Franchise / Tintin

aka: The Adventures Of Tintin

Tintin and Snowy.

"Tintin is neither a surname nor a first name; it is much more than that. Tintin is a totally unique world, a myth or a saga. Tintin is created from Hergé's subconscious desire to be perfect, to be a hero. The hero who everyone between 7 and 77 years old wants to be, or become, while reading The Adventures of Tintin."

— From Tintin's character page on the comic's official website

The Adventures of Tintin, originally titled The Adventures of Tintin and Snowy, is a seminal Belgian comic series and has had considerable influence on the development of graphic narratives in Europe and around the world.

Briefly, Tintin was invented by Georges Remi (AKA Hergé, from his initials backwards, R.G., spelt phonetically in French) as a cartoon character for Le Petit Vingtième, the children's supplement to Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century), a conservative, Catholic newspaper in Belgium. The character was developed from Totor, a boy scout character Hergé had previously drawn for Le Boy-Scout Belge. When the German occupation ended the publication of Le Vingtième Siècle, the feature moved to the Brussels daily Le Soir, where it became a daily newspaper strip until the Liberation in 1944. After World War II Tintin appeared in the new weekly comic magazine Tintin. The series ran from 1929 to 1976; the incomplete Tintin and Alph-Art was released in 1986 after Hergé's death.

Most of the adventures concerned the (eternally) young hero investigating some event or trying to do someone a good turn and, as a result, falling into adventure. The adventures range from thwarting criminals to treasure hunts, from spy stories to a voyage to the moon.

The real world frequently impinges upon the stories, with many identifiable events from Real Life being presented with only a few slight changes of name, for example the Grand Chapo (real life, Gran Chaco) war in The Broken Ear, and the Second Sino-Japanese War in The Blue Lotus. World War II was hinted at less as Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany. In this period, Hergé's stories are fanciful high-adventure yarns with no reference to war at all.^note There are infamous antisemitic caricatures in The Shooting Star however. The newspaper Le Soir in which Hergé first published the work was headed by Nazi sympathizers during the Occupation of Belgium.

The story for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was adapted from a Tintin script Steven Spielberg was writing. Spielberg, who had Hergé's blessing shortly before the latter died in 1983, obtained permission to make a Tintin movie which came out in 2011.

There were two animated series:

• A 1960s series produced by Télé-Hachette and Belvision.
• The Adventures of Tintin, a 1990s French-Canadian-Belgian series coproduced by Ellipse and Nelvana

...four animated films...:

• The Crab With The Golden Claws (1947), Belgian film made in Stop Motion.
• Tintin and the Sun Temple (1969), by Belvision and made from the combined storyline of The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun.
• Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972), by Belvision with an original storyline by Greg, with Hergé merely supervising.
• The Adventures of Tintin (2011), Motion Capture CGI animated movie by Peter Jackson's WETA Digital and directed by Steven Spielberg. It was intended to grow to a film series but the buzz has gone quiet for a while.

...two live-action films:

• Tintin and the Golden Fleece (1961), with an original storyline. Starred Jean-Pierre Talbot as Tintin and Georges Wilson as Captain Haddock.
• Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964), also an original storyline. The plot is based on French poet Paul Eluard's line "Earth is blue like an orange".

Six video games:

• Tintin on the Moon (1987, Home Computers and MS-DOS)
• Tintin in Tibet (1995, SNES/Genesis and Game Boy/Game Gear)
• Prisoners of the Sun (1997, SNES/Game Boy and Windows)
• Tintin: Destination Adventure (2001, Windows)
• The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, mobile phones and 3DS) — This one by Ubisoft rather than Infogrames.
• Tintin Reporter - Cigars of the Pharaoh (2023, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC)

...as well as:...two radio series by the BBC in 1992-93, a Dutch musical adaptation of Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun in 2001 (later translated into French), a theatre adaptation of Tintin in Tibet in 2007/2008, and a French documentary series Sur les traces de Tintin in 2010, which recaps the stories while mixing comic panels with live-action imagery and providing lots of commentary.

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Some of the many tropes in Tintin have included:

