction: In Fantasio se marie, when Spirou visits Fantasio at his new place, Fantasio takes him to the kitchen and warns him that he has something unpleasant to tell him. Spirou promises not to get mad. The next panel shows everyone in the living room looking up in alarm as Spirou yells angrily.
  • Inconsistent Coloring: Fantasio's coat suddenly changes from black to green halfway through Un Cadavre Exquis.
  • Instant Expert: The Count, under the influence of the intelligcence-boosting X4 becomes an expert at diving after quickly browsing through a book on the subject.
  • Internal Homage: The climax in La Mort de Spirou mimics the climax in La vallée des bannis, including the lack of dialogue and Spirou being about to drown, with his fate in the hands of Fantasio. The only difference is that the second time, Spirou doesn't manage to catch Fantasio's hand.
  • Interrupted Suicide: In Un Cadavre Exquis, Fantasio tries commit suicide after believing Spirou has died. Thankfully Spip manages to stop him just in time.
  • Intimate Healing: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Spirou and Seccotine huddle for warmth while in a mountaintop cave.
  • Intimidation Demonstration: One of the early stories has the Marsupilami meet a gorilla, who starts engaging in threatening behavior (chestbeating, ripping trees out of the ground...). Subverted, however, in that it is quickly too tired to actually fight, and the Marsupilami goes by unharmed - and actually looks worried by the gorilla's state of exhaustion.
  • Intrepid Reporter
    • Spirou and Fantasio themselves, of course.
    • Seccotine is a cross between this and Paparazzi.
    • It also applies to Ororea from the Fournier books.
    • Fantasio leans more towards being a paparazzo in some stories, like Panique En Atlantique and Le journal d'un ingénu
  • Irony: Zandra points out the irony of that his dad, Zorglub, overprotecting her, while he invents some of the most dangerous weapons in the world.
  • I Should Write a Book About This: The ending of His name was Ptirou. While working on a passenger liner Robert Velter was moved by his meeting with Ptirou. This inspires him to create Spirou later in his life, as an homage to the young boy.
  • It Always Rains at Funerals: In Spirou à New York, the funeral for one of Don Cortizone's men is held in the pouring rain... from a skull-shaped rain cloud... that hangs only over them, while the rest of the city is enjoying sunshine. The Don remarks that it's almost as if a curse has been hanging over them lately. (He's entirely correct.)
  • I Want Grandkids: In Fantasio se marie, Spirou's mother wants him to settle down and give her grandkids and resents that he is seemingly only interested in adventuring.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: In The Diary of a Naive Young Man and Hope Despite Everything, Entresol is Spirou's supervisor and a loudmouth jerk. Even the hotel manager dislikes him. However, Entresol has a very good reason to yell at Spirou: the latter is always late at his job and off slacking rather than carrying customers' baggages.
  • Job Mindset Inertia: The town drunk was apparently a vetenarian before he took to drinking and is the Closest Thing We Got to a doctor. When giving Spirou a checkup, he gives his opinion as if Spirou were a horse.
  • Karma Houdini: In Pacific Palace, the former dictator Iliex Korda. An Expy of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Korda ruled his country with an iron fist and has excuted many people with his Secret Police. By the start of the story, he fled his country because of an popular uprising and sought refuge in France. This became a hot potato for the goverment as many revolutionaries wanted Korda tried for crimes against humanity. Korda blackmails France into faking his death and finding him a nice, quiet and secret place for him and his family to retire.
  • Kill All Humans: Who would have believed this of Spip the squirrel? But that's what is shown in the shocking epilogue to The Diary of a Naive Young Man.
  • Killed Off for Real: Hope Despite Everything is set in WWII so casualties are to be expected:
    • Spirou's friends, Lucian and Robert: both fathers of the boys are dead. The former was pro-Nazi and killed by the resistance. The latter was pro-communist and was killed by the Nazi.
    • Kern, the false friend who sold forged papers for money and denounced his clients to the Nazi. Shot by an unknown assailant in public.
    • Madeleine and Henri were both members of the Comet resistance cell which expatriated downed allied pilots to the West. Betrayed by a traitor, they were tortured to death by the Gestapo.
  • Killed Offscreen: During the WWII setting, death of innocents and invaders happen, but are never shown in the pages.
  • Kinda Busy Here: In Fantasio se marie, while trying to sneak into a place, Spirou gets a phone call from Fantasio, who is sulking about being replaced by Seccotine. Spirou snaps at him that it's not the time and that he's had enough of his attitude.
  • King of the Homeless: Two pre-teen kids fill this function for a group of Tokio homeless in Spirou et Fantasio à Tokyo
  • Knight of Cerebus: Things get significantly darker when Zantafio enters the picture.
  • The Last Straw: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Fantasio sleeps under a leaking roof with a tarp to catch the rain. Throughout the night, the tarp collects and becomes swollen with water. By morning, it has stopped raining, but water is still dripping into the tarp, one drop at a time. Eventually, it becomes one drop too many, and the tarp tears, causing all the water to be dumped onto Fantasio at once in a rude awakening.
  • Latex Perfection: Played with in the story La mauvaise tête to frame Fantasio. While the mask is good enough to fool people watching him on TV or from afar, it always keeps the same smiling expression, and the guy under the mask was specifically chosen to for his similar frame. He also never meets a close acquaintance of Fantasio's while masked. The story being from 1954, it also comes off as a bit of an Unbuilt Trope. In fact, the mask is not even described as latex, rubber or silicone but "plastic", considering those other materials were uncommon for masks.
    • And yet, oddly, played straight in the Vilain faussaire! story, where Igor Raspoutnikov impersonates Fantasio in mere seconds, changing clothes as well, in a stairway. With a realistic expressive mask that only has one eyehole, as he has an eyepatch.
  • Like an Old Married Couple: Tome and Janry present the duo this way.
    • Lampshaded in La Lumière de Bornéo. After Spirou and Fantasio get into a fight, Fantasio calls the Count for advise. After the call, Dr. Follikel jokingly tells the Count that he should've become a marriage counselor instead of a scientist.
  • Living Dinosaurs: The Visitor from the Mesozoic centers on Champignac retrieving an ancient dinosaur egg from Mysterious Antarctica which hatches into a disastrously clumsy Gentle Giant Sauropod. In the end the dinosaur is relegated to live on a small island (where they make sure to build a drawbridge in order to be able to transport food for it) and becomes a tourist attraction.
  • Long-Runner Tech Marches On: In La Mort de Spirou, Fantasio has swapped his pipe for a vaping machine, he's become vegan and the Turbotraction is now electric.
  • Love at First Sight:
    • In Ms. J, volume 1, Ptirou falls for Juliette the moment he saw first.
    • When Spirou spots Elena for the first time, he couldn't stop thinking about her.
    • Mieke has a big crush on Spirou the moment they met, but she didn't display any signs of blushing or stammering.
