49 Fun Facts About Calvin and Hobbes

Six-year-old Calvin never ages, returning every fall to Miss Wormwood's class in which grade?

First grade rarely holds his attention: when Miss Wormwood calls on him he is often away as Spaceman Spiff, with the teacher recast as a monster on some distant planet.

Which historical figures gave Calvin and Hobbes their names?

A theologian and a philosopher: John Calvin, who preached predestination, and Thomas Hobbes, who took what Watterson calls 'a dim view of human nature'; in the strip it is the tiger who sees the consequences coming.

In the first Calvin and Hobbes strip, what bait traps Hobbes?

A tuna fish sandwich does it: tigers will do anything for one, Calvin tells his dad, and Hobbes, hanging by his foot from the snare, agrees that they are 'kind of stupid that way'.

What is the name of Calvin's favorite breakfast cereal?

Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs are so sweet that Hobbes can barely get a spoonful down, yet Calvin calls them bland until you scoop more sugar on; after five bowls, he admits, he gets pretty wired.

Which syndicate distributed Calvin and Hobbes for its entire run?

Universal Press Syndicate picked the strip up after United Feature, which had paid Watterson to develop it, decided it would not sell; within three years it was running in more than 600 newspapers.

Which never-explained event does Calvin insist no one can prove he did?

The Noodle Incident is thrown at him by Hobbes and even turns up in a dossier on Santa's desk, but the strip never says what happened; Calvin's line is that he was framed.

What are the final words of the last Calvin and Hobbes strip?

"Let's go exploring!" sends the pair off on a sled across fresh snow; Watterson stopped at the height of the strip's success, telling readers he had done all he could in the medium.

In one storyline, Calvin and Hobbes secede from the family and set off for which far-off place?

The Yukon looks close on the globe, but the trip ends in an argument in the woods: Calvin stomps home without Hobbes, and Dad has to go out and fetch the tiger. The story named the book Yukon Ho!

Bootleg car-window decals show Calvin doing what, in an image Watterson never drew or approved?

Urinating on a logo is pure bootleg: Watterson allowed almost no merchandise, and has said that only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise.

Watterson turned down an early syndication deal because it meant adding what to his strip?

A toy robot called Robotman, a licensed character the syndicate had lined up for toys and television, was the condition; when Watterson refused, another cartoonist took the job, and that strip was later renamed Monty.

What does Hobbes routinely do when Calvin comes home from school?

Pounce on him at the door is the ritual: Hobbes stalks past the potted plant, flattens Calvin as he walks in, and explains that after seven boring hours at school he might appreciate a good scare.

What tongue-in-cheek alternative name for the Big Bang did a 1992 Sunday strip coin?

The Horrendous Space Kablooie was Calvin's answer when Hobbes asked what he would call it; scientists, he complained, can picture the whole universe bursting from a dot smaller than a pinhead, yet settled for 'the Big Bang'.

In one of Calvin's wilder daydreams, tyrannosaurs take to the skies flying what?

F-14 fighter jets, with a jittery herd of chasmosaurs below: Calvin, playing with his toys, declares the idea 'SO cool', and Hobbes answers that it is 'SO stupid'.

Calvin's private-eye alter ego Tracer Bullet first appeared when Calvin put on a fedora to hide what?

A terrible haircut, courtesy of Hobbes, sent Calvin looking for a hat, and the fedora turned him into a hard-boiled private eye; Watterson found the detective's stories so time-consuming that he rarely attempted them.

Who made Stupendous Man's mask and cape?

Calvin's mother made the hood and cape and got little thanks: Stupendous Man casts her as his arch-nemesis, the evil Mom-Lady, and in their first clash is vanquished by being sent to bed.

What everyday object does Calvin repurpose as a transmogrifier, a time machine and a duplicator?

A cardboard box, open end down, is the transmogrifier; tipped on its side it becomes the duplicator, which Calvin says combines that technology with a photocopier's, prompting Hobbes to ask if their money worries are over.

