Mortadelo Y Filemon / Tropes A to C

Mortadelo y Filemón Trope Examples
A - C | D - L | M - R | S - Z

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A

• A-Team Firing: A Top Comic album features a brief note about Mortadelo getting into a gunfight against a mobster called Joe Cegátez (translatable as "Joe Sightlesson"). The note mentions that the gunfight took place in an elevator and 23 clips were emptied, but somehow neither of the shooters suffered gun wounds, which, as the note points out, "speaks to the two subjects' poor aim".
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Ofelia to Mortadelo.
  • Mortadelo's sister to Filemón in the second movie, though she does get better by the end.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Many times, a mission will require that Mortadelo and Filemón to go down to the sewers, which are big enough to fit Mortadelo quite well (Depending on the Writer, Mortadelo's height can vary between 1.80 m — 5'11" — and 2 m — 6'7").
• Actually a Doombot: When they think they caught Mirake Tekasko, the Big Bad of "Robots Bestiajos", it is revealed to be yet another of his robots with a rather...creative and unorthodox self-destruct mechanism.
• Adaptation Expansion: In the movies, Filemón is given a mother in the first and Mortadelo a sister in the second and an aunt in the most recent CGI-animated film. The comic books are inconsistent (almost with no continuity) about their families, but have been standardized fairly recently.
• Agony of the Feet: A fairly common gag. Generally, the guy's foot gets really swollen, too.
• Alien Invasion: Featured in "Los invasores", "Expediente J" (both Type 1) and "Las tacillas volantes" (Type 2).
• All Cloth Unravels: This is a common gag. Generally, they will start pulling the thread into a ball, but the thread belongs to a buff man's sweater or something. The owner of the garment will hit them (usually Filemón) for ruining his clothing. If the mummy wrapping variation counts, they do that sometimes, too.
• All for Nothing:
  • Many of the missions Mortadelo and Filemón are sent to will end up being not as vital as they were told. Needless to say, when this happens, they make their anger obvious.
    • One example is 20,000 leguas de viaje sibilino, where they have to deliver an important key to a city in Galicia (northwestern Spain), but instead of going straight ahead, they're told to go around the world to avoid potential spies. What is the key for? The bathroom of the Super's in-laws' house.
  • At other times, they learn at the end of the mission that it was meaningless because of circumstances - such as in "El antídoto", where their travel into the North Korea-like Bestiolandia to find the eponymous antidote is rendered useless because the Super got healed the day after they went on their mission.
• Amusing Injuries: Very, very common, especially the Cranial Eruption. None of the main characters is safe, if they are in the scene, you can be almost certain that they are going to get hurt in the most ridiculous ways. Often results in Instant Bandages.
• Anachronism Stew: Whenever historical events are portrayed, expect some out-of-place item, usually a contemporary one like a cardboard-made TV in old Rome. Other characters will invariably call it a fleeting style which will be out-of-fashion soon.
• And Call Him "George": In "En Alemania", they meet an extremely strong drunkard who mistakes them for some friends of his and constantly wants to hug them. He was so strong that his hugs were quite painful for them.
• Angrish: A very common reaction of the characters whenever something goes wrong. The Spangrish line used most often is "GRFJTX!".
• Animated Adaptation: The series got two major ones. The first, a trilogy of animated films produced between 1965 and 1970 (the first two are actually compilations of short films that were intended to be a TV show); and an actual 26-episode TV show broadcast in Spain between 1994 and 1995, which replicates original stories panel by panel and with the same dialogue.
  • The 2014 movie is done in CGI animation.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • At the end of one episode, Filemón tells the Villain of the Week that he will now be arrested for "deceit, breaking and entering, and spoiling our view" (to which the villain responds with an Insanity Defense).
  • The list of forces the Súper calls to find Mortadelo and Filemón after one of their escapes:
    Súper: Security personnel! Civil Guard! Mossos!^note Catalonia's regional police force. Ertzaintza!^note Basque Country's regional police force. Goat shepherds! GET THEEEEEEEEM!!!
