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YMMV / Tintin

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Comic Books

  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In "Tintin in Tibet", was Captain Haddock stammering out of fear of the yeti (which would make his denial of said fear a lie) or from the cold?
  • Badass Decay:
    • General Alcazar could fit in this category. He seems pretty badass until you learn who wears the brightly colored pants in his marriage.
    • Invoked in Flight 714 with Rastapopolous and Allan. Two of Tintin's more cunning villains... and Hergé decided to make them into more laughable villains.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment In The Broken Ear, after the two bad guys fall from the boat and drown, there's a panel showing them being Dragged Off to Hell by three little black devils, which is really out of place for the genre of the series (and really creepy as well). While it does get the point across that they died, it's an odd way to show it.
  • Bizarro Episode: Flight 714 starts out normal enough, when Tintin and his friends are kidnapped by Rastapopulus's henchmen and kept prisoners on a small Indonesian island. But it soon become clear that something weird is going on, and it turns out that aliens have been coming to the island for millennia. And yeah, everybody (except for Snowy) forgets all about the adventure due to Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • Broken Base:
    • Is The Castafiore Emerald an entertaining diversion, a deliberately silly chamber piece that trades in the high stakes and tension of the rest of the series for humor and character work? Or is it a pointless exercise in wheel-spinning, a waste of the heroes' and the readers' time? You can find both views expressed very eloquently here and here.
    • Tintinologists are divided over the issue of fan art and parodies. Some, including fan sites such as Tintinologist.org, are vehemently against fan art and fanfiction and would ban the posting of such threads on sight, opining that such works fly in the face of Hergé and desecrate his legacy (though understandably so, given what happened with Tintin in Thailand which portrayed the characters in a decidedly pornographic light). Others, while respecting Hergé's wishes for others to not publish any works based on his creation, have made fan works regardless, believing that those are merely love letters to a comic book author they admire and would not intend to dilute or tarnish Tintin's reputation.
  • Complete Monster:
  • Common Knowledge: Even among hardcore Tintin fans, it's common to assume that Thompson and Thomson are twin brothers because of their almost identical appearance and personality, the fact that they live together, and that both Haddock and Snowy refer to them sarcastically as twin brothers in some books. In reality, they aren't related at all, and their different surnames should give it out. There is also the fact that the two are actually brothers in the Belvision animated series and movies and they constantly refer to each other as "my dear brother."
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Captain Haddock, who became even more popular and well-loved than Tintin himself.
  • Estrogen Brigade: There's quite a large female fandom of these comics, and while many enjoy the adventures and comedy, others have admitted to find Tintin and the Captain rather swoon-worthy, even if the comic book's art style is the opposite of erotic. Hmm. Must be all the endangering and tied-up situations they get involved in.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: The Africans in Tintin in the Congo are best left unmentioned. However, the later Blue Lotus was written with input by an actual Chinese person and worked hard to remove some of the Yellow Peril stereotypes. This did not, however, apply to the Japanese villains who are mostly depicted with protruding teeth and thick glasses, reflecting the anti-Japanese colonialism theme that is central to the storyline. Hergé expressed great regret later on for the racism in his early work and actually requested Tintin in the Congo not be republished. The last few Tintin adventures are still prone to Ethnic Scrappy but tend to have fairly realistic characters of color.
  • Fair for Its Day: The series has what would be considered very racist portrayals of minorities today. However, Tintin and the heroes usually treated these people with respect, while the villains would not treat them this way.
    • Invoked in The Blue Lotus, where Hergé consciously defies Western stereotypes about the Chinese and makes fun of people who still believe in them. Tintin defended a Chinese rickshaw puller who gets manhandled unfairly by a brutish American businessman. Later, he befriends Chang, a Chinese boy and they stay close in later books. Tintin freely admits many Westerners mistreat Chinese people, and the book is squarely on their side against both this along with it denouncing Japanese imperialism. Chang was based on a real Chinese friend of Hergé's.
