Referenced By / Tintin

The global success of the Belgian comic book series Tintin has made the eponymous hero one of the most recognizable and popular fictional characters in the world. Together with Peanuts and Disney, Hergé's characters may be one of the most frequent targets for Satire, Parody and shout-outs of all time. Even The Other Wiki has an entire page dedicated to it.

Usually Tintin references vary from having characters or iconic objects (like the rocket from Destination Moon) appear in a cameo appearance and/or shout-outs to one of the equally iconic Tintin album covers. Some of the classic scenes in the stories may be referenced too.

Also note that parodying Tintin is quite difficult in Europe without being sued for copyright infringement. Another thing the company has in common with Disney.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The character Mirio Togata from My Hero Academia is designed to look like Tintin, only much taller and with a Heroic Build. Mirio as a child and in the present day has a hairstyle that looks like that of Tintin (in his middle school, he had a different hairstyle). His father, who appears in flashbacks, also looks just like Tintin, only with black hair.

Arts

• Andy Warhol made several paintings of Hergé and met the man in person, naming him as much an influence on his work as Walt Disney and "For me, Hergé was more than a comic strip artist. He had great political and satirical dimensions."
• Roy Lichtenstein, famous for using images of comic strips and blowing them up to larger frames, used scenes from Tintin albums as well. Much like Warhol he saw Hergé as a huge influence on his work.
• Keith Haring was commissioned to create a painting of Tintin for the cover "Nous Tintin" 1987. He also offered another drawing depicting Tintin to Fanny Rodwell.
• Painter Balthus and sculptor Alberto Giacometti once read Tintins together: "We whiled the night away reading Tintin together, and we found that the further we got into the drawings... the more amazed we were and the more fun we had."