• Absent-Minded Professor: A number of them appear before Professor Calculus (who, on top of being scatterbrained, is also slightly deaf) became a regular character and Trope exemplar. They are Professor Sarcophagus in The Cigars Of The Pharaoh, the nameless one who meets a parrot in The Broken Ear, Professor Alembick in King Ottokar's Sceptre and several in The Shooting Star.
• The Ace: This was Tintin's original character concept.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The Nelvana series has enough to warrant its own page.
  • The radio dramas also indulged in it:
    • The chase through the train is cut from The Black Island.
    • Mr. Sakharine is cut from The Secret of the Unicorn, with some of his lines and scenes given to Barnaby.
    • The Thompsons are completely excluded from the Moon Saga.
    • The seven explorers having fits of pain is dropped in The Seven Crystal Balls.
    • Skut is absent in The Red Sea Sharks.
• Adaptation Expansion: The Belvision animation adaptations added more plot elements, some of them which could actually be considered an improvement to the original stories, such as the Bird brothers returning to interfere with the Red Rackham treasure hunt.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • A large portion of the series' humor comes from Captain Haddock tripping or hitting his head. This is lampshaded in Destination Moon.
    Prof. Calculus: I'd swear you do that on purpose!
  • Thomson and Thompson are also rather prone to these, particularly where stairs are involved.
• Animated Adaptation: Two animated series, as noted above, as well as the spin-off film The Lake of Sharks. Then there's Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's computer-animated adaptation.
• Anyone Can Die: Tintin is notorious for the fact that some characters die, usually off screen, but no distinction is made between villains or good characters.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: Bab El Ehr, Emir Ben Kalish Ezab and Abdallah.
• Art Evolution: It's especially obvious with the first two, but you can spot some from The Blue Lotus onwards, wherein his art became less caricaturish. Originally this was a gradual change, but readers of the color editions are unlikely to notice much of a difference, because Hergé eventually went back and redrew all the volumes except Soviets.
• Artistic License – Space: Hergé was well aware that the space suits in Destination Moon and Explorers On The Moon would require helmets much like the astronauts we see today, but then the readers wouldn't be able to tell who was Haddock and who was Tintin. So, for their convenience he made the helmets more fish bowl shaped.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Many of the made-up languages like Bordurian and Arumbaya are actually phonetic renditions of a local Belgian patois, completely indecipherable even to some Belgians. This carries over to the English translations, albeit with more understandable phonetics.
• Author Avatar: Tintin was originally created to embody the qualities Herge most admired, although in later years he came to identify more with Haddock — in particular Haddock had Herge's dress sense and love of the sea, and his ability to lose his temper and really let rip with his feelings was something the timid Herge wished he could do.
• Author Tract: The first two Tintin albums, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo were made under direct commission of Hergé's newspaper boss, who wanted him to draw propaganda stories that showed the youth good Catholic values.
• Badass Longcoat: Tintin often wears a trench coat.
• Bad Habits: The bad guy in Congo dresses as a missionary to get Tintin's trust.
• Baffled by Own Biology: In "The Secret of the Unicorn", Snowy develops Single Malt Vision after drinking some whisky and thinks there really are two glasses.
• Banana Republic: San Theodoros, Nuevo Rico and Sao Rico. In Tintin and the Picaros, it is even stated that General Alcazar's titular faction is financed by a... banana company.
• Belgian Comics: The pioneering comic strip that set of all the other series the country's famous for.
• Big Ball of Violence: Used whenever Tintin gets in a fisticuff.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In The Broken Ear, the two villains die and are dragged off to Hell by three cute-yet-scary demons.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Brussels' dialect slang (Flemish-based "Marrollien") is often used in the names of Herge's invented places and people and for the Bordurian language.
• Black Bead Eyes: Most characters are drawn with black dots for eyes.
• Black Comedy: Sometimes characters die in comedic fashion, like Diaz in The Broken Ear, who is killed off by his own time bomb, because he looked at the wrong clock. Another one is the shark in The Red Sea Sharks, who accidentally swallowed a mine.
• Bloodless Carnage: Dead people may be depicted in full view of the reader, but there is never any trace of blood. This is especially noticeable when we see Haddock's ancestor and his crew fighting pirates and there are several corpses with no blood or wounds.
• Blow Gun: Used by the Arumbaya Indians in The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros, as well as by the villains in Cigars Of The Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus.
• Bound and Gagged: Happens a lot, such as in Prisoners of the Sun, where Haddock is attacked.
• Bowdlerization: Despite that the Nelvana series kept many of the same plotlines from the comics, a few minor details were kept around, while still keeping true to the original story:
  • All instances of blackface were removed from the Nelvana series - the instance in The Broken Ear wherein Tintin dresses as a black crew member was replaced with Tintin wearing the same wig, glasses and fake mustache getup from The Calculus Affair.
  • Also in The Broken Ear, the villains' death, followed by a scene of them in a somewhat comical version of Hell is replaced with them being arrested.
  • In order to fit the time, the newspaper clipping at the end of The Red Sea Sharks was removed. As a result, this meant that the cargo hold full of African Muslims were visually identical, but their backstory was changed to them being refugees attempting to seek asylum in America. In some ways, this makes it even more dastardly and it remains plausible.
  • The redrawings also bowdlerized many bits that even Hergé thought were a bit unfortunate.
  • The Belvision adaptation removed Captain Haddock's alcoholic tendencies, and made him a coffee drinker instead.
• Breakout Character:
  • Captain Haddock was originally intended to be a one-off, but ended up as Tintin's trusted companion.
  • Professor Calculus became a recurring character after his first appearance in Red Rackham's Treasure.
