Comic Book / Titeuf

"C'est pô juste..."

Titeuf is a popular Franco-Belgian Comics series created in 1992 by the Swiss cartoonist Philippe Chappuis, aka Zep (as in Led Zeppelin).

It tells the everyday life of the 8 to 10 year-old Titeuf and his buddies, specifically on their... confused views regarding the adults and the world. It frequently plays with the Children Are Innocent trope: The kids are far more aware of sex, drugs and the like than the adults would believe, but almost always by Comically Missing the Point, especially Titeuf himself.

A translated version appeared for a short while in The Dandy.

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Titeuf provides examples of:

• Abusive Parent:
  • Hugo's father hits Hugo's big brother just for saying "meh", he then hits his wife for defending her son. In the back cover of one comic, Titeuf even says that Hugo gets his ass kicked by his father when he gets bad grades.
  • Marco once says that his father will kick his ass if he comes home late.
  • Titeuf's father can be seen as abusive, especially in early comics where he tended to slap or punish Titeuf for asking an inapropriate question. This is despite Titeuf just being a child who is not aware that he shouldn't ask things like this. He's way less violent in later books though.
  • Discussed when Titeuf and Hugo see a girl with a black eye and Hugo believes that her father beats her, though there is no indication that it is true. The girl gets angry at Titeuf for insulting her father so it's likely false. Later Manu and François think Titeuf's father beats him because he now has a black eye.
• Actor Allusion: Titeuf's Spanish VA in the animated series is the same one as Bart's.
• Adoption Diss: Jean-Claude once says, as an insult, that Titeuf is adopted. Titeuf takes it a bit too literally.
• Aerith and Bob: Titeuf (from "Tête d'Oeuf", "egghead", according to Word of God) and his little sister "Zizie" (from "zizi", a French childish euphemism for "penis") versus the rest of the cast.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • Titeuf steps on someone's foot when he's trying to use stilts.
  • One gag has Titeuf having trouble concerning how to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, without stepping on his sister's toys. He's glad that it also happens to his parents.
• All Men Are Perverts: This starts young. The fixation the boys have on the school nurse, for instance. Titeuf's "borrowing" a picture of his babysitter in a bathing costume.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Titeuf sometime considers his father to be embarrassing, notably when he become jobless, and is thus able to take him to school. this involves holding his hand and kissing him on the cheek in front of his friends, before leaving.
• Animated Adaptation: The comic got a TV series and an animated movie.
• Amicable Exes: When Titeuf's dad meets an ex, they have a casual and friendly conversation.
• Anime Hair: Titeuf's blond lock, taking the Idiot Hair trope to a whole new level by being his only hair, and nearly as tall as his body.
• Annoying Background Event: One strip has Titeuf and Hugo make weird faces for the whole strip, before the last panel reveals they're doing this in front of a window to distract Manu who's giving a violin recital.
• Art Evolution:
  • Character design was more angular and "rigid" in the early albums, but became more organically rounded in the later ones.
  • In the first four albums, a lot of characters, including Titeuf himself, were drawn with visible nostrils. This detail disappeared completely starting with album 5.
• Artistic License – Education: Even though the books are set in an elementary school, the students are sometime learning things you're not supposed to learn till much later, like square roots.
• Asleep in Class: It sometime happens as the kids find the class very boring. It gets even worst when Mr. Dubouvreuil comes in the class to teach.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Titeuf makes a dream where he's a girl and is attracted by Nadia who is now a boy. Once he wakes up, he says that Nadia was cooler as a boy.
• Author Avatar: Titeuf's father strongly resembles Zep.
• Baldness Means Sickness: Titeuf once meets a girl who is hiding a bald head under her hat: turns out she has cancer.
• Balloon Belly: Titeuf goes on a waterslide, head first, and dives into a pool with his mouth open. His body looks like a huge water balloon in the next panel.
• Banana Peel: Titeuf uses a banana peel to break the leg of a doctor who was going to vaccinate the students. He was said to have hands that shake a lot, much to the fear of the students.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The teacher gets really tired of Titeuf always drawing Lucky Luke and orders him to draw his dreams, which is the class' drawing theme for the day. So Titeuf decides to draw the teacher getting tortured.
