Referenced By / Calvin and Hobbes

Comic Book

• Superman/Batman #75 pays homage to the strip with their own version◊, "Joker and Lex."
  • A previous Superman story showing "What If?... Lois and Clark had a kid?" had six-year-old Lara as Calvin and Mr. Mxyzptlk as Hobbes.
• The Darkwing Duck comic has an Alternate Universe Darkwing drawn in the strip's style.
• Molly in Runaways is rather fond of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs.
• One issue of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) has a cover wherein Apple Bloom reads a ponified version of the strip.
• Apparently, Doctor Strange is a fan of the strip. In Fantastic Four #374, he tells Spider-Man that "Even a Sorcerer Supreme reads the newspapers, to keep abreast of current events... and Calvin and Hobbes!!"
• A Katie Kaboom story in an issue of the Animaniacs comic had her babysit a black haired version of Calvin.
• Fantastic Four: The non-canon side series Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius is pretty blatantly inspired by this strip, with H.E.R.B.I.E. serving as the Hobbes to Franklin Richards' Calvin.
• The eighth issue of Eight Billion Genies has a variant cover depicting a genie version of Calvin overlooking a scene with several F-35s and a paratrooperTyrannosaurus rex.
• The 65th issue of Wonder Woman (1987) shows a stuffed tiger colored green and a doll of a red-haired boy in a yellow shirt resembling Hobbes and Calvin respectively on Vanessa Kapatelis's bed.

Comic Strip

• FoxTrot has a few references, such as this dialogue:
  Peter: [after an incredibly lame pun by Jason in the style of Pearls Before Swine] Remind me to start hiding your Pearls Before Swine books.
  Jason: You still haven't returned my Calvin and Hobbes books after the Noodle Incident, by the way.
  • A couple strips have background characters with Calvin's distinctive hairstyle.
  • One particular one has Jason and Marcus creating an identical snow sculpture of a snowman with a hole in his chest and a cannon right next to it to one in a Calvin and Hobbes strip — then creating sculptures of Calvin and Hobbes goofing around with the cannonball. "See, this way it's an homage, not a ripoff."
  • In the last panel of the October 3, 1998 strip, Jason appears dressed in Calvin's signature shirt and holding a stuffed tiger; to top it off, his mouth is drawn in the style of Calvin and Hobbes.
  • In one Halloween strip, Eileen's friend Phoebe wears a tiger costume and has a tiny stuffed Calvin.
  • Jason and Marcus often go to a store called Calvin's Hobbies.
  • The day after Calvin and Hobbes ended its run, Paige complains, "There's no Calvin in the comics."
  • One comic mentioned a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo titled "Luther and Locke".
• Off the Mark presents a rather dark ending to the strip.◊ "Did you just hear a burp?"
  • Hobbes is also among the imaginary friends shown here◊.
  • What is Calvin listening to?◊
  • Hobbes talks to his therapist◊.
  • Hobbes is one of the cartoon characters featured in this strip◊ about how to create your own cartoon character.
  • Calvin also appears in this strip◊, waiting in line to get a haircut from the Toontown Barber.
  • Calvin◊, Hobbes◊, and Calvin's parents◊ are also residing at the Betty Rubble Center For Recovering Toons.
• In a One Big Happy strip, Ruthie and Joe are supposedly about to travel back in time, when Ruthie comments about the food they packed: "Won't the popcorn turn into corn on the cob, then into corn stalks? And the orange juice will turn into oranges before our very eyes!" Joe then comments that he would have been better off with a stuffed tiger as his co-pilot.
• One Garfield title panel has several newspaper comic characters trick-or-treating, Calvin being among them.
• Calvin has made a number of cameos in Liō, walking the line between Shout-Out and Take That!. This article reprints some of them.
• Mother Goose and Grimm: Here◊ Ralph assumes that Life of Pi is a Calvin and Hobbes movie.
• Curtis: In this strip◊, Calvin is one of the guests at Curtis' party, along with Dennis the Menace, Bart Simpson, Huey Freeman, Stewie Griffin, and Heathcliff.
• Sally Forth (Howard): In this strip, Ted's mom's boyfriend offers to teach him cricket, calling it "like Calvinball but with a lot more rules".