• Bribe Backfire: Attempts to bribe Tintin seem to be a very efficient way to make him angry, as several villains have found out over the course of his adventures. Most memorably, Mitsuhirato once approached him while he was about to be executed and offered him a way out if he would join the Japanese secret services. Tintin seemed half-amused half-interested at first, but the moment money was added to the deal, he beat the crap out of the Japanese spy and threw him out of the cell.
  Mook: He refused?
  Mitsuhirato: How'd you guess?
• Brick Joke:
  • Captain Haddock's difficulties with sticking plaster^note a band-aid in The Calculus Affair are briefly referenced in Flight 714.
  • In Destination Moon, Thompson/Thomson believe there to be a skeleton sneaking around the moon project, due to a misunderstanding involving an x-ray machine. In Explorers on the Moon, when The Mole has been revealed and is being interrogated, they break in with a vital question: "The skeleton, Wolff. Was that you?"
• Briefer Than They Think: Although Rastapopoulos is considered to be Tintin's main villain and nemesis, he only properly appears in four comics in the series out of twenty three ("Cigars of the Pharoah", "The Blue Lotus", "The Red Sea Sharks" and "Flight 714 To Sydney"). There is also a huge gap between his second and third appearances. Even if you stretch to include his wordless cameo in "In America", his animated appearance in "The Lake of Sharks" and the fact that he was probably (but not definitely) going to appear in "Alph-Art", that's still just eight out of twenty-five stories.
• Busman's Holiday: These guys can't go anywhere without falling into adventures. This was lampshaded in Cigars of the Pharaoh when Tintin said "This was supposed to be my vacation."
• But Not Too Foreign: The English translations put Marlinspike in "Marlinshire" and strongly imply (excepting one example in "The Secret of the Unicorn", without outright stating) that Tintin is based in England. Which leads to a little Fridge Logic when he has to get a ferry to the UK...
• Calling Me a Logarithm: Inverted with Captain Haddock's Flowery Insults, which use innocuous words as if they were curses. In fact, in "Destination Moon" he actually calls someone Espèce de logarithmes! ("You sort of logarithms!"), at least in the original language version.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first two Tintin adventures (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo) are outright comedies where the action is often completely surreal and played for laughs (for instance, Tintin killing a rhino by drilling into its hide and dropping in a stick of dynamite). The third adventure (Tintin in America) was transitional with a lot of off-the-wall comedy still mixing with the plot before the series finally found its familiar mood of realistic action-adventure with Cigars of the Pharaoh. There was still comedy but it was far more down-to-earth and character-driven.
• Character Title: The title is "The Adventures of Tinin".
• Chased by Angry Natives: This happens in the Belvision animated series, even though natives were not shown in the original Red Rackham's Treasure.
• Cliffhanger: Lots! Especially during the period when the stories appeared in newspapers. Hergé was a firm proponent of the "suspense en bas de page", stating that each page should end in a cliffhanger. It was later (lovingly) lampooned by humoristic authors of the French/Belgian school.
• Chromosome Casting: There is a noticeable lack of female characters in Herge's work, due to the strictly enforced standards at the time.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: King Muskar XII of Syldavia, who is inexplicably absent from later stories involving that country, even when his appearance would be expected (Destination Moon and/or Explorers on the Moon) or useful (The Calculus Affair). This is possibly a reflection of Real Life politics in the Balkans before and after WWII: Former monarchies were replaced with republican (in practice: communist) governments. (Syldavia does not seem to have a communist government in its later appearances, though).
• Color-Coded Characters: From the book "Red Rackham's treasure" and onwards:
  • Tintin = light blue (even in "Destination Moon", he is one of the only two characters to wear some blue overalls instead of green).
  • Captain Haddock = dark blue (even in "Destination Moon", he is one of the only two characters to wear some blue overalls instead of green).
  • The Thompsons = black (except for when they wear green overalls in "Destination Moon").
  • Professor Calculus = green.
• Comic-Book Time: Nobody ages, even though the technology, fashion and politics of the world around them progress from the 1930s to the 1970s. The closest is Tintin getting a proper pair of pants for "Picaros" (at long last)^note Before this, he wears "plus fours", a kind of early "sportsman's" trousers, so-called because they extended four inches below the knee. In the early years, they would have been the equivalent of wearing jeans, but were well out of date after the fifties.
• Commie Nazis: The country of Borduria is depicted first as a fascist country, after 1945, it is modeled on the Eastern Bloc with some Nazi-style uniforms, complete with its own secret police (ZEP) (led by Colonel Sponsz) and a dictator called Kûrvi-Tasch who promotes a Taschist ideology. A statue of Kûrvi-Tasch in uniform appears in front of a government building, in which he wears a moustache similar to Joseph Stalin's and gives a Nazi-like salute.
• Confused Question Mark: They pop up frequently.
• Continuity Nod: Several in the books, a number of which were cut from the animated version. Whenever Tintin recognizes a character, an asterisk will mention where he saw them, or where a certain event is alluded to and an asterisk mentions where it happened.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Hergé gave himself a cameo in some of the albums. He and co-assistant Edgar P. Jacobs can be seen as reporters at the start of Tintin in the Congo and as military officers at the royal reception in King Ottokar's Sceptre.
  • In the Nelvana animated cartoons series, the animators put a cartoon version of Hergé in the background of every episode.
  • In 2011 film, Hergé has an animated cameo, a little over four minutes into the movie, as a market artist who painted a portrait for Tintin himself. The cameo is voiced by Nathan Meister.
• Creator Provincialism: The first two albums, Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets and Tintin in the Congo reference Belgium most directly. Tintin arrives back at the station of Brussels in the first album and in the original version of Tintin in the Congo he teaches the Congolese children about their fatherland Belgium, which was replaced by a simple mathematic lesson in the reprints. The series avoided any direct references to Belgium in other albums, but it still remains the most Belgian of all Belgian Comics with an international success career. The streets and buildings where Tintin lives are clearly located in Brussels. Foreigners wouldn't notice it, but anyone who ever visited Brussels can recognize it. The police officers are also dressed in Belgian and French uniforms.
  