• Big Damn Movie: Mostly averted with the movie: it is a mundane story about Titeuf wanting to declare his love for Nadia, but several moments are played as "epic" which is mostly in Titeuf's head.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Jean-Claude has rather big eyebrows.
• Bird-Poop Gag: In the 16th book, there is an illustration representing the Spring season with the teacher showing a bird to her students while her face is covered by said bird's poop.
• Black Bead Eyes: Some characters including Titeuf have these by default; they have more normal eyes when they gets emotional.
• Blatant Lies:
  • François says that he stopped buying a brand of shoes because they use child labor. Manu says he stopped too while, sweating heavily and giving a not-so-credible smile.
  • When Titeuf's team is being curbstomped by Nadia's "husband" (Actually just her cousin) at basketball, he says that they let him win out of politeness.
• Bowdlerise: On the TV series, the school nurse started out with overly large breasts, but for her season 3 redesign they were reduced to a normal size.
• Braces of Orthodontic Overkill: Worn by Jean-Claude, which he is not very happy about, causing him to suffer from a speech impediment. When playing pretend games, he will sometimes play the part of a "steel-jawed tyrannosaurus".
• Broken Record: Manu is stuck saying "Me too." with a dumb smile the day after Camille kisses him.
• Bucket Booby-Trap: The kids attempt to do that in real life after seeing it in a cartoon and... as said in the article page, water is heavy, and the bucket doesn't fall empty. Cue in a badly injured kid, and two ashamed ones.
• The Bully:
  • Titeuf and his friends often come across some older bullies, the most prominent one is the great Diego.
  • Camille, an old crush of Titeuf was a bully to every kid except him.
• Burning Bag of Poop: Titeuf and Manu tried to pull the burning bag of poop prank on an apartment's janitor with some dog poop rolled up in a newspaper. However, when nobody answered the doorbell, Titeuf stepped on the newspaper himself. It's then that the janitor came out of the door and punished the poop-covered Titeuf.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Nadia has always rejected Titeuf who was attracted to her. Once Titeuf tells her he doesn't love her anymore she seems happy for a few seconds then she gets sad and become jealous of Ramatou, Titeuf's new love interest.
• Calling Your Attacks: One gag is about Titeuf and his friends having food fights and giving an attack name for every kind of food he uses.
• Captain Obvious: Titeuf loses Nadia and Ramatou's respect due to a misunderstanding, and lament that Ramatou hates him now. Manu then casually adds that Nadia hates him too as she now insults Titeuf.
• Cassandra Truth: Titeuf leaves his backpack with all his homework in it in an open space. People think it's a terrorist attack and it gets destroyed by a bomb disposal squad. In the last panel, Titeuf's teacher says that it's the worst excuse for not doing homework that she ever heard.
• Catchphrase:
  • Titeuf have "C'est pô juste..." ("S'not fair...") and "Tcho" (either "Hi" or "Bye"), the latter is sometime used by other kids.
  • A girl with a Precocious Crush on Titeuf has "Ze t'aime", which means "I love you" with a lisp.
• Celebrity Cameo: The late French rock singer Johnny Hallyday makes an almost-surreal appearance in the movie.
• Cheek Copy: Titeuf once did this, but was found out because his mom had sewn a label with his name on his underwear.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: When Titeuf was at the creche, he offered a ring to Camille as a marriage proposal for the future. In the present, he regrets doing this. While she kept the ring, she doesn't seem to take the proposal seriously anyway and Manu tries to take it back for Titeuf but instantly gives it back to her from himself, technically playing this trope straight in the end.
• Children Are Innocent: Both subverted as seen with Kids Are Cruel, and played straight when the kids are asking questions about sexuality, love, and other adult things, and often ends up Comically Missing the Point.
• Colorization: The first comic was monochrome but later got a colorized edition. It's recognizable by the cover as it has an added stamp showing Titeuf with various colors, as if the character himself was painted over.