  • Love Hurts: In Fantasio se marie, Clothilde ends up breaking up with Fantasio, leaving him miserable.
  • Lying Finger Cross: In Fantasio se marie, Spirou and Seccotine cross their fingers behind their backs as they promise Carinne not to take initiative on the investigation without telling her.
    • Vito Cortizone, when promising he won't hurt Fantasio in Luna Fatale.
  • Madness Mantra: After Fantasio goes insane in La Vallée des Bannis he develops a tendency to say or yell, "FANTASIO MAGAZIIIIIIIIIINE!" due to the fact that the Hate Plague had made him fixate on the fact that despite them being lifelong partners, their book was still called Spirou Magazine. This part was left out of the animated adaptation of this album.
  • Mad Scientist
    • The Count of Champignac, although he gets saner after his debut episode and becomes The Professor. La peur au bout du fil Makes him REALLY mad though.
    • Zorglub, complete with the They Called Me Mad! speech.
  • Mass Hypnosis: One of the possible uses of the Zorglwave. Entire villages are evacuated that way.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A lot of this in the Fournier series, especially with the magician Itoh Kata. Some of what he does can be explained by sleight of hand (although at an Impossible Thief level), but later on this can only be described as magical, such as when his hat is revealed to be a functional Hammerspace containing doves, rabbits, and everything else he puts there. In L'Ankou, he can actually make things disappear or teleport without explanation.
  • Meaningful Name: Zandra. Given Zorglub's habit of naming his inventions with something beginning with Z, this is a fitting name for a Z-Android.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: Victims of the Zorglwave who keep some of their personality will have blank pupils, while those who have been fully enslaved have completely blank eyes.
  • Missing Mom:
    • Zandra never met or remember her mother. For good reason, Zandra eventually discover that she's a robot.
    • In His name was Ptirou, both Juliette and Ptirou's mother are dead. The latter died during their circus act.
  • Mistaken for Gay:
    • Seccotine thinks that Spirou is in love with Fantasio and teases him about it in Le Tombeau des Champignac.
      Seccotine: Your little Fantasio is well, that's what counts right?
      Spirou: What are you trying to say?
      Seccotine: Nothing, you're free to love whoever you want...
    • A street-vendor in an old Franquin volume mistakes them for a couple as well.
    • When Wildy first sees Fantasio in La Lumière de Bornéo, she asks Spirou whether he is his husband.
  • Mistaken for Servant: Throughout his story, it happened to Spirou more than once because of his uniform. A 80's short story even lampshade this, as Spirou is dragged by the doorman into a luxury hotel on Christmas 's night, while he happened to go by. The doorman mistook him for a local staff member, and since then, Spirou prefer to wear either a customized version of the uniform or civilian clothes (albeit the most often in red).note 
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The Marsupilamis look like monkeys with a leopard fur and a extremely long prehensile tail, and are also amphibious and oviparous (although with a bellybutton).
  • Modesty Towel: In the one-shot Fantasio se marie, Seccotine becomes Spirou's new roommate, much to the latter's annoyance. At some point, she comes out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and left quite an impression on Spirou.
  • Mundane Solution: Zorglub struggles to deactivate the Z-Ray. Zandra simply unplug the power cord. Unfortunately, this cause their ship to plummet on the ground.
  • Mysterious Antarctica
    • In The Visitor from the Mesozoic, Champignac finds a dinosaur egg in the ices of Antarctica.
    • In Virus, a sinister corporation has an Eerie Arctic Research Station where they're illegally developing deadly bio weapons.
  • Mythology Gag: In the Animated Adaptation, Zorglub's army of Slave Mooks is replaced by robots, and their artificial language is not used. However their leader, Zero, sometimes malfunctions and says "Liah Bulgroz" instead of "Hail Zorglub", reusing the Zorgmen's hail from the comic.
  • Named by the Adaptation: The unnamed eyepatch-wearing forger in the Vilain Faussaire! story is named Igor Raspoutnikov in the first animated series, where he is an Ascended Extra.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The android called Cyanure (Cyanide in the English translation) is named after a deadly poison.
  • National Geographic Nudity: The tribe of Leopardwomen are all topless. Yes, even the great old priestess.
  • Nearly Normal Animal: Spip and the Marsupilami, on different levels.
    • Spip's intelligence varies a lot Depending on the Writer. At his most clever, he's shown to be of nearly human intelligence with Thought Bubble Speech and perfectly understands human speech, but he still loves to eat nuts and climb on trees. Other writers have depicted him as behaving like a realistic squirrel.
    • The Marsupilami usually behaves like an extremely clever animal: he frequently misunderstands the humans, has no thought bubbles and particularly enjoys eating, sleeping and playing. However, in the Poorly Disguised Pilot Le Nid de Marsupilamis (Marsupilamis' nest), focusing on a family of Marsupilamis living in the jungle, their courtship behaviour is particularly human-like, especially where the female Marsupilami is concerned. In his spin-off, the Marsupilamis seem just as clever as humans, occasionally having discussions between them that are translated in footnotes.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Marsupilami regularly displays new abilities that end up being helpful to the heroes (being amphibious, capable of finding Spirou and Fantasio across a country, burrowing, being immune to the Zorglwave, ...), but just as regularly the source of gags. Lampshaded by Spirou or Fantasio, who regularly note that he is full of surprises.
  • Nice Guy: André, Zandra's boyfriend, is rather friendly and doesn't do anything that would provoke others around him.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In The Diary of a Naive Young Man, Spirou's suggestion settles peace between the Polish and the Nazis, therefore averting war. The solution would be Poland ceding the city of Danzig to the Nazis while the League of Nations would finance the construction of a Polish port near the Vistula river. However, Fantasio is looking for a big story and angers the Nazi negotiator. This prompts him to retaliate by calling off the peace proposal, thereby leading to World War II.
    • In Ms. J, volume 1, Juliette De Sainteloi's medicine goes missing and time is running out before she dies. Ptirou and an airplane pilot go fetch another one in New York despite the storm. When they return, they can't make a sea landing, so Ptirou has to jump, which isn't a problem since he's trained circus acrobat. Unfortunately, he misses the safety net because of the storm and caught a flagpole instead. To speed things up, Mr. De Sainteloi orders him to throw the medicine on the net, despite Ptirou's protests. The medicine misses the net because of a big shake from the sea. The medicine rolls on the deck and is about to go overboard. Trying to catch the medicine, Ptirou swings on a rope which unfortunately breaks. Ptirou crashes below deck and is gravely injured and the medicine is lost at sea. Had Mr. De Sainteloi waited for the sailors to safely bring Ptirou down, all this would have been avoided.