Comic Books

• Jo, Zette and Jocko: Hergé referenced his own comic strip by having a framed picture of Captain Haddock show up in the background of Jo's room.
• Asterix:
  • The Belgian legionary in Asterix the Legionary has Tintin's haircut.
  • Thompson and Thomson have a cameo in Asterix in Belgium, even saying their catch phrase je dirais même plus... ("to be precise", in English)
  • In Asterix and the Magic Carpet, Cacofonix starts singing the Jewel Aria from Gounod's Faust, which is Bianca Castafiore's Character Signature Song. In the original French version, a caption informs us: He is confused with a different comic strip.
• Suske en Wiske:
  • Originally De Gezanten van Mars had a joke where Lambik, Suske and Wiske pass past the Moon in space. Lambik then says he is uninterested, because "I already know everything I needed to know about the Moon. Haven't you read "Explorers on the Moon" by Hergé?". The joke was later removed from the regular Red album series, but can still be read in the Blue series.
  • In De Kleurenkladder Lambik notices Snowy passing by and says: "Poor dog. It's just as if I recognize you from somewhere. You probably lost your master." This joke referenced the fact that only a few years earlier Hergé, creator of Tintin had died.
• Urbanus:
  • In De Tenor van Tollembeek Urbanus performs in China, where we can see Tintin and Snowy in a riksha, a reference to The Blue Lotus.
  • In De Pretparkprutsers Urbanus is sent to an insane asylum where Professor Silicone from The Cigars of the Pharao and Philippus the prophet from The Shooting Star can be seen.
  • In Nabuko Donosor Loopt Voor De Voeten César tries to leave their dog behind in the forest. When he arrives there several dogs from other comic strips and cartoons are left behind by their masters too, including Snowy. Later he donates them all to a Chinese restaurant.
  • In De Harem van Urbanus Tintin tries to find a new female lover by making an introduction video where he poses next to all kinds of objects from the Tintin franchise. When he accidentally breaks them all, Amedee the fly angrily shouts to him: Hergé's widow will sue us in court!
  • In De Afgedankte Stripfiguren Urbanus meets comic book characters who have been cancelled and desposed off, mostly from comic strips no longer in publication, including Tintin.
  • Urbanus tries to sell Tintin figurines in De Gouden Bedpan.
• Charles Burns: As a huge Tintin enthusiast he referenced the comic strip countless times in his work. His album X'ed Out references the mushroom of The Shooting Star on the album cover. In the album itself the protagonist has typical surreal Tintin dreams, complete with himself looking like Tintin, down to the quif. Also, in the El Borbah series the character portraits on the endpapers are a reference to those in the Tintin stories.
• Benoit Brisefer: In the album Tonton Placide Benoit is travelling by train. Some criminals debolt it so that the last wagon comes loose and slides back down the rails. Benoît immediately decides to take action and shouts: "This ain't "The Adventures of Tintin", in reference to "Tintin and the Temple of the Sun".
• De Kiekeboes:
  • In Album 26 Kiekeboe goes to the Hergé Institute to find a stuntman for his comic strip.
  • Near the end of De Snor van Kiekeboe various comic strip characters with moustaches complain about Kiekeboe receiving the Moustache of the Year 1984 award from the Antwerp Moustache Club, among them Thompson and Thomson.
  • Kiekeboe and Konstantinopel try to buy backgrounds from other comic strips in Afgelast Wegens Ziekte. One man buys the set of Moulinsart (Marlinspike Hall) and says: A bargain. This one isn't used anymore anyway. In the same story Kiekeboe imagines his own funeral. Among the people attending the service are characters from different comic strip franchises, including Tintin and Haddock.
  • A man named Herr Gé and who looks a lot like Hergé too appears in De Aqua-Rel.
  • The album cover of Geen Rook has Alanis smiling and telling the viewer to remain silent, in reference to the album cover of The Castafiore Emerald.
• Blake and Mortimer:
  • In L' Onde Septimus (The Septimus Wave) Tintin appears in the background while having his luggage checked.
  • In The Voronov Plot the restaurant Klow and its owner from King Ottokars Sceptre appear.
• Les Femmes en Blanc: One gag has a man who is morbidly obese and wants a liposuction. After they do so, he is left with a lot of drooping skin, causing him to cry. A nurse helps him out by sticking the left over skin in his shirt and golf pants, causing the patient to look like Tintin!
• Agent 327:
  • In De Gesel van Rotterdam the ship Karaboudjan and Allan Thompson appear, referencing The Crab With The Golden Claws.
  • In Het Oor van Van Gogh Vincent van Gogh appears in our modern day and is smitten with Hergé's artwork in some Tintin albums. Snowy too has a cameo in this album.
  • In Het Pad van de Schildpad Agent 327 tries to decipher a secret code and mentions that this would be something up the alley for his Chef, because "his favorite comic strips are "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure".
• MAD Magazine: Once had a parody on the American-Iraqi War in the 2000s named Tintin in Fallujah.
• Belgian provocateur Jan Bucquoy drew a pornographic parody named La Vie Sexuelle de Tintin (The Sexual Life of Tintin) which is banned in both Belgium and France, but available in the Netherlands.
• The subversive French magazine Hara-Kiri (the precursor of Charlie Hebdo) drew a comic strip named Tintin pour les dames ("Tintin to the ladies"), which was mostly pornographic in nature.