• Comic-Book Time: The early albums are set during The '90s, while the latest ones are set in The New '10s, with Titeuf still being around the same age. There's a strip where Titeuf's dad explains that he's getting held back, but in the next book, Titeuf still has the same classmates.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Titeuf once ate two chocolate tablets with honey and cheese between them. He calls it the "gerbosandwich de la mort", basically: the "barfsandwich of death".
• Dagwood Sandwich: One gag has Titeuf and his friends eat at a fast food restaurant selling ridiculously tall sandwiches. Titeuf's friends eat their sandwiches one layer at a time, but Titeuf brags about taking a full bite in it. He ends up projecting the sandwich's content on Manu when trying to take a bite.
• A Day in the Limelight: One gag centers around Nadia fantasizing about her ideal lover, and being disgusted by the boys in the class. Titeuf only appears in two panel and has no more importance than the other boys.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: Discussed at least twice:
  • There is a time where the kids tells about gruesome deaths they heard of; one of them is about an helicopter cleaner who got sliced by the blades.
  • Titeuf once metaphorically says that french kissing is like crossing a fast spinning blade because you must not do any false movement, or else you'll get cut.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The first volume originaly has no color.
• Demoted to Extra: Nathalie, who rarely even talks in season 4.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Done accidentally by Titeuf, when he gets punished for unintentionally calling a rector "Mr. Rectum". He tells Manu that "The Rectum is a real asshole".
• The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: The infestation of headlice in the school in the cartoon. When Titeuf hears that kids with lice will be sent home for treatment, he sets about getting some. He gets sent to the school nurse instead.
• Didn't Think This Through: In one gag, Titeuf decides to board a thrill ride with Hervé, knowing full well that the latter is going to vomit and expecting said vomit to fall onto the bystanders. Said ride is a sling shot, Hervé vomits as the ball reaches its apex, and after it falls back down, it's sent up again... Directly into the still-falling vomit. In the end, Titeuf and Hervé are the only ones who got hit by vomit.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Titeuf can be harshly punished for petty reasons. There's one moment where a woman slaps him for innocently asking if she has the menopause.
  • Nadia have often very good reason to slap Titeuf. However, there is a gag where all he do is take a photo of her and deform it with a phone app just for fun but that makes her angry enough to hit him.
• The Ditz: Thérèse is probably the dumbest character of the comics. Even Titeuf, who's far from being the smartest guy can't help but facepalm at her stupidity.
• Dragged into Drag: When Titeuf thinks that Nadia has a husband, one of his plans to separate them involves having Manu dress up as a girl and pose as Jerome's "side chick" so that Nadia would dump him. Unfortunately for Manu, Titeuf confiscates his glasses, which leads him to walk up to the wrong person and get thouroughly beaten up.
• The Dreaded: Titeuf says that Camille scared every boys at the creche. Even if he was the only boy she wasn't bullying, he's scared of her when they meets again.
• Dream Intro:
  • The movie starts with Titeuf dreaming of everyone in Prehistoric times.
  • The start of the 13th book is a dream where Titeuf, Nadia and Zizie switch genders.
    • Season 4 Episode 20 of the cartoon re-uses the idea.
• Downer Ending:
  • Nadia gets married ends with Titeuf ruining his chance to invite Nadia for a dance at the school party, and he ends up dancing with Dumbo because of a dare he made with Manu.
  • Welcome to teenagehood! ends with Nadia and Ramatou telling Titeuf to grow up, which is what created a conflict for Titeuf at the beginning. The last panel is just Titeuf yelling out of frustration and incomprehension.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Discussed, during a school travel, Titeuf finds his underwear on the ground but doesn't want to admit it's his. So the teacher simply throws it away. Cut to Titeuf at home telling the viewers then when he'll grow up, he'll be able to drink to forget this, implying he had to sleep without underwear during a school trip.
• Dude, Not Funny!: There's a strip where Titeuf gets angry at Hugo for making fun of Pauline being bald, because the reason she's bald is that she has leukaemia.