    • In La mort de Spirou, Fantasio accidently caused Spirou's death by drowning.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • In Champignac, volume 2, the Nazis take over the count's manor and use it as their HQ to transmit and receive all their encrypted messages. This comes to bite them in their asses later in the war when Champignac is hired by the British Intelligence to break the code of the Enigma machine. The Count is a able to locate and make photographs of the very elusive instruction manual.
    • In Ms. J, volume 2, Nazi and Soviet agents somehow decide to have their secret meeting in a restaurant. This allows Juliette to eavesdrop on their conversations and secretly take pictures of them. Mr. Noirhomme also do the same with his accomplices in a pub. Léa is able to hear them talking about scams, deceits and murder.
  • Nightmare Sequence: In Hope despite everything, Spirou has quite a few disturbing nightmares, with Kassandra and Nazis in it.
  • Nitro Express: One episode of the animated Spirou and Fantasio has the protagonists unwittingly transporting a truckload of "nitrotonic".
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Dans les griffes de la Vipère, an undercover Spirou is forced to save an old lady who throws herself into the incoming traffic after he refused to help her cross the road to avoid bringing attention onto himself. After being rescued, the woman immediately tells the villains about his whereabouts.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Zorglub mentions that he keeps a backup of everything he invents, except for his android daughter Zandra. He wanted her to be unique.
  • Nosy Neighbour: During Nicolas Broca and Raoul Cauvin's run with the series, Spirou and Fantasio had an annoying neighbour who kept spying on them from her windows. She would then annoy her husband about her findings while he only cared about watching TV.
  • Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Champignac. Would be a sleepy rural town, but wait, there's the Count... And Caténaire qualifies, too.
  • Nothing Personal:
    • In Dans les griffes de la vipère, Miss Jones is the lawyer, bodyguard and assistant of the boss of Vipère corporation. As a result, she is enraged about capturing Spirou for her boss' profit. Until the very moment a takeover bid deprives her employer of his society. Miss Jones immediately resign, turn her back on him, then peacefully assures Spirou it was a pleasure, and that she is here if needed.
    • In Le groom de sniper alley, Spirou is surprised to see that Poppy Bronco proceeds to help him escape the sniper alley, despite them fighting to death on the moon in a previous album. Poppy was then hired by the Vipère corporation, but he is now employed by the mafia. As a result, Poppy brushes it off, ensuring it was not personal, and his employer is now different.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: In Vito la Déveine. Vito Cortizone is still a Butt-Monkey, but he also shows he can be dangerous. He almost successfully killed Spirou; after that failed, he neutralized him with a homemade drug.
  • The Noun Who Verbed: L'homme qui ne voulait pas mourir (The man who did not want to die).
  • Number of the Beast: Ursula invites Fantasio to come by her hotel room, which is number 666.
  • Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: In La fille du Z, the story explain that Zorglub receives his funds from the military in exchange for weapons and inventions. The military also protects his identity from the media and keep the location of his island a secret.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Champignac is a mushroom specialist, but thanks to his intelligence-enhancing Super Serum he can become an expert at whatever is needed, such as diving or mind control devices.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Seccotine (the name of a brand of glue). Her real name is Sophie. "Spirou" is apparently a nickname too.
  • Only One Name: Most characters are known only by one name (including in situation where the use of a nickname would not make sense, such as in court): Spirou, Fantasio, Zantafio, Zorglub, etc..
  • On One Condition: Spirou et les Héritiers has Fantasio and Zantafio face off in three trials mandated by their uncle's will.
  • Opposite-Sex Clone: Zorglub creates many copies of himself in Lady Z. Each clone take the aspect of one Zorglub's personality. The 21th clone turn out to be a woman who is by far more intelligent and competent than the original.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Seccotine is always extremely smug, cheerful and teasing. In the early pages of Dans les griffes de la Vipère, though, she appears timid, silent and sad, even as her friends are signing a very valuable contract that will save their magazine from bankrupcy. She's being blackmailed by the company on the other side of the contract, which is a trap to take legal ownership of Spirou himself.
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: In The Dark Side of the Z a mixture of solar radiations and mysterious particles trapped on the moon's surface (unprotected by constant bombarding of cosmic radiations) end up causing a de-evolution in Spirou's body and brain mutating him into some sort of feral were-ape. Leaving the moon is enough to return Spirou (and Spip) to normal.
  • Outdated Outfit: Even in the 1970s, Spirou's Bell-boy Elevator Operator uniform was painfully out of place. Since the '90s, authors have finally decided to do away with it.
    • Well, you know, until Alerte aux Zorkons in 2010...
  • Overly Long Name: The count's full name is Pacôme Hégésippe Adélard Ladislas, count of Champignac. When boxing, his title of count isn't up for the taking.
  • Pajama-Clad Hero: Fantasio is often prone to this:
    • In QRN sur Bretzelburg, Fantasio is kidnapped while wearing pajamas, dressing gown, and having lost his slippers in the process. He quickly regret it due to how cold his prison cell his.
    • In Qui arretera Cyanure? (Who'll stop Cyanure?), Fantasio is woke up by a phone call for help by Catenaire, and jump in his car in pajamas to save him. Cyanure capture Fantasio immediately after, making him finish the whole journey in his pajamas.
    • In Le réveil du Z ("The awakening of Z"), Aurélien de Champignac teleport Spirou and Fantasio in 2062, while it was past bedtime and Fantasio was already in his pajamas.
    • In the universe of the mini serie La femme léopard (The leopard woman), the titular character forces Fantasio, in the middle of the night, to do a round trip in car between Brussels and Paris. Which explains why, a few hours later, Fantasio interviews existentialists while in his pajamas.
  • Papa Wolf: Zorglub is very overprotective of his daughter to the point of exaggeration. When Zandra kissed a boy, he swooped down in his ship and sent robots to retrieve her, causing collateral damage and a panic on the streets.
  • The Paralyzer: Another possible use for the Zorglwave. People remain frozen but are sometimes aware of their surroundings.
  • Pedophile Priest: Invoked in Émile Bravo's work on Spirou.
    • In Hope Despite Everything, Fantasio voice his suspicion about unmarried men hanging around young children.
    • The prequel of The Diary of a Naive Young Man makes it even disturbing:
      • An angry Father Albert was beating an orphan Spirou when a giant cross accidentally fell on the priest's head, killing him. This lead to a case of Not What It Looks Like, but the church expels Spirou from the orphanage to avoid a scandal.
      • Father André mention to Spirou that Father Albert had a "weakness". Spirou asked him if it was alcohol. Father André replied "What alcohol?" and remained awkwardly silent.
      • When Father André brings Spirou to his new workplace, Moustic Hotel, the hotel manager looks at the him and Spirou nervously.
      • Father André gives Spirou a key to his new apartment. He add that he'll come to visit him from time to time. Spirou replied that it wont be necessary as he'll come visit him at orphanage. Father André feels uneasy and says he changed his mind. He hand over the spare key to Spirou, telling him to never give it back to him.