  The royal palace of Syldavia in King Ottokar's Sceptre is based on the Belgian palace, and the address on the letter Tintin receives from Chang in Tintin in Tibet is written in Chinese, but reads Brussels when translated. Also, the accents of the Arumbaya Indians in The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros, as well as those of the Syldavians and Bordurians are heavily distorted, but still recognizable versions of the dialect spoken by Flemish people from the Brussels' neighbourhood the Marols. Hergé was a French speaking Brussels' native, but his mother spoke this specific Flemish dialect, so he heard it a lot. Apart from these self-invented languages Hergé also used the dialect for the names of foreign places and characters.
• Deconstruction:
  • The Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714, and Tintin and the Picaros are deconstructions of the series in general.
    • The Castafiore Emerald is an intentional Random Events Plot where Tintin and Haddock stay at Marlinspike Hall for nearly the entirety of the story. It's full of anticlimaxes such as how Haddock's attempt to escape Castafiore by going to Italy is foiled by an accident, the Roma community plight is immediately solved by Haddock’s generosity, Haddock never has the chance to make An Aesop about tolerance because of little distractions and the emerald’s thief turns out to be a harmless magpie.
    • Flight 714 has Tintin and Haddock involved by a Contrived Coincidence into a plot to blackmail a millionaire, recurring villains Rastapopoulus and Allan suffer intentional Villain Decay by being depicted as ridiculous and stupid, all of them would have died in an eruption but are saved by aliens, and only Snowy remembers how they were rescued. For everyone else, it was a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
    • Tintin and the Picaros: Tintin, the Gentleman Adventurer, refuses the call for several days, believing it to be a trap, while his supporting cast goes to San Theodoros ahead of him, Haddock cannot drink alcohol, and the worst is that Tintin, instead of his plus fours pants, now wears jeans! The second to last panel shows that San Theodoros has had a Full-Circle Revolution and it was all a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
  • Tintin and the Alph-Art was planned as a Reconstruction to counter the three examples above, but Herge Died During Production
• Dem Bones: The Thompsons suspect a living skeleton is hanging around in Destination Moon because they saw each other through an X-ray panel and they end up arresting a real (non-living) skeleton in a doctor's office. Much later in Explorers on the Moon, they interrupt Wolff's dramatic interrogation by asking him "vital questions": "The skeleton, Wolff. Was that you?" and "To be precise, were you the Wolff, Skeleton?"
• Deus ex Machina: All the time, though much more predominant in the first three books than later on, as they were defined by their episodic format and reliance on CliffHangers. This ranges from jumping off of a cliff to find a ledge to having the mooks mistakenly use knockout gas instead of poison gas. Hergé used to say "I was often thinking all the week about the way I could get Tintin out of the trap I had thrown him into on the previous Wednesday".
• Direct Line to the Author: Most don't know that Hergé intended the Tintin series to be a series of adventures chronicled by Tintin. Most don't know what he does for a living, or assume he's a Reporter Who Never Reports Anything, not knowing that the books are his reports!
• Disney Villain Death: The leader of the opium smugglers at the end of Cigars Of the Pharaoh. Of course, he survives as he reappears in The Blue Lotus, and is revealed to be Rastapopulous.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Many of the comics written in The '30s reflected the many political upheavals that the world was going through at the time, giving the general feeling of Gathering Storm leading up to World War II. The political references ended when the Nazis invaded Belgium and the comics were subject to censorship, at which point, they became largely escapist adventure stories.
    • The Broken Ear references the Gran Chaco War.
    • The Blue Lotus provides a thinly-veiled account of the Mukden Incident and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
    • King Ottakar's Sceptre has a fascist-sounding group called the Iron Guard planning on overthrowing the government of an Eastern European monarchy. And their leader is called Müsstler.
  • As a later example, San Theodoros, a South American country whose main political officers (e.g. the Bordurian Colonel Sponsz) are all from a European dictatorship led by a man with a mustache and delusions of grandeur. Hmmmmm, where have I seen that before?
• Dressed to Oppress: A number of examples.
  • In The Broken Ear, General Alcazar, the military dictator of San Theodoros, is shown wearing a Chest of Medals, and gold epaulettes.
  • In The Calculus Affair, statues and images of Borduria's Marshall Kürvi-Tash show him with a military greatcoat, and in particular, showing off his curvy 'stache.
  • When Tintin returns to San Theodoros in Tintin and the Picaros, Alcazar's rival, General Tapioca, and his inner circle wear green military uniforms, with Tapioca wearing ample medals and a short moustache.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In Tintin and the Land of the Soviets Tintin has no quiff for the first few pages. His iconic hairstyle only gets into place after a speedy car chase. Also, Snowy has a strange beard. It's also the only album in which Tintin is seen writing journalistic paperwork, though he never seems to post it to his newspaper, because that same night he is attacked in his hotel room and has to flee, without taking all those pages along with him.
  • Snowy can talk and Tintin can understand him in Tintin in the Land of Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America. In the English-speaking world Tintin in America was the only one of the three available in print, and Snowy and Tintin talking to each other only happens in a few panels, making it seem all the more out of place.
  • The first three Tintin stories, Tintin in The Land Of The Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America all have a Random Events Plot and are full of naïve stereotypical ideas about the countries and people Tintin visits. They were all drawn without any documentation or research. Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets and Tintin in the Congo are de facto conservative Catholic propaganda pieces, drawn under commission of Hergé's newspaper boss.
  • The Thompsons are quite competent in their first appearance in Cigars of the Pharaoh. Their comedic ineptitude seems to set in as soon as they go over to Tintin's side. Also, to readers of the albums after The Black Island, it may seem bizarre that the duo actually tries to arrest Tintin in Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus and The Black Island.
• Ear Trumpet: Professor Calculus uses one in Destination Moon (which gets switched out at one point for the Captain's pipe). For the actual trip to the moon, he uses a hearing aid that allows him to hear perfectly. Needless to say, later volumes return him to his hard-of-hearing state.