• Early-Installment Weirdness : The first few volumes (the very first one in particular) are considerably Darker and Edgier (maybe Hotter and Sexier?) than the later ones. In fact, their boldness can be downright disturbing. The first album is also the only one in black and white but it later got colorized.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Due to his weak stomach, Hervé is nicknamed "Vomito". In fact, the kids rarely call him by his actual name.
• Exercise Excuse: There's a strip where Titeuf sees his parents lying on each other in their underwear. When he asked what they're doing, they claim to be exercising and start doing pushups. The last panel has Titeuf telling his friends that grownups don't actually have sex, it's just gymnastics.
• Eye Scream:
  • Titeuf runs around with a toy plane and accidentally shoves it in Hugo's eye.
  • During a strip about food fights, Titeuf sprayed tangerine juice in other students' eyes.
  • Titeuf accidentally puts his finger in Dumbo's eye when he's practicing to dance for a school festival.
• Face–Heel Turn: This trope is referenced in a game of Cowboys and Indians Titeuf and his friends are playing. Titeuf is on the Cowboys' side and smokes a cigarette from Hugo, which makes him cough puffs of smoke, François then thinks he joined the Indians' side and is making smoke signals.
• Face Palm:
  • Grown ups tends to do this when Titeuf says something nonsensical or embarrassing.
  • Titeuf himself do this whenever he witness Therese's stupidity to the point that his hand leaves a mark on his face.
• Fake-Out Opening: The opening of the movie places everyone in Prehistoric times.
• Fingore:
  • In a Funny Background Event during the preparation of a school party, François accidentally cuts the tip of a student's finger.
  • Hervé can be seen with a nail in the finger when Titeuf is day-dreaming about Nadia in crafting class.
• Flat Character: François is the one of Titeuf's friends with the least personality. The cartoon adaptation changes this by making him the smart guy of Titeuf's friends group.
• Flipping the Bird: In one of the many times Titeuf, Manu and Hugo do a remark about Jean-Claude's teeth he gives them the middle finger.
• From the Mouths of Babes: The kids will use very nasty words sometimes. Sometimes straight, sometimes innocently.
• Funny Background Event:
  • When the kids are cleaning a park of its empty cans, a boy can be seen showing a grenade he found to the teacher while sporting a neutral expression,. The teacher is understandably horrified.
  • When Titeuf is having troubles with juggling balls, Jean-Claude can be seen in the background, throwing a ball in his own face.
• Gasshole: Farts can be a source of jokes. One strip was about all different types of farts the kids could do.
• Gift Shake: One strip has Titeuf coming home and finding a gift box for him. He lifts it up, shakes it and throws it in the air to see if it is what he wanted. Then he opens the gift, only for an angry cat to jump out of it at his face, with its claws out.
• Gone Horribly Right: Titeuf's attempt at Playing Sick ends up with him becoming sick for real.
• Groin Attack:
  • Boys tends to gets kicked in the groin when they annoys girls.
  • Manu climbs a tree to pick up a stuck football and falls groin first on a branch.
  • Hugo accidentally does this to Ramon when trying to launch him with a plank on a barrel by jumping on the other side of the plank. Ramon hasn't placed himself yet and thus the plank hits him right between his legs.
  • Titeuf climbs up a water slide while other people are sliding, Hugo doesn't notice him and accidentally headbutts his crotch.
• Growing Up Sucks: In one strip, Titeuf notices his parents having many adult problems like getting a parking ticket or his father cutting himself while shaving. When asked what he wants to do when he'll grow up, he asks if growing up is obligatory.
• Healthy in Heaven: Discussed in a comic where Titeuf and his cousin Julie see a dead cat on the road, Julie then explain him that the cat will go to heaven and that everyone who go there will be healed and look young again. At the end of the page, Titeuf tells François that it's useless to tear off mosquitoes' wings because they will gets new ones in heaven.
• Height Angst: Titeuf thinks he has the worst possible height to travel by bus because he reaches exactly the height of an adult's armpit, and is forced to feel them on his head. He calls his height the "critical height".
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: In the movie, when Titeuf is looking at a psychologist's patients, he pictures one of them must be very violent, by having come out of his head a small killer wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a chainsaw.