    • This is why Nelvana chose to Bowdlerise some of the stories. In The Broken Ear, Tintin still disguises himself as a member of the boat crew, but rather than dress in blackface like in the comic book, just wears a wig and has a fake moustache. In The Red Sea Sharks, the ship full of African Muslims trying to make their pilgrimage to Mecca were instead changed to refugees. That makes it sound even worse. Although said Muslims were portrayed with stereotypical features and as rather dim, it's made clear they should be aided, as they're being trafficked into modern slavery. Similarly, the Arabs (though pretty stereotypical at times too) are often also sympathetic, with Tintin siding with them again.
    • The same goes for the Blackfeet tribe from "Tintin in America". Again, pretty stereotypical (and anachronistic because they're shown still living a traditional lifestyle and this is in the late 1920s), but they are portrayed as right for fighting against outsiders that encroach onto their land. It's being seized by the government after oil is discovered there is shown as clearly tragic and wrong.
  • Fanon: Some fans in the Anglosphere speculate Archibald Haddock is supposed to be Scottish, due to his name ("Archibald" is a stock Scottish name, and "Haddock" is an actual British surnamenote ) and his personality (a rather hot-tempered man who loves whisky). Also, the English localization of some adaptations giving him a Scottish accent didn't help. His ancestor François de Hadoque is supposed to be French in the original version of The Secret Of The Unicorn, but followers of the "Haddock is a Scotsman" theory handwave it as "Hadoque was a Scottish mercenary working for France".
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Tintin's first three stories are definitely not popular with fandom: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is heavy-handed anti-communist propaganda, Tintin in the Congo is horribly racist, and Tintin in America, although considered better than the previous two books, is still criticized for having a series of random events rather than a linear story. Because of this, many fans advise the people who want to get started with Tintin's books to start with Cigars of the Pharaoh, the first story where Hergé really tries to tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. It helps that the events of these first three books are never mentioned by the other books in the franchise.
  • Fashion-Victim Villain: Roberto Rastapopoulos. In his first appearances he wears relatively normal business clothes, but he degenerates fast. First, in his disguise as Marquis Gorgonzola, he wears a bizarre red and green outfit that includes a cape and a cowl with plummage (although he has the reasonable excuse of being at a costume party). In Flight 714, he wears a hideous pink cowboy shirt, complete with hat, boots and bolo tie, and for some reason, carries around a riding crop, even though there's no horses around. Hergé himself said that he wanted to ridicule him and make him a "luxury cowboy" (sic).
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The franchise is insanely popular in the West Bengal state of India, to the point that Tintin is a cultural icon. The books are translated in Bengali and the Nelvana animated series has also been dubbed and aired in Bengali TV channels, with almost all of the characters' localised names from the comic books retained in the series. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that Satyajit Ray was a big fan and had referenced the franchise in some of his works.
    • Considering how the Franco-Belgian comics are very obscure (and only small portion of them are translated) in Japan, Tintin is relatively popular there (as a picture book, though) and remembered for its well-made translation. The word “Bārō（バーロー）,” a colloquial form of “Bakayaro（馬鹿野郎）” which means “stupid,” is often associated with Captain Haddock’s famous catchphrase note  which is translated as “Konkonnyarō no Bārō Misaki（コンコンニャローのバーロー岬）” roughly translated as “You stupid” and also works as a pun on the point Barrow (which is now called Utqiagvik) in Alaska, USA.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Llamas are indeed even-toed ungulates.
    • While under the influence of truth serum, jerkass billionaire Carreidas in Flight 714 goes on at tedious length about his first evil act - stealing a pear as a child. Stealing pears was also St. Augustine's (354-430) first step on the path of sin, according to his famous Confessions.
  • Growing the Beard: After the first three books, the series picked up in terms of story quality. Cigars of the Pharaoh was the first story that attempted to be a cohesive storyline rather than just being a loose collection of set pieces based around a particular country. Hergé himself considered the following story, The Blue Lotus to be the point where the stories really started to get good.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Most of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is laughably crude anti-communist propaganda, with Soviet agents planning to blow up all the capitals of Europe and red soldiers trying to drown Snowy For the Evulz. They were largely lifted from a popular anti-Soviet pamphlet of the time and influenced by Hergé's employer, the right-wing Catholic publication Le Petit Vingtième. Some scenes of the oppression in Stalinist Russia, however, are cases of Accidentally-Correct Writing which ring painfully true, for instance when Tintin helps a kulak hide his grain from the bolscheviks. It has been estimated that half a million kulaks were killed and 1.8 million people starved to death due to forced collectivization and confiscations of grain in the early thirties.
