70 Fun Facts About The Adventures of Tintin

Which style of trousers was Tintin's trademark through almost all of his adventures?

Plus fours, the baggy golfing trousers, lasted until the 1970s, when Hergé put him in brown flared jeans and many readers complained.

What is the real name of Hergé, the creator of Tintin?

Georges Remi signed his early drawings with his initials reversed, R.G., which spoken aloud in French sounds like 'Hergé'.

Why was Tintin's unfinished final adventure never completed after Hergé died?

His own wish: Hergé had said Tintin should end with him, so when his assistant Bob de Moor offered to finish the story his widow finally said no, and it came out as rough sketches.

What is Tintin's job?

Reporter is his job title, yet across the whole series he is shown writing up a story for his paper just once.

What is Snowy's name in the original French editions?

Milou was the pet name of Hergé's first girlfriend, Marie-Louise Van Cutsem, and he borrowed it for the dog.

What breed of dog is Snowy?

Wire Fox Terrier. The breed normally has coloured patches on its white coat, but Hergé drew Snowy without a single marking.

Tintin first appeared in which weekly children's supplement to a Brussels newspaper?

Le Petit Vingtième, which Hergé himself edited, marked the end of that first story by staging Tintin's homecoming at a Brussels station with an actor and a dog, and crowds of fans turned up.

Hergé's editor, a priest, ordered him to set Tintin's very first adventure in which country?

The Soviet Union was the choice of Abbé Norbert Wallez, who ran the paper and wanted a strip that would warn its young readers about communism.

Which is the only completed Tintin adventure that Hergé never redrew in colour?

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets struck Hergé as too crude to rework, and he kept it out of print for some 40 years, relenting only to undercut pirate editions.

Which Boy Scout patrol leader, the hero of Hergé's first comic strip, became the prototype for Tintin?

Totor sailed to America and outwitted gangsters in a Scout magazine strip from 1926, and Hergé later described Tintin as Totor's little brother.

The French name for Hergé's influential drawing style translates as what?

Clear line, or ligne claire, only got its name in the 1970s, when Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte coined it for the style Hergé had used for decades.

Captain Haddock's country house, Marlinspike Hall, is modelled on which real French stately home?

Château de Cheverny lost its two outer wings in Hergé's drawing because he found the full building too grand for Haddock; since 2001 the real château has housed a permanent Tintin exhibition.

In which album is Captain Haddock introduced?

The Crab with the Golden Claws introduces him as a drunken wreck held captive by his own first mate, whose gang hides opium in crab tins; Tintin sobers him up and gains a friend for life.

What is Captain Haddock's first name?

Archibald stayed a secret for some 35 years: readers met the Captain in 1941 and only learned his first name in the 1970s.

Which word completes Captain Haddock's famous curse, 'Billions of blue blistering...'?

Barnacles! Real swearing could never run in a children's paper, so Hergé armed Haddock with harmless words to bellow like the foulest insults, hunting more out of the dictionary.

Professor Calculus's French name, Tournesol, is the French word for which flower?

Sunflower. In the story that introduces him, the deaf professor sells the patent on his one-man submarine and uses the money to buy Marlinspike Hall for Haddock.

Professor Calculus was partly based on which real Swiss physicist?

Auguste Piccard, a lanky balloonist, taught in Brussels, where Hergé used to see him in the street; he said he drew Calculus as a 'mini-Piccard' because the real man was too tall for the panels.

How can you tell Thomson and Thompson apart?

By the shape of their moustaches: Thomson's twirls out at the ends, Thompson's is trimmed straight. Abroad the pair dress in what they take for local costume to blend in, and stand out more than ever.

Which identical twins in Hergé's family partly inspired Thomson and Thompson?

His father and uncle, Alexis and Léon, went out walking in matching bowler hats with matching canes, and plain-clothes policemen of the day really did dress in black suits and bowlers.

What are Thomson and Thompson called in the original French?