• Hospital Hottie: The busty school nurse in the cartoon adaptation.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In a gag that centers around petitions, there's a man who hold a petition for a cleaner town... with a bunch of cigarettes he smoked all around him on the ground.
  • When the students come back from a school trip to the mountains, they all starts to brag to their moms on how they did dangerous stunts and almost died. Then Hervé comes out of the train with a broken leg in a plaster cast because he slipped on the stairs, causing Titeuf to call him a show-off.
• Imagine Spot: Some page are mostly composed of Titeuf having several imagine spots:
  • In one of them, he imagines himself killing or harming his teacher in many different history eras.
  • In one page, he passes next to different cool looking men and he imagines himself in their place, then he comes home and cries when his father asks him to help cleaning the house.
  • In another one, he imagines himself being tortured in different ways.
  • There's a time where he's asked what job he would like to have. He imagines himself in many cool and mostly unrealistic professions.
• Inconvenient Attraction: One episode of the animated series has Titeuf develop a sudden and very confusing crush on Dumbo during play rehearsal, which he refuses to accept but can't deny.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain:
  • A man nicknamed "Ray Charles" often tries to take money off Titeuf and his friends, but they see him more as a joke than anything else because he never realises that they just give him fake Monopoly bills, or in Hervé's case: a piece of toilet paper. When he gets arrested, the kids feel bad for him and offer him a Monopoly board game so he can play in prison.
  • Another bully tries to pick on Titeuf and his friend, all it got him was being vomited on by Hervé, being spat upon by Jean-Claude and having a smell of Puduk's socks; the latter sent him at the hospital. Titeuf and his friends then consider giving him a visit as if he was a friend.
• Informed Attribute: When the students are drawing themselves, Titeuf and Manu start to mess up each others drawings. Manu puts black dots all over Titeuf's portrait saying that he forgot his freckles, even though Titeuf was never shown having freckles.
• Inkblot Test:
  • Titeuf and Manu do one in the first book, they fight over it because Manu says it's a cloud while Titeuf thinks it's Manu's head.
  • Used in the movie where Titeuf go see a psychologist, by sheer coincidence, the three blots look like Nadia, Titeuf's mom and the psychologist. Titeuf thinks the psychologist is some kind of mental manipulator so instead of going along the test, he just says that the blots looks like blots until the last one. The psychologist sounds a bit offended when Titeuf tells the similarities between him the the blots.
• Innocently Insensitive: Titeuf himself, who often embarrasses his parents or other adults by making weird remarks.
• Kids Are Cruel: Titeuf and his friends can do really nasty things, one of their worst moments is when their mockery of "Dumbo" make her think about suicide, causing them to feel guilty.
• Kids Love Dinosaurs: Titeuf seems to be fond of dinosaurs. There's a page where he imagines himself and other people as dinosaur version of themselves.
• Kissing Cousins: Titeuf has been shown to be attracted to his cousin Julie, and immediately asked his dad if cousins could marry. His dad points out the genetic problems that could arise.
• Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy:
  • When the grandfather of a student named Ludo dies, everyone starts to tell him about the death of the relatives of some of their minor acquaintances.
  • When Titeuf has a wart on the hand and every other kids give him advice, Hugo says that he know a dude who is the neighbour of a guy who know a healer. He does it again when Titeuf cuts his wart with scissors.
  • When Titeuf says that Nadia can't be married because she's too young, Hugo answers that his father knows a guy who read an article on a girl who married at 9 in Africa.
• I Know Mortal Kombat:
  • Titeuf says he knows how bunnies' biology works because he watched every Bugs Bunny cartoons.
  • Hugo thinks that making Titeuf play fighting games will improve his combat skills in real life.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Titeuf and his friends start to really enjoy basketball when they decorate the net with a drawing of the great Diego. It makes them feel like they are actually throwing balls at the bully.
• Irony:
  • Titeuf thinks Nadia has a boyfriend, so he asks his cousin Julie to seduce him, to separate them. The "boyfriend" is actually Nadia's cousin.
  • A camera is added into the schoolyard so the students would feel watched and stop fighting. It actually made them fight because they all wanted to show to the camera who was the best actor.