Fan Works

• The Great Hogwarts Noodle Incident, the details of which are never revealed in Dangerverse canon, and which, according to Remus: "all started with a comic book, an action figure, and a stuffed tiger..." According to Word of God, the comic book and action figure are Stupendous Man and Spaceman Spiff, respectively.
• Justice League of Equestria; one of the side stories to Mare of Steel has Rainbow Dash playing superhero as a child, complete with her arch nemesis "Mom Lady" and introducing herself as "Defender of Cloudsdale, foe of Tyranny!"

Films - Live-Action

• In Point Break (1991), Angelo laughs at a Calvin and Hobbes strip in the paper during a stakeout.

Literature

• 1632: In the short story "Nasty, Brutish and Short" (compiled in the ninth Grantville Gazette collection), Princess Kristina is shown to be a fan of the strip. When Hobbes' namesake Thomas Hobbes ends up in town, she tries to convince him to dress up as the Hobbes to her Calvin for Halloween.
• Emma from Because of the Rabbit longs for a best friend and hopes to be half of an "and", like Calvin and Hobbes.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In The Meltdown, Manny creates grotesque snowmen that seem to be a reference to the grotesque snowmen Calvin makes.

Live-Action TV

• In one of the Community Halloween episodes, Abed goes as Calvin and Troy goes as Hobbes.
• Friends has an exchange involving a bootleg T-shirt of Calvin doing Hobbes.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In the episode where Joel, Tom and Crow watch Hercules Unwound, during the scene where a tiger pounces on Hercules, Crow exclaims, "Hobbes, get off me!"
• In the Ted Lasso episode “Two Aces”, Ted tells his team that nothing lasts forever except for the words and wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes.

Music

• The German folk band The Beatlesøns included a cover of "The Yukon Song" on their album Songs For Camilla.

Podcasts

• In Sporadic Phantoms, the tiger at The Gardens is named Hobbes.

Tabletop Games

• An April Fools edition of Dragon magazine introduces the Plush Golem to Dungeons & Dragons, a seemingly ordinary plush toy, which magically comes to life to play with the child who owns it. While a Plush Golem can be made to look like kind of plush toy, ones shaped like tigers are specifically mentioned, with the note that children who own them always seem to be in trouble.

Theatre

• In the playscript of Men at Arms, one of Leonard of Quirm's cartoons is about a little boy with a toy tiger. (The original novel has a little boy with his kite stuck up a tree.)

Video Game

• Star Control has a pilot named Spiff.
• Spaceward Ho! has a planet named Hobbes, among many other pop-culture-derived names.
• Swarm Simulator features the "Bats aren't bugs!!" exchange from this strip.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • The black panther monster has an attack where it pounces on you, ending with the phrase "Homicidal psycho jungle cat!"
  • The description of the War Frat Mobile Grill Unit has this:
    Oh, and look — there's a sticker on the back window with some cartoon character peeing on something. Now *that's* unexpected.
  • One adventure has the option to get meat from a hobo by telling him it's Opposite Day, and that you declared it oppositely by not declaring it, much like an exchange between Calvin and Hobbes.
  • The "cheap toaster" item has a description containing a joke from one strip:
    This is a cheap toaster. You put bread in it, push down the lever, and in a couple of minutes, toast comes out! Nobody knows where the bread goes.
  • The "pair of eXtreme mittens" remarks on the player's "lack of razor-sharp claws", much like Hobbes said in one strip.
  • One strip has Calvin finding a secret decoder ring, joyfully declaring that he and Hobbes can communicate to each other without their parents understanding, then realizes that they probably can't understand him normally anyway. This is given homage in the description of the encoder ring item:
    Now you can send secret messages to your friends that will look like complete gibberish to everyone else. Assuming, of course, that that wasn't already the case anyway.
  • The Mad Hatrack familiar says something similar to Tracer Bullet: "I have three slugs in me. One's made of lead, and two are made of bourbon."
  • The funny paper hat describes several different comic strips, ending with "Whew, thank god for the lunatic kid who thinks his stuffed animal's alive."
• MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat: In the Trial of Grievance (Instant Action), you could change your own name since it was separate to either campaign. Naming yourself "Calvin" allowed you to wear the Elemental Battle Armor suit whereas naming yourself "Hobbes" allowed you to pilot the Tarantula quad-'Mech.

Web Animation

• In Homestar Runner's 2014 Halloween toon "I Killed Pom-Pom!", The Cheat dresses as Calvin's sci-fi alter ego Spaceman Spiff.