Calvinball was introduced in 1990 after Calvin had a miserable time joining which school activity?

The baseball team berated him for a mistake and the teacher called him a quitter when he walked off; the game he plays with Hobbes instead has one permanent rule, that it is never played the same way twice.

One critic called Calvin and Hobbes's sled the most famous in American arts 'this side of' which film?

Citizen Kane turns on a childhood sled; Calvin's carries him downhill while he ponders life, death and God, rides Watterson drew because they were 'a lot more interesting' than talking heads.

What does the acronym of Calvin and Hobbes's treehouse club, G.R.O.S.S., stand for?

Get Rid Of Slimy girlS has two members, Dictator-for-Life Calvin and President-and-First-Tiger Hobbes; Calvin admits 'slimy girls' is redundant, 'but otherwise it doesn't spell anything'.

Which sound effect completes the Calvin and Hobbes book title Scientific Progress Goes…?

"Boink" is the noise Calvin's duplicator makes when Hobbes presses the button; Hobbes, who had doubted the whole scheme, asks whether scientific progress really goes 'boink', and a second Calvin steps out.

Which word is missing from the 2005 three-volume set's title, The … Calvin and Hobbes?

Complete is the word, though the set falls one strip short of it: a 1985 daily that ran in only some newspapers is left out, as it was from every earlier collection.

Which rare, officially licensed 1993 book about the strip has been called the collectors' 'Holy Grail'?

Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes is a language textbook printed in one small run in Fargo, North Dakota; its authors won the licence by telling Watterson how well the strip worked with children who had learning disabilities.

In 2014 Watterson won the Grand Prix at which international comics festival?

Angoulême's Grand Prix comes with a job, drawing the poster for the next festival; the famously private Watterson duly delivered one for the 2015 edition, a rare new piece of his art.

Which 2013 documentary about the strip's legacy was made without an appearance by its reclusive creator?

Dear Mr. Watterson began as fan interviews by a director who wanted to understand the strip's hold on readers; fellow cartoonists and fans speak for it, while its subject never appears.

Which U.S. Supreme Court justice invoked 'Calvinball jurisprudence' in a 2025 opinion?

Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote it in an opinion on cancelled research grants: Calvinball has one rule, that there are no fixed rules, while the Court, she said, seemed to have two, 'that one, and this administration always wins'.

Watterson grew up in which Ohio village, long rumoured to be the strip's setting?

Chagrin Falls's real downtown appears on the back cover of one early treasury, with a giant Calvin rampaging through it; Watterson has never confirmed the popular guess that the strip is set there.

What did Watterson major in, thinking it would help him become an editorial cartoonist?

Political science was his planned route into editorial cartooning; at college he also copied Michelangelo's Creation of Adam onto his dorm-room ceiling, asking permission only once the painting was well under way.

Which newspaper hired Bill Watterson as an editorial cartoonist out of college, then fired him early?

The Cincinnati Post hired him straight from college and dropped him within the year; he ended up, as he later told graduates, designing car and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store.

After his 1991 sabbatical, Watterson's Sunday strip was sold at what size?

Half page, and unbreakable, so that editors could no longer drop or rearrange panels to fit their pages; that freed him to draw the sprawling Sunday layouts of the strip's later years.

Calvin regularly reports to his dad on the results of what?

Approval polls on his parenting, taken among 'tigers and six-year-old white males', usually show Dad slipping; his reply is that being Dad is not an elected position, which Calvin takes as an admission of dictatorship.

Watterson refused almost all merchandise, but which of these was officially sold in the late 1980s?

Wall calendars for 1988-89 and 1989-90 were among the very few official items; a Hobbes doll, Watterson argued, would only cash in on the character and take him out of the world he was made for.

The Mysteries, Watterson's 2023 book with caricaturist John Kascht, was billed as what?

A fable for grown-ups, it sits about as far from Calvin and Hobbes as he could get: both artists gave up their usual ways of working, and the curator who keeps Watterson's originals said the pictures look like neither man's work.