  • There is a few strips where Hervé is prominent, but is not the one who vomits.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • There's a strip where Titeuf's classmates makes fun of him because he always wears the same clothes, even though they barely change outfits themselves.
  • Averted for one scene in the movie where Nadia wears a white shirt instead of her usual black and Titeuf accidentally gets black ink on it.
• Literal Ass-Kicking:
  • We don't see it but it's mentioned that Hugo and Marco sometimes gets kicked in their asses by their fathers for bad grades and coming home late respectively.
  • When Titeuf is about to move out, he dors various things that would make him target for bullying and revenge. This includes kicking the asses of some bigger bullies because he believe it won't have consequences as he moves out in an other country. Then his mom explain him that they actually move in an other apartment in the same city they already lives in.
  • Manu accidentally spits on the apartments' janitor's head. In the last panel, Manu has his hand on his butt and tells Titeuf that if he wants to know how many time his ass was kicked, he just have to count the seconds and multiply by ten.
• Literal-Minded: Justified since the main characters are children.
  • Titeuf being the main character, this trope mainly happens to him.
    • Hugo shows Titeuf Nadia's diary, when Titeuf hears "Dear diary..." he think she's actually writting to someone named that way.
    • There's a French expression for kissing called "rouler une pelle" (rolling a shovel), Titeuf thinks it literally involve rolling the tip of a shovel in a girl's mouth. He often takes expressions in the literal way.
  • Ramon is possibly one of the most naive characters in the books. His introduction has Titeuf tell him that one of their neighbours keeps a tiger in his garden. Ramon not only believes him, but believes Manu when he later tells Ramon that Titeuf was eaten by the tiger, leaving only his clothes behind (when really Titeuf was hiding nearby). Ramon, again, believes this, but unwittingly gets back at Titeuf by gathering his abandoned clothing and bringing it back to Titeuf's parents, leaving Titeuf to walk home in nothing but his underwear.
  • Therese might be the dumbest character of the comic, there's a moment where Titeuf tries to explain her that what's written about her on social medias on her phone are by real people, she tells him that more than hundred people can't possibly fit into a phone, but then she believe him literally and breaks Dumbo's phone which had something written about her, thinking that the phone itself was mean.
• Loves Me Not: Titeuf plays it in a field of flowers and always end with "Loves me not".
• Love Letter Lunacy:
  • In the movie, Titeuf thinks his parents are separating because his mother found his love letter to Nadia and he thinks she believes it was from a secret admirer of hers.
  • Titeuf tries to deliver a love letter to Ramatou via a drone, it lands near Therese and she thinks it's for her.
• Malaproper: Because Titeuf and his friends are children, it's common for them to mispronounce words or misunderstand expressions. The most common case is the word "homosexual", which they always pronounce "momosexual".
• Morning Wood: One gag is about Titeuf being bothered by an erection in the morning.
• Never My Fault: Titeuf almost accidentally make a vase falls out of a table. Then he intentionally tries to push it to tempt fate and when it does fall, he blames God for not preventing the vase from falling.
• No Sympathy: Zigzagged in the movie. Titeuf accidentally gets Nadia and himself in trouble and sent to the principal's office for passing notes in class. The principal takes pity on Titeuf when he mentions his parents are currently seperated and lets him off, but he doesn't even bother hearing Nadia's side of the story and punishes her.
• The Noseless: François looks really odd compared to the other kid characters because he doesn't appear to have a nose. Unless you consider his entire face to be a nose.
• Oddball in the Series: Nadia gets married and Welcome to teenagehood! are both one full story intead of having one page gags.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two boys named Jérôme. A friend Titeuf made in a summer camp and Nadia's supposed boyfriend in Nadia gets married.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Hervé is always called "Vomito" by other kids because of his frequent gastro-intestinal issues.
  • Valérie is cruelly nicknamed "Dumbo" because of her large ears, to the point where even Nadia calls her that.
  • Alexandre is nicknamed "Puduk'", which is a shortening of "pue du cul" (stinks from the ass), because he smells bad.
  • Thomas is nicknamed "Morvax", from "morve" which means "snot" because he always has a cold.