• Art Evolution:
  • Ibáñez art style evolved during the first 15 years of the series. At first, the strip was black and white, resembling the art style from the American cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s with some traits of French comic books. The character design was also different, with a Filemón that resembled Sherlock Holmes and a Mortadelo that had an umbrella and a hat from which he got his disguises. During this time, Ibáñez started to get more and more influenced by French and Belgium comic artists of the time, specially André Franquin. These influences got reflected in the series until the mid 1960's, when his own style got more or less defined.
  • It is worth mentioning "El sulfato atómico", the series' first 44-page story released in 1969. The art style in this volume is the most detailed and elaborate that Ibáñez has ever drawn, which is one of the main reasons why it is considered his masterpiece. However, putting that much effort in that art style turned out to be too time consuming, so Ibáñez decided to go back to his less-detailed style so he could focus on the humour and be able to release more volumes a year.
• The Artifact: Mortadelo calls Filemón "Boss", even though they have the same rank in the T.I.A. This is due to the fact that during the first 11 years of the series, both characters weren't T.I.A. agents, but owned a private detective agency in which Filemón was the boss and Mortadelo his sidekick and only employee. Ibáñez kept Mortadelo's habit after he changed the series' basic plot in "El sulfato atómico" in 1969. See Retool below.
• Artistic License – Sports: Ibáñez was a self-confessed ignoramus when it came to sports, and it shows. Always Played for Laughs, of course.
  • Any team sports match will be filled with things that would never fly in an actual game. For example, Mortadelo wearing his costumes, players engaging in Unnecessary Roughness without being carded, or doping being practiced in the open.
  • In "Mundial 78", the referee in the final match between Spain and Germany has a blatant case of myopia that makes him miss obvious stuff like players trying to kill each other - which he doesn't realize until the linesman warns him and only believes him because he thinks the latter is a priest. Which leads to him red-carding both teams.
  • In 2000 album "Fórmula Uno", the two agents have to compete undercover in a Formula One Grand Prix, but the team only has one car for both of them. Sharing cars had stopped being allowed in Formula One in The '60s, and actually having two drivers in the car at the same time as the agents do here is probably illegal, not to mention nearly impossible to pull off considering how tiny F1 cockpits usually are. Also, it is very unlikely that the FIA would allow them to enter a '58 car rescued from the scrapyard after crashing their original vehicle one too many times, but here they do. We can probably chalk that up to Rule of Funny anyway, since the starting grid for the race features several other unorthodox vehicles.
• Asian Buck Teeth: All Asians, even in the latest releases.
  • A non-Asian example is Prof. Bacterio. There is an episode in which Mortadelo burns up Bacterio's beard, revealing that he has enormous, very prominent buck teeth - which suggests to readers that Bacterio actually grows his beard in order to hide them.
• Association Football Episode: There is usually one for each World Cup, and one for each edition of The Olympics. In most of them the agents get to participate, while attempting to stop a terrorist threat to the event.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The primary plot point of several comics and short stories, with Bacterio usually responsible. El Sulfato Atómico revolves about a chemical that does this to bugs.
• Author Avatar: Ibáñez sometimes plays a minor role in the plot, or is name-dropped, usually making Mortadelo wonder "Where have I heard that name before?".

B

• Backwards-Firing Gun:
  • In "El tirano", Mortadelo modifies General Panocho's rifle to be this. However, Filemón demands to try it, not knowing that it has been rigged, and inadvertently shoots himself.
  • A variation in "El premio No-Vel": Villain of the Week Ten-Go-Pis infiltrates the TIA's headquarters and tampers with Filemón's gun, making it fire upwards and causing Filemón to shoot himself in the nose.
• Badass Boast: Mortadelo does them sometimes, but they're always Played for Laughs, as it's all too obvious that he's making things up. Take, for instance, this one from El Tirano:
  Panocho: Oh, by the way! Do you understand hunting?
  Mortadelo: You bet! I hunted a lot of polar bears in the Nairobi jungle!
  Panocho: WHAT!? There are no polar bears in the Nairobi jungle!