Webcomic

• Exterminatus Now: Strip #436◊ has Virus find Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs in the cereal isle.
• Freefall, strip 125◊: Sam blamed the Noodle Incident on "that spiky haired boy with the stuffed tiger."
• The series is referenced, among other newspaper strips, in the webcomic Precocious.
• Brawl in the Family celebrated its 50th strip with a comic done in the style of the series, titled "Gooey Kablooie."
• America in earlier strips of Scandinavia and the World behaves rather like Calvin.
• Mob Ties has a reference to the series.
• Square Root of Minus Garfield has several references to the strip:
  • #78◊ has the famous Transmogrifier strip, altered so that Calvin's changed form is now Garfield.
  • #84◊ has a strip about Jon's imagination changed to replace Jon with Calvin, and the middle panel shows Spaceman Spiff aiming his laser gun at Garfield on a distant planet.
  • #157◊ alters a strip about rain to show the infamous peeing Calvin decal causing it.
  • #604◊'s original strip had Garfield and Jon walking past each other multiple times. The original punch line was Garfield saying "Round table"; the new version changes it to "Calvin's duplicator."
  • #1053◊ compares a strip from Garfield and a strip from Calvin and Hobbes, both about rat tailing someone.
  • #1368◊ has a Garfield panel showing up in the middle of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, both originals involving a joke about a channel changing screen.
  • #1443◊ again compares two strips from both series, both with the philosophy "If you spend enough time planning, you don't have to do anything."
  • #1457◊ alters a snowman-themed strip to show some of Calvin's creations peeking in Jon's window.
• xkcd:
  • When the characters are having a philosophical discussion mirroring their electric skateboard journey, they collide with Calvin and Hobbes in their cart.
  • In another strip, they complain that the sledding failed to be a metaphor for the conversation, and conclude that it's not a Calvin and Hobbes toboggan.
  • Snow Tracking includes "Kid with Transmogrifier" and "Kid with Duplicator".
  • In Game AIs, the game at the far end of "Computers may never outplay humans" is Calvinball.
• Three early Housepets! strips in a row:
  • In "Ode on a Kitty Tummy", Peanut's poem directly refers to Calvin and Hobbes
  • The next strip has Peanut pulling Grape in a cart while complaining the hills aren't steep enough, and is called "Philosophical Quandaries Must Wait".
  • And the one after that has Peanut make a teleporter out of a cardboard box, and is called "Scientific Progress Goes Zonk".
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • The sign for the Transmogrifier is, of course, made out of cardboard.
  • A lampshaded example here:
    Uptrobar: A pair of ancient human philosophers pithily described this not-uncommon circumstance... Asimov said that scientific progress is less "Eureka" and more "That's funny", and Hobbes said "Scientific progress goes 'boink.'"
    Lefevre: (facepalming): Watterson. That was Watterson.
  • A guest strip references the final Calvin strip.
• Dork Tower
  • One strip has Igor as "Spaceman Splat" as a pastiche of Spaceman Spiff, in what turns out to be the last time he was allowed to play Traveller.
  • When the artist complains that his daughter has guilted him into sledding with her, she retorts that appropriating other cartoonists' intellectual properties isn't right either, in a panel which is clearly intended to invoke her as Calvin and him as Hobbes. An apology to Bill Watterson appears under the strip.
  • And a guest comic has Carson and Ken sledding, while Carson expounds his thoughts, and Ken complains that the only reason they're sledding is for the Calvin and Hobbes riff.
• And Shine Heaven Now: during the Millennium attacks of 1999, Calvin, Hobbes, and Susie (who now can see Hobbes for who he really is) go fight off vampires in Washington, D.C., which is where they were for a school trip when the attacks began. It's also revealed through Word of God that Calvin's parents got Hobbes from Count D, and when they're older Calvin will work for arms dealer Ann Warbucks while Susie becomes a diplomat, and they're the parents of Bonnie.
• Questionable Content: Pintsize plays Spaceman Spiff in this guest comic.
• Sandra and Woo: Sandra asks Woo if he's going to "attack her all the time like a certain tiger". The next panel shows him mimicking Hobbes's leaping pose (as seen on the cover of Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat). In another strip, Larisa paraphrases Calvin's quote on Deliberate Under-Performance.
• Erma: Calvin makes an appearance in this strip alongside several other comic strip characters who want Erma to sit with them.

Website

• Acts of Gord has an image of the titular Gord facepalming, drawn in the style of Calvin.
• The Onion has an article treating the infamous peeing Calvin decals as Serious Business.