  • A teacher is called "Mr. Rotten" by the kids because of his bad breath.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Titeuf and other students tries to disguise as another student named Robert because he has a hot Au Pair girl taking care of him and they wants to replace him. Their disguise is just them wearing glasses and combing their hair to look like Robert's, meaning they barely looks like him.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Titeuf tries to bully a child that's half his height so he'll pay him a chocolate bar, then the child grabs Titeuf and throws him into a vending machine. Turns out he's a black belt in karate.
• Playing Doctor: Titeuf is asked by a girl to play doctor, he takes it literaly and proceeds to simulate an injection... with a sharpened pencil.
• Playing Sick: Titeuf tries to play sick so he won't have to go to school, his mother doesn't believe him, but gives him a chance to prove it by giving him a thermometer. He puts it on a radiator when she leaves the room, and when she come back she panics because the thermometer is boiling hot. She then gives Titeuf a cold shower and he ends up sick for real.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: Played With, Titeuf freezes in place like a statue because he was very close to get a kiss from Nadia, but didn't get it. He stays like this until night time and Manu is considering carrying him back at his home.
• Potty Failure: Titeuf drinks a lot of water at school for a contest of who can pee the farther, he's caught by surprise in the hall by an adult and ends up peeing in his pants.
• Precocious Crush:
  • Several gags involve a girl younger than Titeuf who has a crush on him, much to his irritation.
  • Titeuf is said to be 8 and half in early books but once had a short time crush on a girl who was about 11.
  • Since the 13th book, Titeuf is in love with Ramatou who is 13.
• Prone to Vomiting: Hervé throws up so much that he gets called "Vomito".
• Protagonist Title: The comic is named after Titeuf.
• Punny Name: Titeuf and Hugo watch a gore movie called "The Return of the Mixer", made by John Bolognèse. Bolognèse come from "bolognaise" which is a tomato sauce, fitting for a gore movie producer.
• Rated G for Gangsta: The comic was originally infamous/famous for showing kids in vulgar, shocking and very politically incorrect situations, which is what made its popularity. However, as time went on, its growing popularity ironically led it to become progressively more family-friendly, until its sanitized cartoon adaptations made it barely edgier than your average kid show.
• Remember the New Guy?: Pauline's introduction is done as if she was an old character who was Put on a Bus and came back, even if it's really the first time she appears in the comics. On top of this, it looks like she's going to become a recurring character, but she just makes a few background cameos after her introductory strip including a very small Ship Tease with Manu after he asks her to the dance.
• The Reveal: In Nadia gets married, the kid everyone thought was her husband was actually her cousin.
• Self-Censored Release: It's funny to see how wholesome and kid-pandering the series and franchise have gotten, considering the first comics were quite dark and adult, making deliberate references to pornography at times. There was debate whether the comics could be put in family-friendly shelves or not. Versions syndicated to British anthology comics, and the latter English-subbed version of the TV cartoon, completely omitted any sexually-themed material as utterly unsuitable to British broadcast sensibilities.
• Shipper on Deck: Titeuf and his friends ship their teacher with Mr. Dubouvreuil.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Titeuf imagines himself killing his teacher in different eras, there's one where the teacher is dressed like an ancient Roman while Titeuf looks like Asterix.
  • When the students are asked to draw their dreams, Titeuf draws Lucky Luke. He apparently always draw him, no matter the theme.
  • When Titeuf and his friends are thinking of games to play, he proposes Jurassic Park, Star Trek and Superman.
  • There's a gag where Titeuf imagines himself living in the Harry Potter world.
• Silly Prayer: Titeuf's grandma tells him that he can talk to god as he always listen to him. Titeuf then tries to talk to him like in a phone call and asks for a Playstation, but he's not sure how to end the conversation and is scared that God will think all of his thought are part of the prayer, including the part where he thinks "I want to scratch my ass".
• Skewed Priorities: Titeuf cares more about getting a drawing of a 10 euros bill stolen from him than a real bill.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Titeuf assists at a wedding then the priest says the French equivalent, "Speak now or keep quiet forever." Titeuf, who had been instructed to keep quiet during the wedding, loudly complains that he agreed to keep quiet for an hour, not forever!