  Mortadelo: Of course there aren't... now! Who do you think hunted them all?
• Bad Boss: Superintendente Vicente, in spades. Much of the humor depends on him sending two agents on suicide missions or missions that would require small armies to properly complete (such as stopping a military invasion or investigating the entire New York City for information on a terrorist plot), providing them with inadequate weapons or means of transportation, and then sadistically punishing them for their perceived failures. At times, he has even punished the protagonists because they wanted to get a day off or take a break between missions.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: In a short story, Mortadelo and Filemón grow tired of the secret entrance ways, and demand for them all to be removed or they will quit. Here is the Superintendent's reaction:
  Super: I can't believe it! After so many years... trying to get rid of you two, turns out it was that easy. You may leave whenever you want.
• Bat Deduction: This is how "El Gang del Chicharrón" Big Bad Gedeón el Chicharrón deduces that a cat smoking is Mortadelo in disguise:
  Gedeón: Cats don't smoke. If they don't smoke is because they don't have money to buy cigarettes. If someone doesn't have enough to buy cigarettes, it is because he is a T.I.A. agent. T.I.A. agents eat bread with mortadella. Mortadella sounds similar to Mortadelo. Therefore this cat is Mortadelo! I must get rid of it! (attempts to kick him, but hits the wall, the next panel shows a huge pile of cigarettes next to him) Brr! While I thought, he finished the pack and left.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: In "El Sulfato Atómico", Mortadelo tries to rescue Filemón from the Tiranian border guard by dressing as a Tiranian army general, and manages to walk into the guard post... until the border post commander salutes him and he realizes he doesn't speak Tiranian.
• Been There, Shaped History: When the main characters time-travel, they sometimes change history spectacularly.
• Berlin Wall: They managed to cross it twice in In Germany (from East to West because they stink so much that the guards can't stand them, and from West to East by going really fast on a car), which Ibáñez wrote for the comic's German fans.
  • Ironically enough, those scenes were removed in the German version due to it being a pretty sensible topic at the time. The first instance was replaced by them arriving on the right side but being caught in a pro-green demonstration that delays them for an entire page, while the second was swapped by a (crudely drawn and mostly senseless) scene in which Mortadelo suddenly realises they have no money left and decides to sell half their car, in a hand-wavy attempt to explain away why its back is missing in the following page- the original Spanish version has Filemon very angry because Mortadelo had driven over a minefield believing it was an orchard.
• Berserk Button: Quite some.
  • For starters, Mortadelo's baldness. Do not try to mock it, if you know what is good for you, especially if you're Bacterio.
    • Also, whenever some other Master of Disguise appears, Mortadelo will go into full-fledged disguise mode to prove that he is the one and only.
  • It can't compare to Ofelia's weight. Even the slightest insinuation of Ofelia being anything more than "a little pudgy" (if even that) will end up with you running for your life.
  • Don't tell Mortadelo and Filemón that they have to work with Bacterio, or that they have to test his new invention. They pretty much hate the guy, and they have seen too many of his inventions backfiring to ever trust them.
  • Mortadelo and Filemón themselves are the Súper's own Berserk Button whenever they screw up... which is basically all the time.
  • It is a Running Gag that characters, after being put through the grinder in some kind of situation, will be approached by an innocent character who makes a comment that could be misinterpreted as mocking in the wrong context. They will always retaliate with either a rant at best and a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown or other Disproportionate Retribution at worst, more often than not the latter. For example, in one story the protagonists have been repeatedly abused while chasing one of Bacterio's escaped lab animals (a hen). An old friend offers them a free meal at a restaurant which is known for its chicken dishes. The protagonists figure that he is mocking them, and use the friend's head as a battering ram in the process of demolishing the restaurant.
• Black Comedy: While less common than other forms, this will still show up from time to time.
  • In "¡Misión Triunfo!", the Súper calls out the others for being horrible singers, and declares he will sing a happy tango that incites to enjoy life. One song about war later...
    Radio: Suicides shoot up in the city! Overtime work in graveyards! Funeral parlour company stocks go up seven thousand points!