• Easily Forgiven: Tintin never mentions the fact that General Alcazár tried to have him executed in The Broken Ear in any of their subsequent encounters. Yes, he was set up, but Tintin didn't know that.
• Everybody Is Single: Everybody is in the main cast. As for recurring characters, only Jolyon Wagg/Séraphin Lampion and General Alcazar have wives.
• Explosive Cigar: This is Abdullah's favourite prank to pull on others.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: Pianist Igor Wagner is named after Igor Stravinsky and Richard Wagner.
• Females Are More Innocent: The comic ran for five decades and in that time Tintin only met one female villain who was just aiding her husband.
• Fictional Country: Borduria, Syldavia, San Theodoros, and Khemed.
• Fictional Flag: Of the number of fictional nations Tintin travels to, none of them display their national flag more frequently or proudly as Borduria. It is depicted as a fascist state and Syldavia's warmongering neighbor, with a stark, eye-catching red-and-black flag to match. In post-1945 stories, Borduria is depicted more along the lines of a communist dictatorship with a Stalin-esque cult of personality built up around their leader, Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch; Borduria's flag is likewise changed to a new design, one that features a circumflex symbol that close resembles their leader's prominent mustache.
• Funetik Aksent: Played straight, and also a variation where some languages (especially the native one in The Broken Ear/Tintin and the Picaros) are phoneticised versions of strong dialects - Marollien in the original, and Cockney or Yorkshire in the English translation.
• Funny Foreigner: Thompson and Thomson become this when they visit China. They put on ridiculously garish and outdated Qing-era Manchu costumes and end up with practically an entire street following them, pointing and laughing.
• Gangland Drive-By:
  • Happens to Barnaby in the album The Secret of the Unicorn when he tried to betray the Bird brothers. He is shot down on Tintin's doorstep, the latter barely avoiding it.
  • It happens to Tintin himself in The Blue Lotus, but he was fortunately saved by a young man working for the Sons of the Dragon.
• George Lucas Altered Version: Many early Tintin albums of the 1930s have been redrawn, updated and too dated references have been removed to appeal to modern audiences. The original unaltered stories are still available, but only in a special album series.
• Genre Roulette: There are about as many subgenres of pulp fiction explored as there are albums in the series:
  • Political thriller: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, King Ottakar's Sceptre, Land of Black Gold, Destination Moon, The Calculus Affair, The Red Sea Sharks, Tintin and the Picaros.
  • Satire: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in America, The Broken Ear, King Ottakar's Sceptre, Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin and Alph-Art.
  • Cold War thriller: Destination Moon, The Calculus Affair.
  • Jungle Opera: Tintin in the Congo, Cigars of the Pharoah, The Broken Ear, Prisoners of the Sun, Flight 714, Tintin and the Picaros.
  • Gangster, Western: Tintin in America.
  • Gothic Horror: Cigars of the Pharoah, The Seven Crystal Balls, certain sequences in Tintin in America, The Broken Ear, The Black Island and The Shooting Star.
  • Hitchcockian thriller: The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, The Black Island, The Secret of the Unicorn, The Seven Crystal Balls, The Calculus Affair.
  • Ruritania: King Ottakar's Sceptre.
  • Sci-fi: The Shooting Star, Destination Moon, Explorers on the Moon, Flight 714.
  • Fantasy: The Shooting Star, Flight 714.
  • Swashbuckler: The Secret of the Unicorn.
  • Detective story: The Secret of the Unicorn, The Castafiore Emerald.
  • Farce: The Castafiore Emerald.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Afflicts both Snowy and the Captain in the presence of whisky.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: Plenty of textbook examples, from Haddock's full beard to Thompson & Thomson's trademark "cop thick mustache", plus a long collection of typical villain-ish hairdos and beards, especially with Borduria where the curvy moustache is very recurrent, to the name of the dictator and the country flag. Averted with Professor Calculus, who is a rare example of good goatee (though a bushy one).
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking:
  • Several recurring villains (Dr. Müller, Allen, etc.) have been seen smoking, usually cigarettes. On the other hand, there's Captain Haddock and his ever-present pipe.
  • And Tintin himself never smokes and regularly turns down cigarettes when he is offered one.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Averted and at the same time not even played with. The characters almost never swear, save for a few old slangs or stuff that's "Rude" but not necessarily a curse word. There is a "Damn" in the english version of The Castafiore Emerald. However, Captain Haddock's swearing tirades of "Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles" were never a cover-up for swearing...it's just funny.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Many of the main villains have a superior that serves as a secondary villain:
  • By default, Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch, the dictator of Borduria, is the Greater-Scope Villain of any story in which Tintin had to face Bordurian agents (with the possible exception of Sceptre, in which he doesn't seem to already be in power.
  • All of the villains in Soviets are working for the Russian government.
  • Tom in Congo is working for Al Capone.
  • Mitsuhirato in Lotus is working for Rastopopolous.
  • Müller in Island refers to Puschov as "the boss", although they seem to be working together.
  • Musstler in Sceptre is working for the Bordurians.
  • Chiquito in the Inca books is working for the Inca, although he could be seen as a Dragon-in-Chief.
  • The same with Allan to Salaad in Crab.
  • Jorgen is working for Miller in Moon.
  • Sponsz is working for the Bordurians in Calculus and for Tapioca in Picaros.
• Handcar Pursuit: Tintin does this in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. The handcar breaks just as he is about to catch up.
• Have a Gay Old Time: There are a few old slangs that might get a few chuckles today. notably one instance where a character says "Clever dick", in reference to a police officer. While the series doesn't shy away from depicting drug smuggling and use, these days readers are likely to raise an eyebrow when a ship's captain claims to only be carrying "coke." Coke being a fuel source, not the drug.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Skut in The Red Sea Sharks.
  • Pablo in The Broken Ear. He turns evil again by the time of Tintin and the Picaros.
  • The Incans in Prisoners of the Sun;notably Huascar, who started making the turn far earlier in the book than the rest of them did.
  • Ranko the Gorilla in The Black Island is a nonhuman example.
• Henpecked Husband: General Alcazar of all people. Leads to an amusing moment in the Nelvana series when he leaves behind a note for his wife when he starts his revolution.