• Mœbius once drew Tintin and Snowy appearing in the same frame as his comic strip hero Arzach. In an October 2001 interview he said: "Drawing comic strips is repetitive, mechanical work that naturally leads to the development of artistic tics. Few authors can escape this process yet Hergé, thanks to the fact that he managed to create such a far-reaching work, managed to free himself from it entirely. On the other hand an artist like Franquin, despite his obvious genius, represents the archetype of someone in the grip of this artistic mechanization."
• The Rabbi's Cat: Tintin appears◊ in the second volume during his journey in the Congo, encountered by the characters in their voyage across Africa. In a Take That! to the racism of Tintin in the Congo, he is portrayed as a cheerily condescending racist moron who irritates the group enormously and shoots every animal in sight.
• In Les Aventures des 4 As by François Craenhals Tintin and Snowy drive by and ask the children whether they saw a green car passing by? The children did and show him the right direction. As Tintin leaves they wonder: Strange, I have the impression I know that man from somewhere?
• Belgian cartoonist Kamagurka once drew a funny comic strip analysis of the first few pages of the Tintin story The Shooting Star.
• A cartoon gag of Ever Meulen for the Belgian magazine Humo has a grownup version of Wiske from Suske en Wiske stare lovingly at Tintin, while the equally grownup version of Suske asks her: What's He Got That I Ain't Got?!
• Rasmus Klump: The captain often offers to tell Rasmus and his friends stories about Tintin and Captain Haddock.
• Thomson and Thompson also appear on page 55 of the story L'ombra che sfidò Sherlock Holmes, an Italian comic spin-off of "Martin Mystère", edited by Sergio Bonelli Editore.
• On pagina 24 of El Secreto de Los Hombres-Perro by Hermann and Yves Huppen Tintin appears consulting a fortune teller.
• Spirou & Fantasio:
  • In the album Le Journal d'un Ingénu, a special album set in 1939, there is a scene set on the flea-market on the Place du Jeu de Balle where you see the man who will later sell the model of the Unicorn to Tintin.
  • Spirou also has Tintin in the Land of the Soviets standing right next to the Bible in his quarters, and in one scene clings to a car's spare tyre as Tintin did in The Blue Lotus.
  • In the album Le Groom Vert-de-Gris, a re-imagination of Spirou set during the Nazi occupation of 1942, several references to Hergé and his comics can be found. Fantasio gets stuck in Calculus's fully automatic machine for cleaning clothes from Red Rackham's Treasure. A bearded Nazi who looks exactly like Dr. Müller from Tintin in the Land Of Black Gold also plays a part. Tintin, Snowy, Sakharine and the pickpocket from The Secret of the Unicorn have walk-on cameos, as do Quick, Flupke, Jo and Zette. In a scene in jail prisoners are reading Tintin in Le Soir.
  • The special album Le Marais du temps has a stealth shout-out: Like Land of Black Gold it opens with an explosion that happens just as the Charles Trênet song Boum! is played on the radio.
• A comic strip album by Cowboy Henk was named Het Geroken Oor (The Smelt Ear, which is a pun on the Dutch title of the Tintin album Het Gebroken Oor (The Broken Ear.)
• Fantastic Four: Tintin managed to have a cameo in volume 3, issue #1 of the series, drawn by Scott Lobdell and Alan Davis where Reed and Sue (in disguise) meet the reporter during a protest march, where he is addressed as French, but quickly points out: "For the record, I'm Belgian.". Later in the story he is seen again fleeing away, while shouting Haddock's catchphrase: "Billions of blistering blue barnacles".
• Teen Titans Spotlight: In issue no. 11, June 1987, by RJM Lofficier and Joe Orlando the characters meet a muscular boy with a quiff named Tin, whose planet went through a post apocalyptic war. This may sound a bit too obscure, but later in the story he tells about his planet's history and we see him, Captain Haddock and professor Calculus drawn in realistic drawing style.
• The second album of Émile Bravo's series Une épatante aventure de Jules, Jules meets a middle-aged, overweight and balding Belgian reporter wearing a sky-blue sweater over a white shirt, brown trousers and a trenchcoat. He is also accompanied by a white dog who has clearly seen better days. No, it's not Tintin himself, just a very avid fan.
• In 2010, South-African comic-strip artist Anton Kannemeyer drew a satirical parody of Tintin in Africa called Pappa in Afrika, where Tintin is depicted as a a balding black-haired colonialist shooting and exploiting black people. Kannemeyer says he likes "Tintin", but has mixed feelings about this particular outdated Tintin album.
• There's a familiar-looking white dog in Grandville.
• The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free is an anarcho-syndicalist graphic novel in which characters with the names and appearances of Tintin and Captain Haddock (although completely different backgrounds and personalities) lead a strike on a British building site that turns into a national general strike and then a popular revolution.
• In Jojo: On opère Gros-Louis, Gros-Louis reads Tintin in Tibet out loud.
• DC Comics' New 52: In Superman/Wonder Woman #4, the world learns that the title duo are in a relationship breaks worldwide. Among the montage of reactions which include Green Lantern and the Flash is Tintin doing a Spit Take of disbelief. (He's shown from behind so we don't see his face, but that iconic quiff is unmistakable and a very familiar-looking white dog is beside him.)
• The Simpsons: In "The Simpsons Comics Internationale!", one of the stories depicts a Belgian comic that portrays Bart and Lisa as "Bartbart and Lislis".