  • People Jars: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, the ice princess is preserved inside a giant glass jar filled with some transparent liquid.
  • Pink Is Erotic: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, the luminescent mushrooms glow yellow-green by default, but change color based on the emotions of the person holding them. Spirou's mushroom turns pink when he is hugged by Seccotine, and again when she guesses the reason for the change and flirtatiously teases him about being affected by her. To test her hypothesis, she flirts even more boldly, and the pink deepens.
  • Poorly Disguised Pilot:
    • Le Nid des Marsupilamis, though the spin-off series would not be created until two decades later.
    • His name was Ptirou was just another one-shot of Spirou's origins. The writers saw potential in one of characters, Juliette De Sainteloi, and gave her a series of her own titled: Ms. J. His name was Ptirou was re-edited as a prequel and some bits of the story were updated.
  • Post-Kiss Catatonia:
    • When a time-traveling Spirou couldn't get rid of Seccotine, he resorts to kiss her which left her so stunted that she was cut off from reality. Spirou mention that he always wanted to do that. It's not clear if him meant kissing her, shutting her up or shutting her up by kissing her.
    • The situation is reversed in Le triomphe de Zorglub, when Seccotine kisses Fantasio, inducing him in a brief catatonia (and a Crush Blush) afterwards. Justified as he did not see that coming.
    • Happen to Spirou in WWII works-justified as he's depicted younger than usual, and thus is more impressionable. In Diary of a naive young man, after Kassandra kissed him for the first time, he briefly froze before this actually gave him a rise of energy to finish his work. In Le groom vert de gris, after Audrey's Forceful Kiss, Spirou is still capable of walking, but while blushing, and seeing swastikas and yellow badges under the form of Circling Birdies.
  • Power Perversion Potential: Fantasio uses the Count's own version of the Zorglwave to get some kisses (on the forehead) from a cute air hostess, to the bafflement of Spirou and the Count, and the envy of Spip.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In Spirou & Frantasio à Tokyo, a yakuza aims a gun at Spirou after being outfought by the hero, saying "I've never been humilliated in this way. You'll pay with your life!". At which point Fantasio pulls off a Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind, smashing his face while saying "And you will pay with your teeth!".
  • Professor Guinea Pig: The Count tests his intelligence enhancing Super Serum on himself, after some experiments on a chicken. Ditto for his cold resistance drug.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Ms. Jones does a lot of Viper's dirty work, but that's only because she's under contract. When Viper loses all shares of his company, Ms. Jones immediately quits and bid farewell to Spirou.
  • Punny Name: Frequently the case in the Franquin and Fournier books, sometimes with along with a Bilingual Bonus.
  • Putting on the Reich: At times.
    • Uniforms worn in Zantafio's Palumbia, as shown in Le dictateur et le champignon, resemble those of Fascist Spain.
      • Interestingly, in "Aux sources du Z", Spirou complains that the uniforms resemble Nazi uniforms...
    • All Bretzelburg troops in QRN sur Bretzelburg, whose appearance invokes World War I Imperial Germany.
      • Bretzelburg as a whole is very reminiscent of either Eastern Germany and occupied France or Belgium during World War II.
    • Later on, Kodo le Tyran not only incorporates uniforms, but also a flag that fits well into No Swastikas.
  • Rage Breaking Point: Zorglub in The Dark Side of the Z. He's given up on evil and built a Moon station using private investment to conduct his advanced research on space colonisation, yet the staff at the base call him nicknames and ask him for ID every time, and the fee-paying visitors essentially treat him as a weirdo, despite him being the person who made everything they're enjoying possible. Nonetheless, he takes it on stride because he's doing science and he's doing it the right way, hoping that his old friend Pacôme will finally recognise his rehabilitation and join him as a partner. But when the count says that eating up all that disrespect and working without recognition is beyond his dignity, and refuses to collaborate with him, Zorglub goes Dude, Where's My Respect? and whips back up his supervillain gear to make sure his plans come to fruition at any cost.
  • Rapid Aging: The X3 serum from the Count of Champignac ages the subject from 70 years in an hour. Thankfully, the only creature to whom this was fatal was a cow.
  • Rapid-Fire "No!": When Zandra is abducted by her father with his ship, she utters a series of "No!" in rapid succession.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: In Hope Despite Everything, Spirou is arrested by the SS as he was (unknowingly) part of a resistance cell. The commisioner is tasked of interrogating him and torturing him. However, once they are alone in his office, the commisioner gave him his gun and helps him escape.
  • Recognizable by Sound: Averted in one story: Spirou, while lost in the jungle, overhears the very distinctive cry of the Marsupilami (despite being continents apart), but discovers it's an entirely different creature.
  • Recursive Canon: Spirou and particularly Fantasio work for Dupuis, the publishing company that produces the Spirou comic. Sometimes they are freelance reporters for Le Moustique, Dupuis' real-life entertainment magazine, and sometimes they work on the staff of the Spirou magazine itself, having to meet deadlines and doing publicity for the comic! In the comic stories, Spirou occasionally meets characters who read the comic and recognize him from it:
    • Jijé had him interact with members of his own fan-club (run by the magazine), Amis de Spirou ("Friends of Spirou"), in the story L'enlèvement de Spip.
    • In Spirou and the Heirs (Spirou et les héritiers), Spirou rescues a boy who is reading his earlier adventure, The Wizard of Culdesac (Il y a un sorcier à Champignac), and who asks him how it ends.
    • In Z is for Zorglub (Z comme Zorglub), a kid helps Spirou when he's looking for Fantasio, having recognized them both from the comic.
    • In QRN on Bretzelburg, Marcelin Switch, the neighbor of Spirou and Fantasio, is surprised to notice that "such famous people" live next door. He does not read the comics himself, but his nephews do. Still, it gives to Marcelin such a superficial knowledge of the stories, he thinks that Lucky Luke's horse is named Snowy.
    • In Alerte aux Zorkons, a sniper refuses to fire on a Spirou-shaped advertising balloon the heroes are using to cross a military roadblock, because he used to read the comic as a child.
    • In Machine qui rêve, Spirou and Seccotine get out of getting a ticket for riding a motorcycle without helmets because the policeman has kids who read the comics. (He mentions he thought it was ‘just comics' and is surprised to find out Spirou really exists.)
    • In Dans les griffes de la Vipère, the villain uses Spirou Magazine to launch a manhunt for the titular character, who is trying to hide from them.
    • In La Colère du Marsupilami, Fantasio complains that Yoann and Vehlmann -then the series's authors- keep delivering their pages for the magazine's next issue late.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning:
    • In La Vallée des Bannis, red eyes are a sign that someone has been infected with the book's version of the Hate Plague.
    • In The Dark Side of the Z Spirou's eyes turn red when he mutates into were-Spirou.