    • Much of the shenanigans of Abdullah became this as his inspiration, Faisal II, was overthrown and executed in 1958 (8 years after the original publication of Land of the Black Gold).
    • Tintin's hunting of an elephant and a rhinoceros in the original, black-and-white version of Tintin in the Congo, not least because of how the populations of both animals have dwindled in the years since the release of that version.
    • The plane hijacking in Flight 714 and the real life hijacking of Flight 370 are so similar it's speculated the latter was inspired by the former.
    • The ending scene from Tintin and The Blue Lotus, where Japan withdraws from the League of Nations along with its mistreatment of the Chinese becomes a Foregone Conclusion to its entry in World War II, along with the later years of the Second Sino-Japanese War when reading it now. In particular, the book also represents the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and ends shortly before Japan started committing serious atrocities against the Chinese.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The references to "coke" in The Red Sea Sharks. At the time it was widely used to refer to as a derivative of coal, but nowadays "coke" usually refers to either Coca-Cola or cocaine. The latter interpretation makes Haddock's shocked reaction to Tintin's question if their ship is carrying any coke look particularly hilarious.
    • In The Castafiore Emerald, Bianca Castafiore gives Haddock a violent and ill-tempered, red-feathered pet parrot named Iago. Only applicable to the English translation, though; in the French version the parrot is named Coco.
    • Also in The Seven Crystal Balls and The Castafiore Emerald, Captain Haddock, a character with black scruffy hair and beard, falling down the stairs...
    • In Tintin In Congo, Tintin is accompanied by a native boy called Coco. Kusao Takeshi, who voices Tintin in the Japanese dub of the 1991 animated series, voices a character called Coco in Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Tintin's relationship with Captain Haddock gives many readers this impression. Neither characters shows any interest in women throughout the series, and a few books after Haddock buys Marlinspike Manor, Tintin moves in with him, and lives there with him.
    • Less obviously, Tintin and Chang from The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet.
  • Inferred Holocaust: Happens at the start of the first Tintin story, Land of the Soviets, as the train that Tintin is taking to the USSR gets blown up by a bomb, and all the passengers and crew are apparently killed (except for Tintin and Snowy, who survive... just because, really).
  • It Was His Sled: Everybody knows that Roberto Rastapopoulos is more than just a movie director...
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • "The Seven Crystal Balls" and "Prisoners of the Sun": The story arc covered by these two books has this duo of Incan priests:
      • Rupac Inca Huaco, or "Chiquito" is the more proactive of the duo. Seeking retribution against a team of European explorers for desecrating the tomb of Rascar Capac, he travels to Europe and works undercover as Ramon Zarate's assistant, to use the titular crystal balls to put the explorers in a coma and torment them using wax figures. He also kidnaps Professor Calculus for putting on a bracelet belonging to the former king, and smuggles him to Peru with the intention of executing him for sacrilege. However, when Tintin tells the Incan Prince that the explorers were well-intentioned people who wanted to educate the world about the Incan Civilization, Chiquito willingly destroys the figures upon the prince's orders, freeing his victims from their curse.
      • Huascar is Chiquito's fellow priest who is introduced in "Prisoners of the Sun". Initially spying on Tintin and Haddock while they are looking for Professor Calculus in Peru, Huascar attempts to get them off the trail by sabotaging their train ride, almost succeeding in sending them plummeting to their deaths. However, upon seeing Tintin defend Zorrino from a pair of Spanish bullies, Huascar's views on him soften and he tries to talk him out of looking for Calculus, warning him that the journey will be dangerous. When Tintin insists on continuing his search, Huascar gives him a medallion to protect him from the wrath of the Incan prince, and personally vouches for Tintin after the latter accidentally breaks into the Temple of the Sun.
    • "Flight 714 to Sydney": Mik Kanrotikoff (Ezdanitoff in the French version) acts as the middle-man between Earth's scientists and aliens formerly worshiped by the residents of Pulau-pulau Bompa. He uses a telepathic transmitter to communicate with the aliens and is introduced telepathically instructing Tintin on how to find him. He saves Tintin and company from a volcanic eruption by hypnotizing them into entering a flying saucer, erasing their memory of the events of the story, and depositing them on a dinghy in the ocean, though still leaving them dazed and at the mercy of the volcano.