Films — Animation

• Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle: In this Tarzan parody, Tarzoon swings past a scene where Tintin is trying to convert little black Africans. When one of the Africans is distracted by Tarzoon passing by, he hits him over the head with his crucifix, while Snowy is standing by.
• The Rabbi's Cat: As in the comics, Tintin has a cameo in this film, appearing in his Tintin in Africa safari outfit.

Films — Live-Action

• In Delicatessen, Marcel Tapioca (played by Ticky Holgado) is named as such as a reference to General Tapioca.
• Kramer vs. Kramer: Dustin Hoffman reads Red Rackham's Treasure to his son.
• Los Abrazo Rotos: The moon rocket from Destination Moon appears in the background in one of the scenes.
• The Reader: In the film, a character is reading The Seven Crystal Balls in bed, next to Kate Winslet.
• Satyajit Ray: The director was a huge Tintin fan and included shots of the comic strips in some of his films. He went on record claiming he loved the use of the Devnagri script for the Hindi yelling of a poter after being bumped into by Captain Haddock in Tintin in Tibet.
• Alain Resnais: This French film director also read Tintin a lot and once had the plan to adapt The Black Island to the silver screen, but the plan never came about.
• Argentine film director Mariano Llinás named Tintin of the inspirations for his film Historias Extraordinarias.
• The 1973 movie Les Malheurs d'Alfred (The Troubles of Alfred) has a scene where a character is lying in bed, next to a copy of Tintin Magazine.
• Le Souffle Au Coeur: Laurent, the 14 year old boy, reads both Marcel Proust as well as Tintin and is given a Tintin book while he is bedridden.
• The 2007 film La Carta Esférica (The Nautical Chart) tells the story of a hunt for an eighteenth-century shipwreck and its cargo of treasure. In one scene the Spanish edition of Red Rackham's Treasure can be seen.
• Ted: In one scene Mark Wahlberg's character is reading Destination Moon.
• In the Indian movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara some Tintin stories can be seen in one scene.
• In The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec one of the objects Professor Espérandieu uses to bring the dead to life is the idol from The Broken Ear.
• The 1964 Philippe de Broca film That Man from Rio, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorléac, has been called by some critics "the best Tintin movie"^note  This was before the Spielberg movie, even though the characters are totally different, for capturing the spirit of a Tintin adventure. Some of the scenes and plot elements are very reminiscent of specific albums, starting with the opening where, as in The Broken Ear, an ancient American idol is stolen from an ethnological museum.
• Another Jean-Paul Belmondo movie, Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine, is even closer to the atmosphere of a Tintin adventure, especially The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet.

Literature

• The novel Turkish Delight by Jan Wolkers opens with a quote from Flight 714, more specifically the Eviler than Thou dialogue between Rastapopolous and Carreidas.
• In The Golden Gate by Indian novelist Vikram Seth the following lines can be read: "... and thanks for the two Tintins. Paul's ingesting that glorious goop with as much joy as I did when I was a boy. Liz laughs: "So you were brought up on it?" I was, as well. What marvelous books. I wish someone would write a sonnet about them. I'm on tenterhooks. Whenever each new one's translated! I think they're more sophisticated than Asterix - and far more fun." Seth is such a Tintin fan that he owns three maquettes based on model of the Unicorn from Secret Of The Unicorn. In an interview with Telegraph India he said he likes The Calculus Affair best, "But I think what I really, really like is a pair of two stories, "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham’s Treasure". That combination is a rollicking good tale."
• Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha has an unnamed "button-nosed French reporter whose stiff fore-lock stood up", and an opera singer actually named Bianca Castafiore.
• In the fifth book of The Mythical Six (an Italian series of books featuring six kids who are descendants of Ancient Greek gods and monsters), the main characters find a bunch of treasures, and among them there is a portrait of Sir Francis Haddock.
• Angels of Music gives Carlotta, the prima donna from The Phantom of the Opera, the surname Castafiore.
• In The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, the story "The Six Maledictions" features an opera singer named Madame Castafiore, whose singing is highly regarded by her fans and considered very painful by everyone else.
• The Doctor Who Expanded Universe short story "Crimson Dawn" in Decalog 2: Lost Property, a character is reading Cigars of the Pharoah.
• The Boy Who Drew Monsters: During Jack's former obsession with comic books, he and Nick used to read Tintin together.
• In Bewilderment, Robin draws an elaborate poster of endangered animals to protest with in Washington, D.C. Theo compares the art style to Tintin.