• Bland-Name Product: Commonly for the lulz, a portmanteau of a well-name brand with some other unrelated word - "Pescadillac" combines luxury-brand Cadillac with "pescadilla", Spanish for whiting, which is not expensive. The same goes with "Alfalfa Romeo", mixing another high-end car brand, Alfa Romeo, with alfalfa, which is a plant farmers use to feed their livestock (and yes, the word for alfalfa is the same in Spanish and English), and "Boing" (the representation of the sound of something bouncing, as in English too) that refers to the plane maker Boeing. Sometimes only some letters are changed to ease a Spaniard's pronunciation.
• Blind Mistake: Rompetechos (originally having his own comic-books, now a recurrent character in Mortadelo) is a Mr. Magoo -like guy who crosses paths with Mortadelo and Filemón because of a mistake - Rompetechos may be looking for a priest and, seeing Mortadelo's black clothes, will harass him nonstop, meddling with Mortadelo's activities.
• Blind Without 'Em: Mortadelo when his glasses are either lost or broken.
• Body Bag Trick: The comic moves this a step forward: Main characters need to infiltrate into a hospital. They see a slacker sleeping in the street. The characters impersonate nurses bringing the slacker in a pallet, claiming he needs urgent surgery for appendicitis. The slacker wakes up in the operating theater; when he leaves the hospital, he sees a peer loafing around and warns him: If the staff catches him sleeping, they will operate him for appendicitis!
• Body-Count Competition: Invoked by Villain of the Week Ten-Go-Pis in "El premio No-Vel", as the titular prizes are given out by himself to the criminal that manages to kill the most people in a determinate way.
• Bookcase Passage: Secret doors are accidentally opened, commonly for comedic effect.
• Bowdlerise: In the 50th anniversary special "Venganza Cincuentona", which brought back many villains from previous comics, all of the villains that smoked in their original stories are not seen smoking anymore, including Professor Von Iatum, an alien conqueror disguised as a scientist, whose cigarettes were established in the original album as his tool for breathing in the Earth.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall/Medium Awareness: Happens occasionally.
  • The most prominent example is in "Robots bestiajos", where Mortadelo directly asks the reader to turn the comic sideways so that the characters can easily walk up the side of a building.
  • Another example has a character comment on events he couldn't possibly witness first-hand by simply looking into the panel next to his.
  • In some stories, when a particularly violent or bloody scene is supposed to be happening (for instance, the duo being attacked by lions or huge guardian dogs, or receiving a severe beating by a big thug), Ibáñez himself will turn a corner of the panel so that the image is hidden and he warns: "Don't look, don't look! It's something frightening, believe me!".
• Breakout Villain: Ibáñez introduced the rival organization ABUELA only once, as a one-time Villain of the Week in "El plano de Alí Gu-sa-no". This didn't stop other writers to use it as the arch-enemy of the organization TIA.
• Broke the Rating Scale: A subversion in "¡Llegó el euro!". Mortadelo and Filemón arrive at the small town of Fuentelnabo while trying to track down a money counterfeiter. The agents are told that the local hotel, the Fuentelnabo Palace, is an eleven-star hotel. They soon find out that it is not actually a rating: the 'Palace' is, in fact, a crappy small-town inn that has a hole on the roof of its dining room, from which eleven stars can be seen at night.
• Brown Note: Usually Played for Laughs.
  • In "¡Valor y al toro!", Mortadelo knocks out the bull by showing it the hotel's price list.
  • If a character is being bit by an animal, another character will pull out the former's latest medical analysis in order to shock them into stopping.
  • In "El brujo", one of the murder attempts uses one of these combined with a Clingy McGuffin. Its contents? A calculation of fuel prices by the end of the year.

C

• Camp Gay: All homosexual men are always depicted as very, very effeminate. They all look like this: flowered Hawaiian shirt, semi-long hair, long curled eyelashes, and cheesily talking about flowers.