Dupont et Dupond got those names late: in their first album appearance the pair were known only as agents X33 and X33A.

Bianca Castafiore's party piece is the Jewel Song from which opera?

Gounod's Faust supplies her Jewel Song, in which the heroine tries on a casket of jewels and is dazzled by her own reflection: a pointed choice for the vainest character in the series.

From the 1950s, Hergé remodelled Bianca Castafiore on which real opera diva?

Maria Callas filled the magazines Hergé read in the 1950s; an earlier model was his aunt Ninie, whose shrill singing to the piano in his childhood home did nothing to win him over to opera.

In which album does Bianca Castafiore make her first appearance?

King Ottokar's Sceptre has her give Tintin a lift and burst into song in the car; he is grateful that the windows are unbreakable and slips away at the first chance.

Which real event did Hergé satirise in a Tintin story about a plot to seize a Balkan kingdom?

Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria came in March 1938, and that August Hergé began what he later called 'the tale of a failed Anschluss', in which Tintin foils the takeover.

The name of Müsstler, a fascist plotter Tintin foils in the Balkans, blends the names of which two dictators?

Mussolini and Hitler: Hergé later said the name plainly alluded to both, and he dressed the story's Bordurian officers in uniforms modelled on the Nazis'.

The Syldavian language in the Tintin albums is really a Slavic-looking transcription of what?

Marols, a Brussels dialect mixing Dutch and French, was dressed up with Slavic-looking endings, so that 'police' in Syldavian becomes 'politzski'.

Which young friend of Tintin was modelled on a real art student who became Hergé's close friend?

Chang was modelled on Zhang Chongren, a Chinese sculpture student who taught Hergé about his country in 1934; the two then lost touch for nearly half a century before a reunion in Brussels in 1981.

Which Tintin album, set against Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria, was the first Hergé researched in depth?

The Blue Lotus was pointed enough that Japanese diplomats in Brussels lodged an official protest and threatened to take Hergé's children's comic to the international court at The Hague.

Who is the long-suffering butler at Captain Haddock's home, Marlinspike Hall?

Nestor first appears loyally serving the villains who own the house; Haddock speaks up for him when he is arrested with them, and the butler stays on when the Captain moves in.

Which Brussels newspaper serialised Tintin during the German occupation of Belgium?

Le Soir had been seized from its owners and ran under Nazi control, earning the name 'the stolen Soir'; after the liberation Hergé was arrested as a collaborator but never convicted.

Which pirate's treasure do Tintin and Haddock hunt in The Secret of the Unicorn and its sequel?

Red Rackham was killed in single combat by Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis, who hid the clues in three model ships; the treasure itself turns up at home, inside a globe in the cellars of Marlinspike Hall.

In Explorers on the Moon, what does Tintin find in a lunar cave?

Ice: Snowy slips into an ice-covered chasm in the 1954 album, published 15 years before Apollo 11, and in the 1990s the Clementine probe's radar hinted that the Moon really does hold frozen water.

Tintin's Moon rocket is launched from the Sprodj Atomic Centre in which fictional country?

Syldavia hosts the secret centre because the remote mountains around it are rich in uranium, the fuel for the rocket's atomic motor.

Which Tintin album, drawn amid Hergé's nightmares during his marriage break-up, has no villain at all?

Tintin in Tibet turned his dreams of blinding white into Himalayan snow, and in 2006 the Dalai Lama honoured the book with the Light of Truth Award.

In The Castafiore Emerald, who turns out to have stolen the diva's emerald?

A magpie had flown off with it. Hergé set out to tell a story in which nothing happens: nobody leaves home, every suspect is innocent and the only thief is a bird.

Which was the last Tintin album Hergé completed, published in 1976?

Tintin and the Picaros shows a changed cast: Tintin practises yoga, Haddock can no longer stomach whisky, and the faithful butler is caught listening at doors.

Hergé's unfinished final Tintin album, released posthumously, was about which criminal enterprise?