  • Mandela Effect: The title character is often thought to have orange-red hair. Throughout the original comic, he is actually a blonde, though sometimes strawberry blonde and sometimes even brown-haired. Animated screen adaptations usually make him a full-on redhead.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The comics' covers are a huge source of parodies. The most parodied cover is the one from Explorers on the Moon, originally titled On a marché sur la lune (We walked on the moon), whose title is a source of parody on its own right.
    • "HA HA HA, OH WOW", an edit of two panels from Destination Moon of Captain Haddock laughing at Prof. Calculus's plans to build a moon rocket.
    • "Caramba! Encore raté!" ("Caramba! Missed again!") from Broken Ear, whenever a plan fails or a target is missed.
    • The Thompsons' catchphrase "Je dirais même plus..." (To be precise...)
    • Many of Haddock's Character Catchphrases, e.g. "Thundering typhoons!" or "Blistering barnacles!"
    • Among French commentators, Captain Haddock's bandaid in The Calculus Affair is sometimes used as a comparison to any particularly sticky scandal that may plague a politician and that just won't go away.
    • From the Nelvana animated adaptation of Prisoners of the Sun: "Tomorrow's the sixteenth! EUREKA! We're saved!"
    • What a week, huh?. Captain, it's Wednesday.
    • "Where do you think we are?": A fan-made drawing that recreates the Wham Line from the Scrubs episode "My Screw-Up", with Tintin as JD and Captain Haddock as Dr. Cox.
    • A number of comics turning characters into parodies of themselves (Tintin as a racist Immoral Journalist actively causing diplomatic tensions so he'd have something to report on, Haddock as an upper-class reactionary, Castafiore as a rapper, etc) by Un Faux Graphiste attracted some attention when Hergé's estate threatened to sue if they weren't removed.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Not So Crazy Anymore: In "Destination Moon", Captain Haddock spends a lot of time mocking Professor Calculus for saying that travel to the moon is possible. When the book was published, in 1953, this was understandable, but after 1969, Haddock seems like the crazy one...
  • Once Original, Now Common: Young readers who have seen many adventure comics/cartoons may find Tintin to be cliché - despite Hergé trail-blazing some of those ideas.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The insane Italian driver Arturo Benedetto Giovanni Giuseppe Pietro Archangelo Alfredo Cartoffoli da Milano from The Calculus Affair.
  • The Scrappy: Jolyon Wagg is considered annoying by both the in-universe characters and the readers.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Herge usually tried to avert it, but if there is some, it's there big time. For instance, Tintin in the Congo. Where he does everything dissonant known to 21st century man: Blowing up a rhino by drilling dynamite holes into it, shooting an ape to use his skin as camouflage, all the way down to teaching native children imperialist Belgian ideology. Fabulous, eh? Note that this was mostly forced onto him by Executive Meddling. In no small due to this, Hergé himself would later look quite negatively back at the story, calling it "paternalistic" and "bourgeois".
    • The Japanese are portrayed as many a big-toothed Jerkass in The Blue Lotus. This is because the album came out during the brutal invasion and occupation of China by Imperial Japan, who committed horrific atrocities on the civilian population, such as the Nanking massacre. As such, that unflattering depiction is a scathing indictment of Japanese imperialism at the time and no different from similar depictions of Nazi Germany. note  Modern readers, however, would likely see the visual caricature as racist and wrong.
      • The main reason for the representations of the normal Chinese and caricatural Japanese in Blue Lotus was due to a Chinese student offering to help Hergé with his research precisely because he was afraid of the stereotyping being as bad as Congo. Hergé put him in the story as Chang in thanks.
    • About everything in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.
    • Or in The Shooting Star (published during WWII, when Belgium was occupied by Germany), where Tintin's expedition's nemesis is a certain American industrialist called Blumenstein. In the later versions, the country was renamed Sao Rico and Blumenstein was renamed Bohlwinkel (which incidentally is also a jewish surname, but Herge supposedly did not know this at the time).
    • Or when the world was allegedly going to end in the same album, and two stereotypical Jews are seen talking about it, one of them saying that would spare him paying a debt to another Jew. Those were erased from post-World War II editions.
    • The English translation used "Aborigine" and "Tribe of Polynesians" among Captain Haddock's many unusual insults. Back then, it may not have been a big deal, but now it makes him look unacceptably (and uncharacteristically) racist.
    • Tintin even wears blackface to spy on the villains in The Broken Ear. This was thankfully replaced by a wig, mustache and glasses in the Nelvana adaptation.
    • There's a scene in Land of Black Gold where Tintin beats a child in a manner apparently so violent that it happens off-screen (we're shown the door of the room, with the sounds of smacking, and the next panel shows the child in tears). It's played for laughs, and never mentioned again. Later in the same book Haddock spanks the same child..