  • Red Herring: In His name was Ptirou, everyone on the cruise ship is looking for Juliette's medicine who has been stolen. All signs seem to point toward bitter union workers and rival cruise businessmen who all have interests in disrupting the cruise's voyage. None of them were responsible for the theft. The storm that hit the ship caused the medicine to fall inside an opened drawer and another tumble closed the dresser.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Spirou and Fantasio are usually dressed in spades of red and blue, albeit with inverted temperaments, the collected and rational one being Spirou, the headstrong and wild one Fantasio.
  • Refuge in Audacity: In Champignac, vol. 2: The Patient A, Champignac and Blair go to Germany to rescue one of their friends held against his will by Hitler's entourage. They manage to locate him, but their car is wrecked and the alarm has been raised. They need to reach Switzerland, which is a neutral country during WWII. note  To escape and avoid capture, they reluctantly swallow pills of pervitin, a methamphetamine drug widely used by the Nazis to boast their morale and physical prowess. This allows the trio to make a daring escape on foot until they safely reach the border without food or sleep. They suffer from withdrawal symptoms and other side effects, but thankfully they haven't gotten addicted. So drugs are...good?
  • La Résistance: During WWII stories, Spirou and Fantasio joined armed resistance groups against the Nazi.
  • Ridiculous Repossession: The first page of "Spirou à New York" illustrates how fast fortunes can change in the world of stock trading, with the repo men (instantaneously) seizing not only the newly-impoverished man's luxurious surroundings and replacing them with ghetto-quality ones (a chandelier with a dangling lightbulb, a massive desk with wooden boards on trestles...), they also take his revolver and all his clothes except for an undershirt and Goofy Print Underwear.
  • Ripped from the Headlines: Most of the more serious plots.
  • The Rival: Seccotine is a rival journalist to the main characters, hence Fantasio's dislike of her.
  • Robot Girl: Cyanure in Qui arrêtera Cyanure? is a particularly malicious and powerful one.
  • Robotic Reveal: Much to her shock, Zandra discovers that she's an android created by her father Zorglub.
  • Rogues Gallery: Not so much the comic — which had a greater variety of plots and more one-off villains — but the 1992 animated series was fond of recurring antagonists, particularly Vito Cortizone and Cyanure.
  • Ruritania:
    • Bretzelburg is a typical Ruritanian country, with added Germanic trappings.
    • In Pacific Palace, The Democratic Republic of Karajan is described as an eastern European communist country ruled by President for Life, Iliex Korda.
  • Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Zandra thinks that "Starbattle XI" is just a recycling of the old movies from the franchise. Still, she says that it wasn't so bad and she'll be watching it again, at least 7 times instead of the usual 10.
  • Screwball Serum: The Count has invented a superintellicence booster drug, the "X4", that had the unfortunate side-effect of causing some psychedelic episodes. In La Peur au Bout du Fil, the Count conducted a successful experiment to "purify" X4, but was distracted by phone and unwittingly drank the residue, which turned him into a psychopatic prankster.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • Aniota decides to stay in her tribe and succeeds her grandmother as the new grand priestess. When she finds out the gruesome and disgusting rituals that she has to endure, she hastily decides to return to Belgium with Spirou and Fantasio.
    • Spirou is onboard a train from Belgium to Auschwitz. While hearing the Jews arguing back and forth, Spirou come to realize that they are heading to their doom. He breaks a windows and escape with two children.
  • Smooch of Victory: After Audrey hides Spirou from the pursuing Nazi, she asks a kiss from Spirou for her reward.
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: In Pacific Palace, Fantasio is working as a belboy along with Spirou. He refuses a tip from Iliex Korda because he's a dictator and consider the tip as blood money.
  • Sdrawkcab Speech: Zorglub's artificial language, Zorglang, consists in inverting the letter in every word while keeping their position in the sentence (so that "Hail Zorglub" becomes "Liah Bulgroz").
  • Security Cling: Fantasio jumps into Spirou's arms on the cover of Qui arrêtera Cyanure
    • Spirou does the same thing to Fantasio at one point in Le Prisonnier Du Bouddha
  • Senseless Violins: Seen many times in Luna fatale. Mostly the cases though (used to dissimulate tommyguns, which made the one time when a violin was actually required have it replaced with a comb and paper).
  • Sequel Hook: Yoann and Vehlmann have turned this into a habit, often presented as The Stinger.
  • Servile Snarker: Zorglub's robotic majordomo has no shortage of snark and provides lots of Lampshade Hanging on his boss's Mad Scientist persona.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The mayor of Champignac is fond of speaking in convoluted sentences replete with mixed metaphors.
  • Sexy Discretion Shot:
    • In Le Groom vert-de-gris, which takes place during the WWII era, Fantasio wakes up in bed with Wehrmacht officer Ursula Chickengrüber getting dressed for work.
    • In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Spirou and Seccotine are freezing to death in a Tibetan mountain as their anti-cold drugs are wearing off. As they hold each other to warm themselves, Seccotine notices a mushroom that Spirou is holding just changed color. She correctly guesses it's tied to emotions and teases him by asking if he has ever kissed a girl, as she always thought he and Fantasio were gay. Cut to a scene outside the mountain with Seccotine saying: "But?! Spirou, what are you doing?" Later, Fantasio comes to the rescue and has a very shocked expression on his face when he enters the cave.
  • Shoe Phone: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Seccotine has a pen with a mike and recorder built in that she uses to secretly record the Count of Champignac's words.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In the album Le Groom Vert-de-Gris, a re-imagination of Spirou set during the Nazi occupation of 1942, several references are made to other Belgian Comics from this time period, including Tintin, Blondin et Cirage, Suske en Wiske, Lucky Luke, Quick and Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko.
    • Spirou et Fantasio in New York City has what is obviously Soda as one of the cops.
    • In Tora-Torapa, Natacha and Benoit Brisefer can be glimpsed in an airport.
    • Spirou is dressed like Tintin in The Diary of a Naive Young Man.
    • In La femme léopard, Nazi scientists are captured and put on a ship to Africa. The captain of the ship isn't named, but is clearly Allan from Tintin along wih his mate, Tom, from The Crab with the Golden Claws.
    • In Dans les griffes de la Vipère, Fantasio is waiting for someone in a flea market and is checking an old model ship, just like Tintin did in Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn.
    • In Wrath of the Marsupilami, Spirou disguised himself as Naruto for a costumed carnival.
    • Zandra went to the movies and watched "Starbattle XI: Son of Evil" and "Montana Bob and the Gold Baby", which are not so subtle nods to Star Wars and Indiana Jones respectively.
    • The way the General is knocked out by Zandra is extremely reminiscent of the way people are knocked out by magic potion users. In addition, the dialogue of his soldiers sounds a lot like how Roman legionaries tend to talk in Asterix.
    • In Lady Z, all the Zorglub's clones represent one trait of his personality, including one who is constantly in a bad mood. Zandra is quick to compare him to Grumpy Smurf, and then the titular Lady Z to the Smurfette.