Art forgery drives Tintin and Alph-Art, whose last sketched page leaves the hero about to be coated in liquid polyester and sold as a fake sculpture.

Which French president said that Tintin was his 'only international rival'?

Charles de Gaulle explained the likeness: both were 'the little guys who refuse to let the big guys walk all over us', though nobody noticed, he added, because he was so tall.

Which brand of whisky is Captain Haddock's favourite tipple?

Loch Lomond replaced an advert for the real Johnnie Walker when an album was redrawn in the 1960s; Hergé, it seems, did not know a distillery of that name had just opened.

Which late Tintin adventure ends with a flying saucer rescuing the heroes from an erupting volcano?

Flight 714 to Sydney ends with the heroes hypnotised into forgetting everything; the scientist who summons the saucer was modelled on Jacques Bergier, a real writer on the paranormal.

Which Tintin album was completely redrawn in 1966 after its English publisher complained of errors about Britain?

The Black Island was redone after Hergé's assistant Bob De Moor spent days in Britain filling sketchbooks, and came home with a real policeman's uniform.

Who directed the 2011 motion-capture film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn?

Steven Spielberg had never read Tintin until a French review compared Raiders of the Lost Ark to it in 1981; he became a fan, and three decades later he filmed it.

Who played Tintin in the 2011 motion-capture film The Secret of the Unicorn?

Jamie Bell, once the boy dancer of Billy Elliot, stepped in after Thomas Brodie-Sangster was lost to production delays; Andy Serkis played Haddock and Daniel Craig the villain.

Which deposed leader turns up as a music-hall knife-thrower in The Seven Crystal Balls?

General Alcazar, driven out of San Theodoros by his eternal rival's coup, earns his living throwing daggers under the stage name Ramon Zarate until he can sail back to South America.

During a hunt for sunken pirate treasure, Professor Calculus supplies a submarine shaped like which creature?

A shark. Tintin and Haddock turn down the hard-of-hearing inventor's one-man craft, so he smuggles it aboard their ship and stows away, in what is his first appearance in the series.

Opera diva Bianca Castafiore is known as the 'Nightingale' of which Italian city?

Milan, home of La Scala, is her base; her name means 'white, chaste flower', which is why Professor Calculus calls the white rose he breeds 'Bianca'.

What is the one great fear of Tintin's otherwise fearless dog, Snowy?

Spiders. Snowy takes on far bigger creatures to save Tintin, yet a spider unnerves him, and a tempting bone has more than once lured him away from an urgent mission.

In his debut adventure, what first sweeps Tintin's flat hair up into his famous quiff?

A car chase: as he races away the rush lifts his fringe, and the tuft never drops again; Dutch readers even know him by it, as Kuifje, 'little quiff'.

Which recurring villain, a criminal mastermind of many identities, poses as a friendly film tycoon in Cigars of the Pharaoh?

Rastapopoulos seems a harmless millionaire film producer when Tintin meets him on a cruise liner; only in the next adventure is he unmasked as grand master of the opium ring.

In The Broken Ear, rival companies push two republics into war over land they believe is rich in what?

Oil. Hergé based the feud on the Chaco War that Bolivia and Paraguay had just fought, and in the album the fighting stops once the disputed land proves to have none.

Which real-life gangster does Tintin take on in Tintin in America?

Al Capone's men kidnap Tintin soon after he reaches Chicago: in his previous adventure he had already broken up the gangster's diamond-smuggling ring.

The creators of which rival comic series worked for Tintin magazine before launching their own hero in 1959?

Asterix's creators drew a Native American hero, Oumpah-pah, for Tintin magazine in 1958; a year later they launched their indomitable Gaul in a new French weekly they had helped to found.

Where did Hergé's Moon rocket, as drawn in the albums, take its design from?

The German V-2 was the work of Wernher von Braun, then the world's leading rocket engineer; Hergé copied its lines and leaned on a French professor's new textbook on astronautics to get the details right.

A fearsome 'beast' guards the villains' island hideout in one Tintin adventure; what does it turn out to be?

