Trivia / Bob Morane

• Approval of God:
  • Henri Vernes approved Indochine's song "L'Aventurier" despite that the lead singer wrote it without paying any copyrights. It helps that the song gave the series some publicity.
  • Unlike the first Continuity Reboot, Vernes approved the second one by Christophe Bec and Paolo Grella launched in 2021. He even wrote the forewords in the first issue (published a few months after his death) that he was confident that his franchise was in good hands.
• Completely Different Title: In the animated series, the original French title of Solar System Sentinels is Services secrets soucoupes ("Secret Service Saucers").
• Creator-Driven Successor: The 1998 animated series is this to Blake and Mortimer, another Ellipse Animation animated series released the previous year which both are adaptations of a similar franchise roughly created at the same period (a combination of adventures, espionage, and sci-fi with a duo of protagonists travelling around the world). Coincidentally, they both have the exact same number of episodes, 26 (though Blake & Mortimer story arcs is actually made of 13 2-parts episodes).
• Disowned Adaptation: Henri Vernes has been vocal about his dislike of the 2015 reboot "Bob Morane Renaissance" by Luc Brunschwig and Dimitri Armand and specifically asked the publisher not to be credited.
• Distanced from Current Events: "Le président ne mourra pas" (The President Will Not Die) was ironically scheduled to be published in November 1963. Because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the plot of the novel is specifically about an organisation plotting to kill the President of the United States, the book was delayed for two years.
• Missing Episode: A live-action film titled L'Espion au cent visages (The spy with the hundred faces) was made in 1960 by Belgavidéo. Too bad, it was only screened once and the only copy was destroyed during the fire of the studio.
• Out of Order:
  • The Yellow Shadow was translated to English before Treasure of the Golcondas, despite being an obvious sequel to the latter.
  • The animated series first and second runs in France (respectively on the paid channel Canal + in September 1998, then on the free public channel France 3 in September 1999) didn't broadcast the episodes in the same order: the first run started by Terror at Manicouagan and ended by The Last Wall (respectively the first episode of the Smog arc and the last episode of the Ananke arc), the second run started by The Crown of Golconda and ended by Puppets of the Yellow Shadow (respectively the first and last episodes of the Yellow Shadow arc). Note that the series hasn't much continuity outside of the Yellow Shadow arc (six episodes) and Ananke arc (four episodes), which in both runs were broadcasted in the right order.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The French version of the 1998 animated adaptation uses an instrumental cover of the aforementioned song "L'Aventurier" in its opening credit.
• Recursive Adaptation: Some of the comics based on original stories (like The Bird of Fire and The Eye of The Samurai) were later novelized.
• Self-Adaptation: Henri Vernes wrote the comics based on his novels.
• What Could Have Been: A cancelled film directed by Christophe Gans would have featured either Roch Voisine or Vincent Cassel in the lead role.