  Alcazar: P.S. Due to the revolution, I will not be home in time to cook dinner.

• Hero Stole My Bike: A favorite trope of Hergé. Whenever Tintin is pursued by some mooks, there will be a car, airplane, or motor boat waiting for him to board.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen:
  • Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch, the dictator of Borduria. Being the ultimate higher-up of such villains as Colonel Sponsz, he could be considered the real Big Bad of The Calculus Affair, Tintin and the Picaros and possibly the Moon books,^note The ruler of Borduria at the time of "King Ottokar's Sceptre" is not named, but seems unlikely to be Kûrvi-Tasch, as the Bordurian aircraft Tintin steals has different markings which do not include the moustache that became omnipresent in "The Calculus Affair". Possibly Kûrvi-Tasch ousted his predecessor after the failure of the plot to take over Syldavia in "Sceptre". but never throws in a personal appearance — all we ever see of him is the occasional statue.
  • General Tapioca barely manages to avert this status. Despite being an apparently brutal dictator and the enemy of General Alcazar, he wasn't actually seen in The Broken Ear or The Red Sea Sharks. He finally appeared in person in the last completed book, Tintin and the Picaros.
• Hollywood Healing: You can't keep these guys down! Tintin is more than enough proof. He has survived big falls, several gunshots and hits to the head, chloroform, near-drowning and too many fights to count.
• Home Base: Marlinspike Hall becomes Tintin, Haddock and Calculus' homebase from Red Rackham's Treasure on.
• How Unscientific!: While most Tintin stories don't feature any sort of supernatural elements, there are a few times this trope pops up. A yeti and floating monks appear in Tintin in Tibet, aliens are present in Flight 714 and an unusual substance found on a meteorite defies physics in The Shooting Star. Both Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun also contain elements that are supposedly magic in origin such as a psychic's vision and a curse, as well as a fireball that appears out of nowhere and vanishes along with an Incan mummy.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: Hergé wasn't allowed to have cursing in the books, so he had Captain Haddock do this instead. It repeated itself so many times that it became not only a Running Gag, but a character trait.
• Hypnotic Eyes: The Fakir in Cigars of the Pharaoh is a hypnotist. In The Seven Crystal Balls, another hypnotist appears, though he uses his gift in a stage act.
• I Am Very British: In The Black Island:

  Tintin:There's a car just ahead... crooks making a getaway... I simply must go after them.

  Triumph Herald Driver:Crooks? I say, what a lark! Hop in the caravan.

• Iconic Outfit: Tintin's plusfour pants. The Thompson's bowler hats, black suits and walking sticks. Captain Haddock's sailor hat, black jacket and blue sweater with an anchor on it.
• Iconic Sequel Character: All of the series' recurring cast except for Tintin and Snowy themselves qualify — the series started with a very Minimalist Cast and only gradually picked up a cast of recurring characters:
  • Thomson and Thompson first appear in the fourth book.
  • Bianca Castafiore first appears in the eighth book, though she doesn't really become a major recurring character until close to the end of the series.
  • Captain Haddock first appears in the ninth book.
  • Professor Calculus doesn't appear until the twelfth book.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • The knife-throwing villain from The Broken Ear has terrible aim, which becomes a plot point later on.
  • General Alcazar's soldiers, also from The Broken Ear. Pablo even lampshades this while he and Tintin are being shot at during their prison break:
    Pablo: Take no notice! They shoot like a bunch of drunks!
• Inconsistent Dub: One of the 7 victims of the Inca curse is named Marc Charlet in the original French version, in English, he's called Mark Falconer in "The Seven Crystal Balls" but is suddenly called Carling in "Prisoners of the Sun".
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Tintin. Professor Calculus too, as he refuses to shake hands with a representative of general Tapioca in Tintin of the Picaros, because of his evil regime.
• Insane Equals Violent: Zig-zagged - An important plot point is that the enemies of the drug-smuggling gang from the Cigars of the Pharaoh & Blue Lotus arc are disposed of by poisoning by the Rajijah Juice. Victims of the Rajijah juice aren't typically violent, but rather, total Cloud Cuckoo Lander-types - though two of them are violent: Sarcophagus, who is influenced by a hypnotist, and Didi.
• Insistent Terminology: Remember, Professor Calculus isn't deaf. He's just "a little hard of hearing".
• Intergenerational Friendship: All of Tintin's friends are either much older or much younger than he is.
• Island of Mystery: He's been to a few:
  • The island of Flight 714 has caves, ancient ruins, ancient ruins in caves, anomalous physical properties and is ultimately a landing site for alien spacecraft.
  • The crashed meteor in The Shooting Star becomes a Mysterious Island with giant plants and insects.
  • The Black Island contains ruins and a mysterious, dangerous beast which turns out to be a gorilla. In Scotland.
• I Want My Jetpack:
  • The space hardware used on the Moon mission is in many ways more advanced than any equipment that has ever been taken to space in Real Life: a nuclear fission-powered rocket engine that provides constant acceleration (and deceleration) at 1 G for the entire trip, hard-shelled spacesuits, and a pressurized three-person tank.
  • The Carreidas 160 seen in Flight 714 is a supersonic private jet with variable-geometry wings, like a Concorde crossed with an F-14.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Max Bird and Trickler. In the Belvision animated adaptation, they are captured after they show up again during the treasure hunt.
  • The Fakir, but only in the redrawn version of The Blue Lotus. In the original serial, he is mentioned as having been recaptured right before Tintin heads to Shanghai.
  • Miller, the ominous Big Bad of the two Moon books is given no comeuppance. In fact, the characters don't even know he exists at the end of the story.
• Kick the Dog: Several villains try to take shot at Snowy even before he does anything to warrant their attention.
• Kitsch Collection: The Kleptomaniac in The Secret of the Unicorn keeps a collection of stolen wallets, alphabetically sorted, along with date of theft, which he proudly boasts of assembling in 3 months!! To show the magnitude of how often they've been pickpocketed, every single one of the 3 dozen or so wallets under the letter T belongs to the Thompsons! Actually saves the day when he pinches Max Bird's wallet with the two parchments in it
• The Klan:
  • The secret society in Cigars of the Pharaoh look suspisciously like the Ku Klux Klan: all dressed in large hoods.
  • Peggy Alcazar was also based on a Klan member, whom Hergé saw on television.
• Known by the Postal Address: On various occasions, it is established that Tintin lives in an apartment in Rue de Labrador no.26 in Brussels. Although there is no Labrador street in Brussels, there is a Newfoundland street which houses the same working-class apartment buildings that make up the fictional Labrador street. Eventually when the Hergé museum in Louvain-La-Neuve was built, the city fathers decided to call the access road 'Rue du Labrador' just so the museum could have the official address of no. 26.
• Lame Pun Reaction: One from the audiobook version of Secret of the Unicorn:
  Tintin: What did you say the name of the pickpocket was again?
  Thompson or Thomson: Aristides Silk.
  Tintin: Well I think it's time we "arrest-ided" him.
  (Various noises of disgust.)
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The revelation that Rastapopoulos in The Blue Lotus is the bad guy is pretty lame if you have read the albums where he later appears.
• Laughably Evil: In Flight 714, both Allan and Rastapopoulos are less serious and more funny. The latter also has funny scenes in Tintin and the Lake of Sharks.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Al Capone appears in person (the only person to do so), and Hergé has several Creator Cameos (particularly in the Animated Adaptation. Numerous other real people appear thinly disguised (such as Jacques Bergier in Flight 714) or in the background. Other well-known thinly disguised real life persons are gun-runner Henry de Monfreid (who saves Tintin in The Cigars of the Pharaoh) and arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff (here called Bazaroff), who sells guns to both sides in The Broken Ear.
• Literal Cliff Hanger: Many times, not surprising considering the number of regular CliffHangers. In Tintin in America, for example, Tintin survives by getting caught on a bush and finding a natural tunnel to the top of the cliff through blind luck.
• Live-Action Adaptation: There's been two of them: Tintin and the Golden Fleece and Tintin and the Blue Oranges.
• Lost in Translation: Many of the names and "foreign" words are from Brussels dialect (Flemish) and so don't make sense in English, e.g. Bagarre (brawl), Kalish Ben Ezab (licorice water, Brussels slang for a bad coffee). Bab El Ehr (babbler) still works, as does Wadesdah ("What is there?").
• Meaningful Name: A "picaro" is a picaresque rascal/hero, while Tintin's Dutch name, Kuifje, literally refers to an odd tuft of hair like the one the hero sports.
• Mistaken for Destitute: The story Flight 714 has our protagonists meet a Corrupt Corporate Executive named Lazlo Carreidas, who is slovenly and rather sickly-looking. When he first appears in the story, Captain Haddock confuses him for a homeless man that managed to wander into the airport's lobby and sneaks some money into Carreidas' hat when a gust of wind takes it off his head. When Carreidas appears a couple of scenes later, Haddock confuses Carreidas' assistant for the man himself and thinks (but thankfully doesn't says aloud) that "Carreidas" must be quite the humanitarian if he decided to help that "helpless old man".
• Murder by Suicide: A favorite was to have the villains goons try to make Tintin jump off a cliff in order to Make It Look Like an Accident.
• The Namesake: The titular sharks only show up at the end of The Red Sea Sharks, which may explain why the English title translation is an outlier for an adventure everyone else knows roughly as "Coke on Board". The significance of the title in The Broken Ear also takes a while to come into focus.