  • There is a member of the FEA - a rival organization of the TIA - who looks like that and is called Agent Pitiminí (from the common name given to a variety of rose). He opens a box, despite having been warned not to open it no matter what, because he can't stand not knowing if there is a rose or a carnation inside.
• Canine Companion: Played with. The pair often gets a trained detective dog to help them with their missions, but it always turns out that the dog is either too stupid or too smart to be of any use. Mortadelo and Filemón always end up getting rid of the dog, in an often abusive way.
  • Also, Mortadelo or Filemón sometimes bring to the TIA offices a dog they claim to be their own pet, but it is only used in that particular chapter and the dog is never heard of again.
    • Filemón is known to have at least two different little female dogs, called "Menda" and "Secretaria". Both are used in different albums as a one-time joke to mock Ofelia. They have never appeared or even been mentioned again.
    • And yet another one, a big, aggressive guardian dog called "Butcher". Like the others, used for a one-time joke, never to be seen again.
• Canis Latinicus: Whenever Latin is needed, it is granted to be totally - and comically - faux Latin. Often combined with Binomium ridiculus when it comes to plant or animal species.
  • In "El Antídoto" ("The Antidote"), the Super has his head turned into a pig's head because of one of Bacterio's inventions, and the pair is sent to search for a medicinal herb to cure him (the titular antidote). Its botanical name is Hierbajus Apestosus Repelentus ("Stinkus Disgustingus Weedus").
  • In "Contrabando" ("Smuggling"), Mortadelo disguises as a fly, and an entomologist captures him and tries to pin him on a board, classifying him as a Moscardus Cabezonus ("Botflyus Bigheadus").
  • In "El 35 aniversario" ("35th. anniversary"), Mortadelo, disguised as a priest, mockingly baptises a bill he doesn't intend to pay as Incobrata Fallídez et Archivata ("Unpaid, failed and filed").
• Canon Discontinuity: Ibáñez lost the rights to write the comic during the late 80s. During that time, less known authors published some stories on their own (each with his own style, see Depending on the Writer below). When Ibáñez regained the rights, he dismissed most of the stories written by other authors (some of them are still among the official works, though).
• Cartoon Cheese: A painful aversion: An elderly woman mistakes a bar of soap for a piece of cheese that looks just like the soap (rectangular, not like a wedge) and gives it to Filemón, who unknowingly eats it...
• Catchphrase: Mortadelo repeats his "¡Corra, jefe, corra!" ("Run, boss, run!") quite a few times.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: This is Mortadelo's speciality. He holds an indeterminate number of disguises under his coat and can instantly put them on in between comic panels.
• Chased Off into the Sunset: This happens in virtually every last panel of every story, with the two bumbling secret agents typically being chased by their boss, his secretary, the agency's scientist, or a combination thereof because they (again) screwed up their case big time. Sometimes, Mortadelo will also use his superhuman camouflage skills to hide as a cactus, cow etc. with Filemón hiding "in" him, and their suspicious pursuers in the vicinity looking around for them.
• Chekhov's Armoury: The first movie. You will just get amazed at how many details get reused later on.
• Chekhov's Gun: Every other gag is this.
  • In "El caso del bacalao", Mortadelo and Filemón are locked in a cell and Filemón tries to dig his way out with a Swiss army pickaxe, dismissing Mortadelo when he tries to warn him about something. After sixteen hours of digging, his pickaxe completely worn out, he finally comes out - only to see Mortadelo was already out. How did he get there? The vault's door was unlocked and when Mortadelo tried to tell this to Filemón, he didn't want to hear.
  • In "Las embajadas chifladas", at the final chapter Filemón got his neck elongated to a point where it was about half a meter long, and had to hide it inside his shirt. Much later, once everyone thought his neck had gone back to normal, he used it to make everyone think that Mortadelo was a snake charmer, revealing it while Mortadelo played the flute. And at the end of the story, he and Mortadelo got tied with a bomb near them. What did Filemón did? He stretched out his neck to take the bomb with his teeth and spat it at the Big Bad.