    • In one album, Spip had enough of all the dangers while adventuring with Spirou. He leaves and say he'll be joining the The Smurfs. However, Fantasio prevent him from going too far.
    • In Spirou chez les Soviets, they mention that the last Belgian reporter to enter the USSR illegally created quite a mess, showing an issue of Tintin.
    • In The Dark Side of the Z, while chasing after Were-Spirou, Blythe sees the potential of making a movie based on this ordeal titled "Close Encounters of the Bellboy".
  • Show Within a Show: some adventures show the heroes' documentary films. Le nid des Marsupilamis is mainly such a documentary with the title heroes as a Greek Chorus.
  • Silence Is Golden:
    • The climax for La Vallée des Bannis is told in a page without a single line of dialogue.
    • There are tons of this in Pacific Palace. Many scenes are without dialogue or narration.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: In Émile Bravo's series of albums, Spirou can only think of Kassandra and refused Christina and Mieke's advances. As time goes on however, Spirou started to realize that he may never see Kassandra ever again, so he tries to win Mieke's heart who has already moved on from him.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Seccotine to Fantasio, with the former regularly stealing the spotlight or the theme of an article the latter wanted to write. At least in the second animated series, he often grumbles when she gets involved in their adventures.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: In His name was Ptirou, the shareholders of CGT orders its CEO, Mr. De Sainteloi, to make massive layoffs of its employees because the The Great Depression hit their profits hard. Mr. De Sainteloi complied and this led to many series events in the story: The sabotage of CGT's passenger liner by disgruntled union workers, the liner heading into a storm to arrive at its destination on time to impress the shareholders, the storm causing Juliette De Sainteloi's medicine to go missing, Ptirou's tragic death while trying to fetch Juliette's medicine and Robert Velter creating the comic strip "Spirou".
  • Something Else Also Rises: In Le triomphe de Zorglub (Zorglub's triomph) Seccotine kisses Fantasio while he's wearing the fantacopter on his back, with the propeller retracted. The very next panel show the rode erupting spontaneously from the fantacopter, and the blades of the propeller unfolding without any button was pressed.
  • Soviet Superscience: In Spirou and Fantasio in the Soviets, a Soviet scientist discovered the communist gene. When awoken, the gene will turn a person into a communist. They only need the Count's help to mass produce the mushroom that will activate the gene.
  • Speech-Impaired Animal:
    • Spip, though he does get thought balloons quite often.
    • Strangely, while Spip has a quasi-human intelligence (and the cynicism that comes with it), the Marsupilami, who can utter human words like a parrot does, only has animal-level intelligence. He is clever for an animal, though.
  • Spin-Off: Quite a few of them:
    • Gaston Lagaffe
    • Le Marsupilami
    • Le Petit Noël (which never really took off)
    • There's also a Manga Spirou project stuck in Development Hell.invoked
    • The Zorglub spin-off, centred on the titular character and his android daughter.
    • Champignac: the count in his youth along with his love interest, Blair Mackenzie. They work for the British Intelligence during WWII.
    • Ms. J. A grown-up Juliette De Sainteloi from the one-shot His name was Ptirou also get her own series. While His name was Ptirou is set in 1929, the two next volumes are in 1938 and in 1946.
  • Spinoff Babies: Le Petit Spirou
  • Spoiler Cover: Although subtle, the cover of L'ombre du Z contains a big clue as to who the Big Bad really is: the shadow behind Zorglub is shaped like Zantafio's emblem when he was ruling Palumbia.
  • Spoof Aesop: The ending of "Z like Zorglub" notes that you should always be nice to policemen, because they could be former Zorglmen.
  • Spy Cam: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, Seccotine has a compact with a small camera built in that she uses to secretly take pictures.
  • Stalker with a Crush: In Pacific Palace, Spirou quietly spies on Elena who's taking a dip in the swimming pool at night. She notices him, but not Fantasio who did the same.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye:
    • The Ankou does it all the time, making the heroes rather jumpy.
    • Elena in Pacific Palace. She's very good at leaving the scene without making any noise.
  • Stepping Out to React: At the end of one story, the treasure hunter Bill Callaway barely escapes with his life while his top-of-the-line ship gets totaled by sea monsters. He then has this to say:
    Callaway: While excessively aware of how lucky I am to have escaped, would anyone mind if I mourned the loss of my multi-million dollar ship?
    Fantasio: Go right ahead.
    Callaway: WAAAAAAAH!
  • Superhero Episode: Or rather superhero spinoff. In Supergroom, are featured non powered costumed heroes like Spirou as the titular character (albeit sometimes enhanced by super serums), Spip as Redwing, Seccotine as Superglue, and Fantasio as Gentleman Thief Fantastik.
  • Super Serum: A lot of these, all courtesy of the Count, and always extracted from some mushroom:
    • One of his first inventions is the "X1", a serum that when injected grants superhuman strength for a time.
    • A further one is the "X4", which incredibly enhances intelligence. The Count uses it on himself to invent a revolutionary diving equipment and submarine in the space of a few hours, while having no knowledge of the subject beforehand.
    • Another of his inventions allows to become immune to cold.
  • Supreme Chef: Herr Doktor Kilikil is the torturer for the kingdom of Bretzelburg. However, Kilikil prefers cooking, his real passion. Fantasio found his dishes so delicious that he visits him after their adventure in Bretzelburg is over.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: The mysterious corporate leader employ Commander Alexander and Kalloway which are some of the most moronic henchmen the series has to offer. Their lack of saviness combined with their incompetence makes you wonder why someone as rich as the leader keeps them under his payroll for three albums in a row.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: During Fournier's run, Ororéa replaces Seccotine as the tag along female reporter. Fournier did so because he didn't like Seccotine's annoying personality and Ororéa was meant to be far nicer. As time went on and different writers took over, Ororéa disappeared and Seccotine came back.
  • Swallow the Key: In Luna Fatale, in order to make Spirou obey him, Vito Cortizone put an Explosive Leash around Fantasio's neck, ready to explode in 58 hours. As Spirou try the simple solution by taking directly the key of the collar in Vito's hands, the latter finally swallow it. 57 hours and 55 minutes later, however, a constipated Vito still did not get the key back, even after Fantasio, to motivate him, handcuffed them together. Fortunately Luna has stolen a duplicate earlier and put it in her brooch, but she then realize she has just lost it. Luckily, Spip turn out to have the brooch-and the key- in his paws.
  • Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Among recurring villains, Zorglub is the sympathetic one as he often express regrets and tries to repair what he did wrong. Sometimes, he does mistakes accidentally or being tricked into doing it. Killing someone never crossed his mind, and the second animated adaptation turn him into a Well-Intentioned Extremist to keep him redeemable. Despite since The dark face of the Z, he's once again on the bad side. Meanwhile, Zantafio only had second thoughts once, in the end of Les héritiers, and never since. Not having, like Zorglub, the excuse of doing it For Science!, his main motivation is Greed. Along with megalomania, pushing him into becoming a dictator (twice). He actually tried to kill members of his family (his cousin and his uncle) quite often, and he's sometimes behind Zorglub 's bad deeds. Plus he's responsible for Marsupilami's disappearance, and is not used for comedic purposes like Zorglub.
  • Technopath: The android Cyanure can take control of machines.
  • Techno Wizard: The Count of Champignac. Most of his Phlebotinum involves mushrooms in some form, including in the design stage.
  • Temporal Paradox: Dear God. The last Morvan and Munuera album made, Aux Sources du Z, the entire series was erased with one of these.
  • That Poor Plant
    • The Count once experimented a serum on a mushroom, causing it to turn into an ugly, misshapen thing.
    • In QRN sur Bretzelburg, Spirou convinces the king to stop taking the "medicine" his advisors use to keep him docile. He pours it out on a plant, which immediately wilts.
  • Theme Mobile: Whatever Zorglub invents is invariably named as Zorg-something, which gives us the zorglumobile and the zorgcopter (and the zorglwave, zorgspeak, the Zorgmen...).
  • Theme Naming: Fantasio's relatives include his cousin Zantafio and his uncle Tanzafio. They somehow manage to be serious characters despite the silly names.
  • The Talk: Zorglub's robot majordomo thinks it's time he has the talk with his daughter Zandra, something Zorglub has been reluctant to do for a long time. It's actually about revealing to her that she is an android.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In Le groom de Sniper Alley, the dictator of Aswana is killed in a missile barrage while he was hidding in his shack.
  • They Called Me Mad!: Zorglub's backstory. People laughed at his theories in school so he decided to create an army of mind-controlled soldiers.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: In Champignac, the count will never ever kill someone no matter what. In Champignac volume 2, the British Intelligence aren't too happy when the count had a chance to kill Hitler while he was vunerable, but choose not to because he wouldn't be better than him.
    • Spirou too have such a policy, evidenced in Luna Fatale. In order to make Spirou obey him, Vito Cortizone put an Explosive Leash around Fantasio's neck, ready to explode in 58 hours. As Spirou try to take the key of the device in Vito's hands, the latter swallow it. Spirou have a knife in his hands at this point, and it look like he then plant it into Vito's stomach to get the key back. Except not: Out of spite, Spirou simply planted the knife into Vito's pants, making the latter loose it. Killing The Don to get the key, even as the risk that his best friend head explode, would just be crossing his moral horizon for Spirou. He then accept Vito's mission, and is protected by Luna meanwhile. The latter is Trigger-Happy, and kill any Chinese mafiosi who shows up. Horrified (especially when he learn that she killed more than one guy), Spirou, stating that he'd rather have "the whole China on his back than blood on his hands", prevent Luna to shoot once again. Then he ask her to give him her revolver. Granted, a Triad member then taunt Spirou, assuring he won't dare to use it, but he shoot using angles that cannot wound the mafiosi, forcing them to retreat.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Spirou in Machine qui rêve. He spends the entire comic being pursued by The Men in Black who want to kill him, before he realizes that he's actually a clone of the real Spirou. The original sacrifices himself and allows his duplicate to live out the rest of his life.
  • Too Dumb to Live: In Hope Despite Everything, Spirou discover a bomb in the hotel's basement. Entresol dismissed it as non-threatening despite being a belboy and having no expertise in explosives. After an argument, with the hotel's director he goes to prove to everyone that its harmless by giving it a slight kick. Cue explosion.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: Implied to be Kassandra's fate. After living throught hell for five long years during WWII, she's described herself a changed person. She's no longer the optimistic girl she once was.
  • Torches and Pitchforks: Whenever something unusual happens in Champignac, the townspeople will blame it on the count and the mayor will organize a march to the chateau, sometimes with the express purpose to smash up the count's scientific equipment. They tend to end up making fools of themselves, but when they realize that they quicly fix all damages and leave, feeling sorry for their foolishness.
  • Torture Technician: Subverted with Herr Doktor Kilikil in QRN sur Bretzelburg: his methods involve scraping chalk on a blackboard, or cooking a lavish and fragrant meal in front of a hungry prisoner. He's so good at it, in fact, that he eventually becomes a restaurant chef.
  • Tractor Beam: Zorglub's ship is equipped with a tractor beam, although it's called it a "raptzorg" beam.
  • Trading Bars for Stripes: Zantafio proposes it to Spirou and Fantasio. First they nearly lynch him, then they accept so they can plot against him more easily.
  • Tragic Keepsake:
    • In a one-shot, The Diary of a Naive Young Man, Kassandra Stahl says that Spirou looks great in his red bellhop costume. After her tragic death, Spirou decides to keep wearing his costume as a reminder of her.
    • Juliette keeps a bouton from Ptirou's uniform tied around her neck.
  • Trip to the Moon Plot: The Dark Side of the Z centers on Zorglub taking Spirou, Fantasio and Champignac to his intricate moon settlement, which includes a VIP resort.
  • Trumplica: In The Blue Gorgon, Simon Santo is a not-so subtle parody of Trump being a loud-mouth jerk, greedy and dirty businessman. His field of business is pesticide and junk food, and he's polluting the planet.
  • Tsundere: When Spirou is working as a bellboy at the Pacific Palace, he's smitten by one of the guest, Elena. Elena notices this and tries to have Spirou act more friendly and informal toward her. Spirou maintains his professional demeanour however. Elena then makes up an excuse and angrily shout at him to leave her room and breaks down crying when she's alone.
  • The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Elena, the daughter of fallen dictator Iliex Korda. Both Spirou and Fantasio are quick to notice this. She's gorgeous and looks nothing like her father, or mother for that matter.
  • Undercover Model: In Fantasio se marie, Seccotine goes undercover as a runway model to investigate at a fashion show.
  • Under the Sea: Much of Le Repère de la Murène takes place underwater.
  • Underwater Base: The villains of Le Repère de la Murène.
  • Underwater City: Spirou et les Hommes-Bulles.
  • Unexplained Recovery: During Yoann and Vehlmann's run, there was this running gag revolving around Poppy Bronco, a badass mercenary who tended to pop up under different occupations (bodyguard, soldier, Non-Powered Costumed Hero). He dies in a more or less gruesome manner (aspired into space or eaten by crocodiles) and inexplicably show up alive in one of the next albums. Still, in the spin off Supergroom by the same authors, Poppy, under the identity of the hero "Avalanche express", get killed by a ninja contract killer. And he does not recover from that, at least not yet.