Live-Action TV

• The Avengers (1960s): In two early episodes Mr. Steed is reading respectively Tintin and the Land of Black Gold and Tintin in Tibet.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Far Beyond The Stars", the red model rocket◊ that sits in the middle of the Incredible Tales office resembles the Moon Rocket from "Destination Moon" and "Explorers On The Moon".
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: Indiana Jones' best friend during his days in the military in World War I is a Belgian named Rémy. This could be a shout-out to Hergé, whose real name was Georges Remi. Steven Spielberg is a Tintin fan ever since people told him Raiders of the Lost Ark had the same atmosphere as the Tintin comics. He had never heard of it, bought an album and was immediately hooked. What is certain is that the character Rémy in the series is not intended to be Hergé himself at a young age, because the real-life Hergé was just a teenager during World War I.

Music

• Stephen Duffy, former member of Duran Duran, performed the minor hit single "Kiss Me" under the name "Tintin" around the same time as The Thompson Twins had their success, but had to drop the name under pressure of a copyright infringement suit.
• Tin Tin was a pop/rock band formed in the UK in 1966 by expatriate Australian musicians.
• A 1980s pop band The Thompson Twins was named after Thompson and Thomson.
• Sting: Sting wears a Tintin and Snowy shirt in the music video of We'll Be Together (1988).
• The 1998 novelty song "Potverdekke, It's Great To Be A Belgian" by Mr. John has the lines "Without the Belgians we wouldn't have no saxophone/ no Tintin, Captain Haddock or Poirot/ and excuse if I missed/ anybody of the list/ these are the only Belgians that I know."
• The Walloon comedy ensemble Les Snuls once wrote a song named Avec ("With") in which Jacques Brel's opening word "Avec" from "Le Plat Pays" is sampled. The band keeps asking him whether certain things should belong together, among them Tintin and Snowy, to which Brel's sample always answers: Avec ("With").

Puppet Shows

• Spitting Image: In 1988 the series published a comic book with a Tintin spoof that was mostly Kill the Cutie in nature, with references to sex and violence.

Video Games

• Adiboo: Magical Playland has at least two Tintin references.
  • In the original French game, one name Adiboo suggests for Buzzy Galump is "Bachi Boulouk", which is taken from one of Captain Haddock's insults: bachi bouzouk. Adiboo then says that this name isn't really good and that it reminds him of something.
  • One element the player can place in the drawing minigame is a rocket ship with a red and white squares color pattern, just like Professor Calculus's rocket ship.
• One boss bloon in Bloons Tower Defense is called "Blastapopoulos", inspired by Rastapopoulos.
• In Shadow Warrior (2013), Lo Wang has a kind of secret superhero base under his house, in which he also keeps comic books and arcade cabinets. One of the exposed comic book's covers imitates Tintin graphics and typography, refering to Tintin: Explorers on the Moon. The cover features a zombie wearing a torn astronaut suit, walking toward a dog. It is titled (in French): The Adventures of a Young Zombie - Red Planet II.
• In Broken Sword, George mentions that he's missing some Tintin books, and then he tells Nico that he will give away his collections to her if he's in danger. Charles Cecil, creator of the game, said he's a big fan of Tintin and gets his influence from the comics.
• In Curious Expedition, one of the recruitable companion is the journalist Tim Timster (whose portrait is basically Tintin with a more classical haircut) and his fox-terrier Luis (they're recruited at the same time). There's also the Treasure Pendulum item, which refers Cuthbert Calculus: according to its flavor text, the item is engraved with "T.T." and a sunflower (the character's original name is Tryphon Tournesol, and "tournesol" is French for "sunflower").
• The Comic Within a Game for Fuga: Melodies of Steel is The Adventures of Sucre, an Affectionate Parody of Tintin down to having a similar art style.