  • Values Resonance: On the other hand, while the stories are old and filled with antique prejudices of the era, a lot of the messages found in them can also be found engaging and relevant today:
    • The criticism of Japan's invasion of China in The Blue Lotus, considering the rise of revisionism in Japan, especially far-right politicians and trolls (netouyo). Tintin also delivers an excellent speech to Chang about how, while a lot of Chinese are afraid of westerners because they don't know what they're like, a lot of westerners are just as afraid of the Chinese because they believe they're all Yellow Peril Fu Manchu stereotypes, and when you overcome ignorance you realise that race doesn't determine whether people are good or bad.
    • While the Captain's alcoholism is often treated as a joke, it's also shown as a hindrance for the characters in their adventures, and a big part of Haddock's development throughout the series is to learn to not be so dependent on the drink.
    • Portraying the Incas and their descendants as rightfully wary of foreigners due to their past with the Spaniards, and criticizing the European exploitation of Peru and its rich culture in The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun. It's exemplified the best in the scene that opens the first book, where the gentleman sitting next to Tintin calls out the desecration of Rascar Capac's tomb, and later the scene where Tintin saves Zorrino from being bullied by two Criollo-looking men. Additionally, the Incans were not demonised for protecting their heritage - and the expedition was done in the name of teaching the world what the Incans were actually like.
    • Believing in the Roma's innocence and not supporting the Thompsons' racist accusations in The Castafiore Emerald.
    • Not caring for either Alcazar or Tapioca's regime in Tintin and the Pícaros, since at the end of the day both leaders still abandon the poorer sections of the population to cater to their own whims and to the richer classes.
    • In general, after the stories of Congo and America, Herge just put a lot more of research into his stories, making the world and characters come off as unique and realistic. Considering how many modern authors nowadays barely do a thing of research and leave their token characters to be mere stereotypes, this is more impressive to consider.
  • Vanilla Protagonist: The title character is calm, levelheaded, and lacking in quirks, making the colorful and wacky supporting cast stand out more in comparison.
  • Viewer Name Confusion: Non-European people tend to write Tintin's name as TinTin or Tin Tin.
  • Villain Decay: Rastapopoulos to a tee. In his earlier appearances, he is a powerful, deceptive and menacing chessmaster. Flight 714 sees him reduced to a pathetically short-tempered pink cowboy who can't think even one step ahead (he's still pretty evil though, as he is quick to tell us). His dragon Allan falls prey to this too, becoming nothing more than a dumb and cowardly henchman. Note that this was done on purpose; Hergé deliberately decided to ridicule his villains at this point.
  • Vindicated by History: While the series was never poorly received in the States and English Canada, it was pretty obscure owing mostly to its very limited run. (Meaning you had to hope your library had copies or pay pretty steep prices in online auctions.) After its reprints in The New '10s, it's now one of the few Franco-Belgian comics some people in North America can even name.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: For a series primarily aimed at younger audiences, it features some heavily mature undertones such as gun violence, drug usage, organized crime, political conflicts and even terrorism. It also isn't shy of showing near-death experiences, and goes as far as directly or indirectly showing a few characters's deaths. The earliest albums are even guilty of overt propaganda, promoting colonialism and feature racist depictions of certain ethnic groups like the Congolese and the Japanese. Then again, Tintin is from Belgium, and Europe is relatively permissive when it comes to content for children.

Ellipse-Nelvana animated series

See here.

2011 Film

See here.

Other adaptations

  • Awesome Music: The bombastic theme from the Lake of Sharks animated movie.
  • Narm: The audio dramas give us a couple.
    • In The Black Island, Puschov shouting "CURSES!" to the Thomson twins' "To be precise…" moment is Narmy enough, but there's also the fact that it sound suspiciously like they used the same audio clip twice:
      Thomson: Hands up!
      Puschov: CURSES!
      Thompson: To be precise; up hands!
      Puschov: <exactly the same as before> CURSES!
    • From The Castafiore Emerald, someone in the TV crew gives us this gem, all the while sounding like he's on the verge of bursting into tears:
      "HEY! WHAT'S THE IDEA?! SOMEONE'S RRRUNNING ARRROUND IN THE DAARRRRK!"
  • Only the Creator Does It Right: Tintin and the Sun Temple was the only Belvision production that Hergé himself was involved in, and is generally regarded as the best of them by far.

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