  • In "El cochecito leré", Mortadelo and Filemón must participate in a 1000-km car race to win a great prize for their organization, using a car developed by Bacterio. After an accident, Pepe Gotera and Otilio are the ones that repair the car, and they accidentally don't put the brake pedal back to the vehicle. This mistake causes Mortadelo and Filemón to be unable to stop after a policeman tells them to do so. There are no problems in the whole race, but, when they reach the goal, they have to brake, and they can't. Just then, the car starts to break down in pieces, due to Pepe Gotera and Otilio's shoddy work.
• Chew Toy: Every member of the main cast.
  • Extra points in Filemón's case.
  • Doctor Bacterio also deserves a special mention, as everybody always does their best to make his life miserable. While he is often attacked for some of his genuine mistakes, the other characters attack him even when he simply tries to greet them politely or when he is minding his own business.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Irma, sort of. Her introduction was forced as a way to combat homosexual viewing of the main characters. The character was apparently disliked by the series creator and Brotherchucked when he gained full control of the series some years later.
    • Irma was actually introduced in "¡Terroristas!", which was made by Ibáñez, based on the secretary of the German editor of the series, and retired after said secretary died in 1990.
  • Likewise, Agent Bestiájez hasn't been seen in quite a while. He was among the least essential recurring characters, so his role could be eliminated altogether.
• Clingy MacGuffin: One of these features prominently in one of the issues, titled "The Warlock": a magical note, enchanted to kill anyone who reads it. The titular characters subsequently try to remove it by the most varied means, chucking it into the bin, shredding it, burying it, tying it to a rock and throwing it to the sea, and hitting it with a full discharge of a flamethrower. And yet the note manages to never be actually harmed due to some kind of karmic immunity that causes people around it to suffer instead.
  • They do manage to get rid of it. How? They send it back to the guy that commissioned the warlock to send the note to the Super.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Many of Mortadelo's disguises grant him abilities which he does not have when undisguised. For example, his ghost disguise allows him to phase through walls, he can climb buildings while disguised as a lizard, breathe underwater with a fish disguise, or fly when disguised as a bird. Also, his iceberg disguise allowed him to cheat a thermal detector.
  • Averted, and Played for Laughs, in some instances when Filemón assumes that Mortadelo has the abilities of the disguise he is wearing and tries to take advantage of them, only to fail miserably, and have Mortadelo telling him "But, boss, it's only a disguise...".
• Collared by Fashion: Mortadelo.
• Comedic Hero: Subverted repeatedly because they tend to fail.
• Comedic Sociopathy: In "Los mercenarios" the two main characters go so far as throwing their boss from the window when (they think) they are rich.
• Comic-Book Time: Despite the series having gone for over 50 years, none of the characters have aged one bit. Some of the anniversary specials acknowledge for how long they have been by showing the characters suffering from health issues, but any other comic shows them perfectly fine.
• Comically Missing the Point: Constantly.
  • In "La gallina de los huevos de oro" Mortadelo hits Filemón on the head, believing that it is the hen they are looking for and comments that he will wake her up with an injection. Cue angry Filemón starting to run after him, ready to inject him with a dose of sulfuric acid. Mortadelo's answer?
  Don't be mad, boss! You aren't a registered nurse and could get fined!
  • One of the many secret entrances to the TIA offices has the duo dragging through a very narrow passage. Mortadelo finds the exit blocked by some sort of fabric and rips it off with a knife. It turns out that, in the other side, there was a very expensive painting that the Súper had on his wall. "The Titian! The Titian!", the Súper screams. "No, it's me, the Mortadelo", answers Mortadelo with a cheerful smile, "Don't you know me?"
• Compelling Voice: Hypnosis is shown in a fantasy-clichéd way particularly with the character Magín el Mago and in the second movie. The only way to break the spell is by slapping the victim.
• Composite Character: In the animated series, Agente Bestiájez fulfilled the roles of many one-off characters in the comics, probably so that the staff could reuse his design and voice actor.
• Continuity Nod: Any references to previous comics or appearances by returning villains are punctuated by a side note pointing to the comic being referenced.