Web Comics

• In Darths & Droids, one of Jim's malapropisms for the Lost Orb of Phanastacoria is the Lost Emerald of Castafiore.
• The Warhammer 40,000 webcomic "Bacon and Eggs" has Captain Haddock's Identical great-to-the-zillionth Grandson as an Imperial Guard general.
• Sheldon: This strip features rejected Halloween costumes for Arthur. One of them is Tintin.
  Arthur as Tintin: Zee case eez solved!

Western Animation

• In Arthur, Fern is a fan of the comic book series Zutzut, which is a pretty accurate parody of Tintin.
• MAD: Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock appear in "My Little War Horse".
• Robot Chicken: In the "Reboot Team-Up" segment in "Choked on Multi-Colored Scarves", Tintin appears riding a Velociraptor riding Jaws and kills a German soldier when he talks about the Uncanny Valley.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Husbands and Knives", Lisa discovers the Tintin and Asterix comic strip section and says: "I thought these only existed in high school French classes". She then picks up an album named Tintin in Paris, which doesn't exist in the Tintin series, but is a mishmash of the album cover of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, combined with content imagery of The Black Island and Destination Moon.
  • In "In the Name of the Grandfather", Bart insults Belgium, to which Marge threatens him: "Bart, if you hate Belgium so much, maybe I should take your Tintin stories away." Bart then clutches a copy of The Crab with the Golden Claws, promising he'll behave.
  • In "Once Upon a Time in Springfield", Tintin and Haddock appear in Paris and hug each other, moved by Princess Penelope's musical performance.
  • In "Moms I'd Like to Forget", "Beware My Cheating Bart" and "The Fabulous Faker Boy", a Tonton in Paris poster is seen hanging in Comic Book Guy's store.
  • The chalkboard gag in "Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson" is "Tintin did not sucksuck", in reference to the 2011 Tintin movie.
• South Park: Tintin and Snowy appear among countless other fictional characters in the Imaginationland trilogy.

Real Life

• French president Charles de Gaulle named Tintin "my only international rival".
• Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese military dictator and later President for Life of Taiwan, was such a fan of The Blue Lotus and what Hergé did to defend the Chinese during the Japanese occupation in World War Two in that album that he invited Hergé to visit China. Hergé didn't take up the invitation until 1973, when Chiang had passed away two years earlier.
• The logo of the Belgian Center for Comic Strips in Brussels is a text balloon with a Tintin quiff. Inside the building a huge replica of the moon rocket from Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon can be seen.
• During the Monty Python reunion in Aspen, Terry Gilliam wore a Tintin-shirt.
• Formula one driver Jackie Stewart is a Tintin fan and posed with a Tintin toy car in front of a Tintin shop in Brussels.
• Anita Pallenberg, the Italian fashion model who was Keith Richards' (The Rolling Stones) partner from 1967 to 1979 is seen holding a copy of The Black Island in one picture.
• The Dalai Lama was offered a copy of Tintin in Tibet in 2003. He liked the book so much that he awarded the character the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth Award.
• Hergé met Princess Grace of Monaco in 1971 and offered her some copies of Tintin stories, which she took in gratitude. In 2010 her son, Albert II of Monaco, was also offered the first Tintin album translated in Monegasque.
• Nick Park, of Wallace & Gromit said in a 2005 interview that he is a Tintin fan. He wore a Snowy T-shirt during an interview for the Cracking Contraptions series and presumably based the moon travel story in A Grand Day Out on Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon.
• A picture was once shot of Francoise Sagan in her bed, with a copy of Tintin in Congo lying on the mattress.
• Belgian vulcanologist Haroun Tazieff once named Hergé "one of the geniuses of the century. Both poet and storyteller, he is the author of a universal work", and added, "when strip cartoons are spoken of as a minor art, my blood begins to boil".
• Author Philip Pullman said: "Hergé was the best at everything: plots, draughtsmanship, jokes, characterization, timing — he could do the lot, and this is his best book [The Castafiore Emerald]".
• Bollywood actress Raima Sen said she is a fan too.
• A meme deriding the milquetoast contemporary response to terrorism shows Tintin weeping in the first panel.

---