Web Original

• An Easter Egg in the sbemail "theme party" has a bootleg shirt showing Calvin passed out with a The Grateful Dead dancing bear.
• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • In the review of A Kid in King Arthur's Court, Critic compares the main character of Calvin with that of the titular character in Calvin and Hobbes.
    Critic: So we see our main character named Calvin. And no, he's not a ten year old with an imaginary tiger, but he's pretty much on the same brainlength.^note Calvin is six, Critic got his age wrong.
  • In the review of We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Raoul Puke compares the strange premise to a "Spaceman Spiff" fantasy.
  • In the The Lorax (2012) review, Critic responded to the extremely reclusive Once-ler with, "Oh my god, we finally found Bill Watterson!" (Hilarious in Hindsight when Bill briefly came out of retirement not too long after to guest-draw Pearls Before Swine)
  • In the review of Fox Kids, Malcolm describes Bobby's World as "Calvin and Hobbes if they were made by Ned Flanders".
  • In the review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Critic unfavorably compares Greg's drawings to Calvin's.
• In "Golden Book Video Killers XVIII", at one point during the Golden Goose story, Daffy is heard saying "Slippin' rippin' dang fang rotten zarg barg-a-ding-dong!"
  • In "Golden Book Video Killers - Ai and Sam's Edition", the characters reenact the "Maybe the seal round the tub leaks" strip.
• Chuggaaconroy:
  • In Episode 49 of his Splatoon 2 Let's Play, while playing the Tenta Brella, he says he's, "pitching the tent", to which he mentions that he can't hear that phrase anymore without thinking of the strip◊ where Calvin misinterprets the saying as throwing the tent away.
  • In Episode 44 of Banjo-Kazooie on The Runaway Guys, he quotes Calvin saying, "Einstein had bad grades? Mine are even worse!◊"

Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "Holly Jolly Secrets", the Ice King creates snow goons to attack Finn and Jake.
• In the South Park episode "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", Craig is dressed as Spaceman Spiff.
  • Also, the way Butters (as Professor Chaos) behaves in class is reminiscent of Calvin as Stupendous Man.
• MAD: In the sketch "Garfield of Dreams", Calvin^note who's miscolored - his hair is brown as opposed to blonde and his shirt is blue instead of red and Hobbes are among the comic strip characters that Seth MacFarlane encounters.
• In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Mxyzpixilated", the Daily Planet comics page◊ has a strip named "Dini the Meany" that has a similar art style to Calvin and Hobbes and is made by "Bill Wemissu", a reference to Bill Watterson ending the strip.
• According to Word of God, the Wattersons from The Amazing World of Gumball are named after Bill Watterson.
• The Family Guy episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" has Stewie sending a picture of a mumps-riddled Meg via text message to Calvin.
  • Also, in the infamous Family Guy/Simpsons crossover, Peter begins the episode by getting his own newspaper comic strip. When his offensive content angers the townsfolk and the Griffins are forced to flee, Peter is given the option to submit one final comic strip before he leaves. Said comic strip is a shot of himself, walking out of a newspaper office, with a written goodbye on his in-universe desk. He refers to this act as "going out on top, just like Bill Watterson".
• Robot Chicken
  • A sketch from "Lust for Puppets" depicts Calvin as an insane kid who believes Hobbes is alive. His parents put him on electroshock therapy and pills, but Hobbes comes back to life and urges Calvin to murder them with a chainsaw, which he does. Calvin gets caught by the police and winds up wearing a straitjacket in a padded cell with Hobbes while under the delusion that they're visiting Mars.
    Calvin: (getting off a spaceship and stepping onto Mars) Wow! Mars is amazing!
    Calvin: (in reality, wearing the straitjacket) Mars is amazing...Mars is amaaaaaaazing...
  • A sketch from "Jew No. 1 Opens a Treasure Chest" features Calvin and Susie all grown up and married to each other, with Susie wanting Calvin to pee on her despite his objections, and Hobbes decides to leave them alone.
    Calvin: Susie, I did not agree to those decals! Some douche-schnozzle used my likeness without permission, and suddenly those things were everywhere, okay?!
• In The Simpsons episode "Fat Man and Little Boy", Moe asks Bart if he has a T-shirt of Calvin peeing on Hobbes. When Bart answers no, Moe asks "Well what do you have him peeing on?"
• Molly of Denali parodied Calvinball with Mollyball, a fictional sport named after the title character where the rules are made up as the game goes on.

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