A gorilla named Ranko, Hergé's answer to King Kong, the film sensation of 1933; once wounded, the terrifying ape lets Tintin lead him off to a zoo.

Which Tintin album did Britain's race-equality watchdog urge bookshops to stop selling in 2007?

Tintin in the Congo drew the watchdog's fire for showing Africans as childlike savages; Borders and Waterstones responded by moving it from the children's shelves to the adult section.

Which country's edition of Tintin in Tibet briefly carried an altered title until Hergé's estate protested?

China's edition appeared as 'Tintin in China's Tibet' until the Hergé Foundation and the publisher objected and the original title came back; by 2007 the series had reached more than 70 languages.

Which two colours make up the chequered pattern on Tintin's Moon rocket?

Red and white. To keep the rocket consistent from every angle, Hergé had a scale model built with removable parts, and his studio drew from that.

Which wartime record made publisher Raymond Leblanc the ideal backer for the blacklisted Hergé in 1946?

Resistance fighter Leblanc used his standing to get Hergé the clearance papers he needed to work again, and building a magazine around Tintin did much to restore the artist's name.

In The Calculus Affair, rival spies kidnap the professor for an invention that can do what?

Shatter glass with sound: his ultrasonic machine breaks glass and porcelain all over Marlinspike Hall, and two rival countries send agents to seize him for the weapon it could become.

The wrong numbers that plague Marlinspike Hall come from callers trying to reach which local business?

The butcher's, Cutts, is one digit away from the Hall's number. Hergé knew the feeling: at his own country home he kept getting other people's calls, and he turned them into a running joke.

What is the profession of Jolyon Wagg, the recurring character who infuriates Haddock?

Insurance salesman. Hergé based him on a salesman who called at his own home, sat down uninvited and, pointing to Hergé's chair, told him to take a seat.

Tintin and Haddock travel to which fictional country in The Red Sea Sharks to restore its deposed ruler?

Khemed. The ousted Emir packs his prank-loving son Abdullah off to stay with Captain Haddock, so putting the Emir back on his throne is the only way to be rid of the boy.

In Explorers on the Moon, what does Captain Haddock's whisky do when the rocket's motor cuts out?

Rolls into a floating ball. With the atomic motor off there is no artificial gravity, and Hergé rightly drew the liquid pulling itself into a sphere, as surface tension would make it.

In Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin escapes the pyre by timing his execution to coincide with what?

A solar eclipse. Tintin pretends to command the Sun and is set free, though the book shows the Moon crossing it in the wrong direction.

Which instrument does Professor Calculus consult, sure that it will point the way to whatever he seeks?

A pendulum. The man who builds Moon rockets and submarines is also a fervent believer in dowsing, and trusts the swinging weight over anyone's common sense.

Why was Hergé's 1936 Tintin cover painting, auctioned for a record in 2021, originally rejected?

Too complex to print. Hergé's ink-and-gouache dragon on black gave way to a simpler red cover, and 85 years later the rejected painting set a world auction record for comic art.

Which studio made the first Tintin television cartoons, serialised in five-minute episodes with cliffhanger endings?

Belvision. Hergé feared his heroes would become unrecognisable and had the cartoonist Greg brought in as scriptwriter, yet the cartoons still took enormous liberties with his stories.

The 1969 animated film Tintin and the Temple of the Sun sends Tintin to which country to rescue Professor Calculus?

Peru. The film hurries through The Seven Crystal Balls in its opening scenes, then follows Prisoners of the Sun into the Andes, and the singer Jacques Brel wrote songs for it.

Which company animated the 2011 motion-capture film The Adventures of Tintin?

Weta Digital. Its animators worked in New Zealand, half a world away from the director, who watched over their shoulders through a video-conferencing link.

Which two pop artists claimed Hergé as one of their most important influences?

Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Warhol painted a series of four portraits of Hergé and said the cartoonist had influenced his work in the same way as Walt Disney.