  • The Unwitting Comedian: In Le Tombeau des Champignac, while trying to get oil in a Tibetan village, Fantasio ends up getting stuck in a stack of tires and falling down several flights of stairs, bouncing and rolling inside the tires until finally crashing into a pillar. He tries to get the tires off, hopping about, and slips and falls on some ice. A crowd of villagers who witness this applaud, cheer, and toss coins his way.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: In Fantasio se marie, Seccotine reveals a picture on her phone to Spirou, who is shocked. Shortly after, she comes up with a plan and tells Spirou offscreen. Both pieces of info are not revealed to the audience until later — in the plan's case, when it's being successfully carried out.
  • Ventriloquism: In the first animated series, Igor Raspoutnikov is somehow great at doing this against Don Vito, projecting a booming female voice at an idol statue to make him think it is talking to him. Spirou, however, spots the trick quickly.
  • Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Most of the time.
  • Visual Pun: Zantafio crashed into a tree and lost consciousness surrounded by apples that fell from the tree. The French expression "falling into apples" means losing consciousness.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": Spoofed. Zorglub's name is a portmanteau of this and "Arglub", which is a standard Written Sound Effect for accidental strangling or drowning in Franco-Belgian comics.
  • Vladimir Lenin: his embalmed body plays a major role in Spirou à Moscou
  • Violence is the Only Option: In Spirou in Berlin, Momo prepares a bomb that she plans to use on Communists while Spirou worries about potential casualties. Momo retorts that revolutions are never victimless. She does uses the bomb later, but it cause no fatalities. The last scene of the story shows Momo in a peaceful protest for the fall of the Berlin Wall.
  • War Is Hell:
    • Invoked by the sniper who is tasked with shooting down the Spirou-shaped balloon in Alerte aux Zorkons. He breaks down and cries because he loves the comic and cannot bring himself to shoot at the balloon.
    • Le Groom vert-de-gris and Hope Despite Everything deal with destruction, helpless civilians, broken families, refugees, the occupation and everything that made WWII dreadfully infamous for.
    • Hope Despite Everything is also set in WWII. Spirou, Fantasio and other refugees are trying to flee to France. The Nazis bomb them and killed many. France closes its borders to the refugees, but it all become moot when the Nazis overun their country as well. During the occupation of Belgium, the Nazis arrest Jews and anyone they don't like. Recurring characters are tortured and executed. Later in the war, the Allies finally arrive, but accidental bomb civilians.
  • Weaponized Landmark: In Spirou et Fantasio à Tokyo, a live-sized statue of Hachikō (a famous japanese dog) is animated by telekinesis.
  • Weasel Mascot: Spip the squirrel.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Not so much kept hidden from the viewer, but rather, the books positively state that the characters live in the suburbs of both Paris *and* Bruxelles at the same time. Meanwhile, the location of the quaint small town of Champignac is deliberately ambiguous, with different books dropping hints that point to it being Belgian and also French.
    • The Castle of Champignac is based on an actual Belgian castle, and in Il y a un sorcier à Champignac, the Count goes to a nearby city -which is heavly inspired in Bruxelles- to test his creations, where he ends up meeting policemen dressed on the Belgian style rather than the French one.
    • In Z comme Zorglub, the people of Champignac are listening to the results of the latest stage of the Tour de France on the radio.
    • In Spirou & Fantasio á Moscou, they travel from the Charles de Gaulle Airport (in Paris), are kidnapped by the French secret service, which asks them to "help your country", and then go straight to the French Embassy in Russia.
    • In Le rayon noir, the Mayor of Champignac campaigns for his re-election wrapped on a French flag.
    • In Paris Sous-Seine, they travel to the flooded French capital in no time, and comment on how different it feels compared to "the usual".
    • In Aux Sources du Z, Spirou mentions that he'll need Belgian Francs to travel to his home in Bruxelles.
    • In Le Groom de Sniper Alley, Fantasio arranges for them to travel to a Middle Eastern country to "cheer up the French-Belgian troops".
    • In Spirou chez les Soviets, they describe Tintin as "a fellow Belgian reporter", Fantasio claims to be specialised in "our internal Belgian politics", and when someone points out that their French has a heavy Belgian accent, they explain that it's natural, "because we're Belgian!".
    • The town's full title is Champignac-en-Cambrousse, which roughly translates as Champignac-in-the-Sticks or Champignac-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhere.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Kassandra Stahl was a member of the Comintern and truly believed in an idealistic communism where nations could live equally and peacefully together. Unfortunately, Stalin never agreed with her and prefer a more opportunistic approach.
  • Windbag Politician: The mayor of Champignac is widely feared for his entirely improvised and metaphor-breaking digressions.
  • The Worst Seat in the House: In Spirou à New York the title characters are supposed to attend a "car ball" (like soccer, but the players are all in cars, and the ball is also a car) finals match to write an article about it. They are late (since they spend the entire comic on wacky mafia hijinx), but a shady guy sells them the last set of seats. Which are inside the "ball".
  • Worthless Treasure Twist:
    • In the short story L'héritage (The inheritance), Spirou gets an Unexpected Inheritance from an uncle, and have go on a long journey with Fantasio throughout Africa, in order to find the uncle's "treasure". Which consist entirely of whiskey bottles, while Spirou is a teetotaler.
    • In Le groom de Sniper Alley (Sniper alley's bellboy),Vito Cortizone forces Spirou and Fantasio to go on a treasure's hunt. When they are back, they explain that they found a parchment. But it's subverted as Vito apparently do not think that knowledge is a treasure, and try to toss Spirou, Fantasio and Spip into the Hudson river as a response. However, Spirou and Fantasio have time to explain that the parchment lead to about thirty treasures's hideouts, and Vito finally let them go. Double subverted as in the next scene, Spirou and Fantasio admit to Don Contralto, Vito's great uncle, that they actually found thousand of parchments, back-up copys of the content of the vanished library of Alexandria. Had Vito learned it, he would had sold the parchments to the highest bidder. Spirou and Fantasio then chose to pretend that they simply found a sole treasure map, which could satisfy Vito's Greed.
  • Would Hit a Girl: In Paris-Sous-Seine Spirou punches Miss Flanners in the face for being the cause of Spip's death. However, after discovering that Spip is actually safe and sound, he is mortified by his actions even though Flanner had still done enough to deserve the punishment - and advises him to not ask forgiveness for doling punishment to those that deserve it.
    • Later in Aux Sources du Z it's possibly subverted again as Aged!Spirou reveals he originally hit Miss Flanner because when he saw her, he immediately had "strange feelings" that he'd never felt before and it scared him, causing him to lash out... At Miss Flanner.
  • Writing for the Trade: Mostly averted, as most creative teams made a point of ending nearly every page with a gag or Cliffhanger because the prepublication schedule could be reduced to as little as one or two pages per week.
  • You Are Number 6: Members of the Triangle refer themselves by number according to their rank in their hierarchy.

Alternative Title(s): The Adventures Of Spirou And Fantasio

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