• Continuity Porn: The 50th anniversary special "Venganza Cincuentona", which brought back many of the previous villains in the series to claim revenge on Mortadelo and Filemón and has some other references to earlier comics.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Roughly 30% of the frames show one character punishing another in some ridiculously over-the-top way.
  • There are many other frames in which the Súper threatens Mortadelo and Filemón with something if they don't comply with his orders. It usually involves watching something so horrible that they will go with obeying. One example is Chuck Norris' films.
  • In 20,000 leguas de viaje sibilino (in which they must go from Madrid to Lugo, going around the world), one of the stops is China. Two Chinese Secret Police members believe M&F are two spies and attempt to make them reveal why they are there through Chinese torture methods (which are not exactly like the normal ones) until they pull out... poisoning them and pushing them through a bureaucratic mess parodying the Spanish Social Security system. Mortadelo ends up making up a bold lie to get out of it.
  • In one gag, Mortadelo tells Filemón that there is "nothing" over a window; Filemón proceeds to jump through said window to plummet hundreds of feet down a precipice, meaning that there was literally nothing past the window. Injured by the fall, Filemón proceeds to chase Mortadelo, trying to smash him with an enormous book titled "Nada, por Tedio Plomez Sopor", which roughly translates as "Nothing, by Tedium Boredom Sleepiness" (Tedio Plomez Sopor, being a gag name in Spanish). Filemón chases him saying "I'll show you what nothing means!"
  • Sometimes, both of them are held in tiny spaces. This will result in either of the following: either they come out in the form of the place they have been held (and eventually threatened to be sent to another place which is even smaller) or the place where they were kept was much bigger than what it should be (one hilarious example has Filemón "practicing Formula 1 racing" while kept in a drawer, which results in one guy looking into that drawer and getting his big nose flattened by one Formula 1 racing car and shouted at from within the drawer to stay off the track).
    • Another one has Mortadelo practicing horse riding. Cue a horse coming out of the drawer.
    • Another one combines the two outcomings. The duo come out from the punish room in the shape and size of a shoebox, and the Súper scornfully asks them whether they have been bored. While stretching back to his size, Mortadelo comments that he has killed some time by taming lions. The Súper bursts into laughter, saying "Taming lions in a two feet square room!". Cue some TIA agents bringing a badly injured cleaning lady, who has been attacked by lions while cleaning the punish room.
• Cranial Eruption: From blows to the head, falling from great heights, you name it. The lumps sometimes come in layers of two or three.
  • In one instance, we see a bunch of pre-historic men fighting to the death with clubs. In present time, when their remains are discovered, there are cranial eruptions in their bare skulls.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • In "Chapeau el Esmirriau", Chapeau's hat hides a Hyperspace Arsenal full of all sorts of wacky weapons he can activate just in time to repel whatever Mortadelo and Filemón throw at him.
  • Mortadelo once managed to avoid getting bitten by a vampire in the neck... by way of wearing a hidden second collar made of wrought iron.
• Creative Closing Credits:
  • Issues of the comic from 1958 to 1968 included billboards of "Chicle Duglas" in the background.
  • In The '80s, Mortadelo and Filemón, along with some other Ibáñez characters, were used as the image of a chocolate spread, "Tulicrem". Some one-page stories were written to promote the brand.
• Creator Provincialism: Played straight and averted: There are plenty of stories set in other countries or as world trips (Not that they are accurate or anything), but quite a few have evil criminals, aliens or whatever that just happen to hide/go to Spain for no real reason. Best example? Expediente J. The evil aliens send a few havoc-causing phlebotinum rocks to Spain (And accurately, around the area the main characters live at that) and when their leader appears at the end, he assumes that has caused ALL of humanity to be a mess.
• Crossover:
  • With another popular Spanish character, Capitán Trueno, in the album ¡Bajo el bramido de Trueno!
  • They also had an earlier one with Zipi y Zape.
  • And with pretty much any other Ibáñez strip: 13 Rue del Percebe, Rompetechos, Pepe Gotera y Otilio, etc. Many of these strips have gone out of print, and their characters are no longer featured anywhere but in these cameos.

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