Mort & Phil in English, Russian, and Japanesenote Albeit just for the comics, the live-action film keeps the original Spanish names instead in this version.
Paling & Ko in the Netherlands.
Clever & Smart in Germany and Arabic.
Flip & Flop in Denmark.
Futt et Fil in Francenote Only when some comics were localized in the 1980s; later on, it's been retitled "Mortadel et Filemon"..
''Antirix and Symphonix" (Αντιρίξ και Συμφωνίξ) in Greece. Antirrisi is the Greek term for disagreement and opposition, and Symphonia is the Greek term for agreement.
Creator's Pest: Ibañez wasn't very fond of Irma, whom he was basically forced to create to prove the main characters weren't gay, and she stopped appearing altogether the moment he regained control over the comic.
Died During Production: Ibañez died partway through his work on París 2024, which was still on a preliminary state. The story was published posthumously in April 2024, just as Ibáñez left it before his death.
A lot in the early years - the Bruguera company even tried to "steal" the characters from Ibáñez and give them to other authors a couple of times. He also had to deal with the Francoist official censorship, which was pretty hard at suppresing Toilet Humor and anything that denoted "subversion". For instance, he sometimes had to imply the story took place in either France (cops were called "gendarmes" and characters often talked about "the '14 war") or Britain/United States (some cops dressed like British ones and had in their cars the word "Police" in English instead of the Spanish "Policía", and there were lines about the Sing-Sing Penal) not to look he was making fun of Spain's law enforcement or the Spanish Civil War. This is also why women do not appear at all in late 50s strips - each time Ibáñez drew one, the censors eliminated so much curves that it ended looking like a broomstick.
Even some dialogues had to be changed because of censorship. In one instance, Mortadelo sees a monster, and runs to Filemón in panic, trying to alert him. He tries to say "¡Un monstruo!" ("A monster!") but he's so scared that he can only babble: "¡Un mo... un mo...!". Filemón thinks he's trying to say "un moco" ("snot") and says "Si tiene un moco, suénese" ("If you've got snot, blow your nose") as he produces a handkerchief. "Moco", though a quite colloquial, innocent word, was such a profanity for some censor that Filemón's answer was rewritten as "¿Un mono? Aquí no hay monos" ("A monkey? There are no monkeys here"), making the gesture of producing the handkerchief completely absurd.
By Ibáñez's own admission, he saw the character of Prof. Bacterio as a chance to create storylines (via his infamous invents) whenever he couldn't come up with something more interesting.
Post-Seasonal Rot, several albums have been accused of this. For example, "El tirano" being a remake from "Objetivo: Eliminar al rana", "La MIER" from "Cacao espacial"...
In Episode 4 of Money Heist's second season, Sánchez negatively responds to Raquel's explanation of her plan to catch the Professor at the hospital Ángel is in with infiltrated cops as being something out of Mortadelo y Filemón.
In the SuperThings episode "Kid Kazoom's Training", one of the comics in Kid Kazoom's comic book collection is a comic called "Lonchadelo Y Filetón".
Series Hiatus: Production was stopped in 2023 following Francisco Ibáñez's death, but the editors have confirmed plans to have new artists continue the series when the time is right, and are staying in contact with Ibáñez's family for this purpose.
The character of Irma was based on a German secretary who worked for the comic books' editor in Germany. Sadly, she died not long after Irma's creation.
One of the companies that has employed the TIA the most in several books and short stories is Ibáñez's publisher, Editorial Brugera (later known as Ediciones B). Some of Brugera's personnel became recurring characters with defined personalities in those stories; the head editor, for example, is a mischievous, millionaire Femme Fatale with a penchant for long walks atop her pet elephant.
Animated series:
Approval of God: Ibáñez was happy with all the chances he was given to work with the animated series' producers, which included making scripts and selecting voice actors, and was very vocally supportive of the series at first. It was later when he said that the quality of the animation had disappointed him.
Creator Backlash: Ibáñez criticized the animation, which was done in China in order to save costs and suffered in quality as a result.
Uncredited Role: The English dub of the animated series doesn't credit any of the English voice actors.
Movies:
Acclaimed Flop: The movie Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible (Mortadelo y Filemón contra Jimmy el Cachondo) was a financial flop, only earning a measly €4.9 million and not covering the €12.5 million spent on its production. Despite this colossal flop, many fans of the franchise and critics consider this movie to not only be one the best movies of the franchise, but one of the best animated movies made in Spain of all time.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Several of the people who worked in the films were fans of the comics.
Same Language Dub: Unlike previous films exported to Latin America, when the Spaniard voice acting was kept, the most recent movie (Mortadelo y Filemón contra Jimmy el Cachondo) was redubbed into Mexican Spanish, in this case because the sole name of the titular bad guy, Jimmy el Cachondo, was changed in the Mexican dub to "Jimmy el Locuaz" ("Jimmy the Loquacious"). The reason is that, while Cachondo can mean both "funny" and "horny" in European Spanish, in Mexican Spanish it means solely "horny."