• Stealth Insult: Titeuf starts making a drawing for Nadia and ask Manu if she's gonna like it, Manu says that it can't be worst than if he writes the poem he was thinking about making her.
• Stern Teacher: Titeuf's teacher is an old strict lady.
• Stock "Yuck!": The kids will sometime comments on how disgusting spinach is.
• The Stoic: Despite being a young child, Romuald has a constantly bored face with his mouth always drawn as a straight line, and he always stays calm.
• The Stool Pigeon: Depending on the episode, it's either Dumbo or Vomito.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: During an horror themed party, a kid covers his head in strawberry jam to make it looks like blood, in the next panel, he's swarmed by flies.
• Terrible Artist:
  • Titeuf's drawing skills are rather inconsistent, but several strips are about him being bad at drawing so a joke can work.
  • Hugo's portrait of Titeuf looks more like a dog than anything else, much to the anger of Titeuf.
• The Talk:
  • One page is a single big panel with the teacher talking about bees during a sexual education class. Meanwhile, Hugo is showing a porn magazine at the other end of the classroom.
  • One gag is about Titeuf at different ages asking his parent how babies are made. They always give a different explanation, so Titeuf believes that they really did forgot.
  • Out of universe, the series love of "kids don't understand sex" jokes eventually led to the release of The Sexual Peepee Guide, a Titeuf-themed sex-ed booklet.
• Threatening Shark: In a compilation of Titeuf's nightmares, one of them is a shark attacking him in his bathtub.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl:
  • Titeuf once had a short time crush named Caroline who was a bit taller than him.
  • Staring from the 13th books Titeuf dates Ramatou, a girl who is much taller than him.
  • The 14th book reveal that Titeuf was in love with a taller girl named Camille at the creche when he was younger. He was the only boy she wasn't bullying and accepted a marriage proposal.
• Toilet Humor: Gross humor is common in the books. There is for example a strip where Titeuf and another kid have fun throwing cat poops at each others.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: While in first comics and first season of the TV show Nadia wasn't always good to Titeuf, she was a lot nicer too him on several occasions. In the newest season of the TV series, she's a pure jerk who spends her time hurting Titeuf, sometimes for very minor reasons Maybe she was good to him at least 3 times, but that's all. Looks like an unfortunately case of Derailing Love Interests in favor of Ramatou.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Titeuf makes fun of a kid because Nadia is attracted to him, later the kid's older brother comes to beat up Titeuf and he looks exactly like a bigger version of his little brother.
• Under Water Fart Gag: In a strip where Titeuf lists things he considers cool, he mentions farting in his bath first.
• Unnamed Parent: Titeuf's parents are never given names.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Up until the 13th comic, Titeuf had a crush on Nadia, which she didn't reciprocate due to Titeuf being annoying at best and creepy and disgusting at worst. When Titeuf falls in love with Ramatou, Nadia ends up being jealous and misses Titeuf.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Back when they were younger, Camille pulled a kid's underwear up to the top of his head because he was bothering Titeuf.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Titeuf and Jean-Claude are almost always hostile to each others, but the cover of my best buddies implies that Titeuf counts him as one of his friends.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Hervé, aka "Vomito", has this as his hat.
  • There are a few ironic moments where Hervé appears but is not the one who vomits.
    • Titeuf once threw up after eating an entire cake by himself and Hervé who was next to him does not vomit once.
    • Everyone vomits when they realise that Marco gave them bunny poops to eat, except Hervé who didn't eat any.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Ramon has no problems with wearing a fairy costume and Titeuf is proved wrong when he thinks people will find him ridiculous in it.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Romuald is three years younger than the other schoolkids and is a lot smarter than them. Much to the frustration of Titeuf who's sometime corrected on his work by him.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: One strip has Titeuf coming to Hervé's house with a bunny so it could play with Hervé's female bunny. Despite Titeuf insisting that his own bunny is also a female, it's clearly mating with Hervé's. The final panel reveals that Hervé's bunny got a litter, much to Hervé's anger.

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