In June 2014 Watterson secretly drew three strips of which cartoonist's comic?

Stephan Pastis's Pearls Before Swine ran the three strips without a word about who had drawn them; only afterwards did Pastis reveal his guest, and the originals were auctioned for a Parkinson's charity.

In 2014 Watterson's first published cartoon in nearly two decades was a poster for which documentary?

Stripped, a documentary about newspaper comics and their move to the web, also got him on tape: he is one of the cartoonists it interviews, heard on the soundtrack but never shown on camera.

Susie Derkins's surname was borrowed from the nickname of what?

Watterson's in-laws' beagle was nicknamed Derkins; Susie herself, he said, is the earnest, serious, smart kind of girl he was attracted to as a teenager and eventually married.

Calvin's teacher Miss Wormwood takes her name from a character in which book?

The Screwtape Letters lent her the name of its apprentice devil, yet Watterson said he had a lot of sympathy for her: a teacher who believes in education, is waiting to retire and takes a lot of medication.

How did Watterson describe the school bully Moe?

"Every jerk I've ever known", big, dumb, ugly and cruel, was Watterson's verdict; Calvin's rare wins are verbal, as when he cheerfully admits he took Moe's favorite swing and leaves him stuck for a reply.

What is babysitter Rosalyn's stage in life?

A high school senior was meant to appear once, but Watterson found her hold over Calvin surprising and kept bringing her back; she even daunts his parents, demanding advances and raises before she will sit.

In her final storyline, how does Rosalyn finally win Calvin over?

She agrees to play Calvinball if he finishes his homework first, puts on the mask that no one is allowed to question, and soon grasps the secret: 'it's as if you're making it up as you go'.

What is Calvin's father's profession?

Patent attorney was also the job of Watterson's own father, and so were the lectures: strips about suffering that 'builds character', he said, are close to transcripts of his dad on cold, hungry, lost camping trips.

Which relative visited the family in a 1988 storyline and was never seen again?

Uncle Max, Dad's brother, got one storyline; Watterson dropped him because a visiting adult had no way to address parents he had resolved never to name, and the visit, he felt, produced no new material.

What is the name of Susie's stuffed rabbit?

Mr. Bun is brought over so that he and Hobbes can be the children when Susie plays house; unlike the tiger he never stirs, and the verdict from Calvin's side is that he 'seems comatose'.

What is the name of the principal at Calvin's school?

Mr. Spittle calls Calvin and Susie into his office and gets wailing, blame and pleas not to be spanked before he has said another word; his only comment, to himself, is 'I hate this job'.

When Calvin first asks if any monsters are under his bed, what answer comes back?

Several voices saying no is the monsters' standard bluff, and it can collapse into squabbling ('Nice going, Maurice'); Maurice and Winslow are the only two the strip ever names.

What did the visitors Galaxoid and Nebular pay Calvin when he 'sold' them the Earth?

Fifty alien leaves, identified and labelled, were his price because a leaf collection was due at school; the buyers came back in December to complain that nobody had mentioned winter, and were told 'let the buyer beware'.

What did Calvin's dad tell him wind really is?

Trees sneezing, says Dad, who then admits it isn't true 'but the truth is more complicated'; Calvin heads outside anyway and reports to Hobbes that the trees are really sneezing today.

What color combination is Calvin's trademark striped shirt?

Red and black stripes are his uniform; Watterson, by his own account a fairly quiet, obedient kid and almost Calvin's opposite, said he used the boy as an outlet for his own immaturity.

In one storyline, what does Calvin bring to life, only for it to start building an army of its own?

A snowman, soon a 'deranged mutant killer monster snow goon', gives itself extra heads and arms and starts making more of its kind; the story supplied the title of a whole collection.

Peanuts and Pogo shaped him more directly, but which strip did Watterson call 'the best comic strip ever drawn'?

Krazy Kat, George Herriman's strip, was too peculiar to imitate, he said, 'like trying to paint a sunrise'; its landscapes still found their way onto Spaceman Spiff's alien planets.