• Narrating the Obvious: The target group was children, hence it's not surprising that many actions are commented on by characters in order to explain points that may be missed by inexperienced readers.
• National Stereotypes: The comic strip has often been accused of this, though it was Fair for Its Day and most of the time, foreigners are both good and bad characters. Hergé also subverted these stereotypes, like in The Blue Lotus where stereotypes about Chinese people are debunked and The Castafiore Emerald in which prejudices about the Roma people turn out to be false.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: While it later became an analogy for Commie Land, pre-war Borduria (King Ottokar's Sceptre) is clearly a fascist dictatorship, right down to using German built Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes. Dr. Müller (The Black Island and others) and Dr. Krollspell (Flight 714) have also been suggested to be Nazis/ex-Nazis due to their rather unethical ways of conducting experiments. Ironically, when the real Nazis occupied Belgium, they banned The Black Island because it was set in Britain, their enemy, while King Ottokar's Sceptre was still allowed, despite having an almost obvious Nazi-analogue.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the earliest books, Tintin is happy minding his own business, until the villains attempts at getting rid of him out of fear that he will bust them eventually get him on their tracks.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Kûrvi-Tasch, the dictator of Borduria, is a thinly veiled Expy of Josef Stalin, right down to the thick moustache.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: There is hardly any romance or a hint of sexuality of any sort in the whole series beyond chaste crushes. Word of God states that he wanted to avoid Shipping in his stories. The fact that there is only one recurring major female character also plays a role.
• No One Should Survive That!: Almost half of Tintin escapes from death are due to pure dumb luck or a Contrived Coincidence of sorts.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: At the end of Red Rackham's Treasure, Capt. Haddock and Tintin buy Haddock's ancestral home, the luxurious Marlinspike Hall, with Prof. Calculus' help and find Sir Francis' treasure. From this point on, Haddock and Calculus live there as wealthy gentlemen, with Tintin visiting them so often that Marlinspike starts to operate as home base during adventures.
• Nuclear Torch Rocket: "Explorers on the Moon" has Professor Calculus' experimental nuclear rocket move the character's ship (paid for by the Syldavian Space Agency) fast enough to get to the moon inside a day (it takes three with Apollo-era oxygen/kerosene engines), and it moves fast enough to generate a comfortable 1G. Hilarity Ensues when it's turned off for the deceleration burn halfway there and everyone floats around helplessly for a bit. The engine is handwaved to be small enough to fit into the rocket by saying it's made of a super-material called "Calculite," which has a melting point in the millions of degrees
• Odd Couple:
  • Tintin and Haddock. The former is a neat, organized teenaged/young adult, chaste hero and morally upright. The latter is a bad-tempered, middle aged sailor, an alcoholic (while not always drunk, he's incapable of drinking water or non-alcoholic drinks), prone to spouting (made up) profanities at the slightest provocation.
  • General Alcazar and Peggy Alcazar. The former is a South American revolutionary with a long string of victories followed by defeats. The latter is a domineering, all-American virago with haircurlers. They're married.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The earliest albums went: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America and... Cigars of the Pharaoh. From that point on, though, the "Tintin in Geographic Location" formula was discarded for many years until Tintin in Tibet.
• Older Than They Look: This applies to Herge's character design, because Tintin doesn't even look old enough to drink, yet he's presumably an adult (his age is never stated). According to the Word of God, he ages from fourteen-ish to seventeen in the course of the series.
• One Degree of Separation: The unfinished Tintin and Alph-Art was poised to bring back some one-off characters as well, such as the Bird Brothers and Ivan Sakharine, although Hergé passed away before the plot was developed enough to explain why.
• One-Hour Work Week: Tintin is supposedly a journalist. This is rarely mentioned, and the only time he is ever seen writing an article or explicitly doing actual journalism is in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Played with - Tintin will, on occasion, be wearing one of these. Sometimes, it works - other times it doesn't. It's actually parodied a few times that someone who looks like Tintin in an obvious disguise isn't him.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis: Whenever someone familiar with Tintin hears the Jewel Song from the opera Faust by Gounod, it's difficult not to think of Bianca Castafiore.
• The Pratfall: At least once per episode. In later volumes this will fall to clumsy characters like Haddock or the Thom(p)son, but in early volumes, Tintin himself has to take the pratfalls.
  • In The Castafiore Emerald, everyone except Castafiore herself has a turn at tripping at over the broken step.
• Protagonist Title: Tintin.
• Punny Name: Almost too many to list, but notable examples include:
  • Captain Haddock (a species of fish)
  • Jolyon Wagg => Séraphin Lampion (a lampion is a cheap lamp made of paper and a candle given at fairs)
  • Kûrvi-Tasch (curvy 'stache) => Plekszy-Gladz (plexiglas)
  • Mr. Cutts the Butcher ; his original name is "Sanzot", which is read exactly like the French phrase "sans os" ("boneless")
  • Professor Calculus
  • Mr. Bolt the Builder
  • Lazlo Carreidas the millionaire (four aces in your hand)
  • Many names and places are in fact bastardizations of the Marol dialect, a Flemish dialect spoken in Brussels. Hergé's mother spoke it and he remembered many phrases and expressions he used for his fictional foreigners. The Native Amazonians speak it in The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros, as do the Syldavians and Bordurians. Sheik Bab El Ehr ' name, for instance is a pun on babbeler (talkative person).
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Several events in the albums were directly inspired by major events of the 20th century, including the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s and the Cold War. Other events were references to things that happened in Hergé's private life, such as his friendship with a Chinese foreign exchange student named Chang (Tchang in The Blue Lotus) and a repair man who always promised to come over and fix his broken stair case, but never did (The Castafiore Emerald).
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Tintin is calm and smart (blue) in contrast to the hot-tempered Captain Haddock (red).
• Red Scare:
  • This trope re-emerges (albeit very subtly) in Tintin in Tibet, where Tintin's friends from The Blue Lotus inexplicably no longer live in Shanghai (which had become part of a communist state between the events of the two books), but in Hong Kong.
• Related in the Adaptation: Thomson and Thompson really are twin brothers in the Belvision series, with identical moustaches.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: Calculus, notably in The Calculus Affair where he invents an ultrasonic device and is kidnapped for the purpose of using it as a weapon of mass destruction.
• Repetitive Name: Both title and character name, with Tintin.
• Retcon: Done a few times with the redrawn versions of the color stories. For instance, the Thompsons are inserted into the first panel of Tintin in the Congo, while a previously anonymous smuggler is turned into Allan in Cigars of the Pharaoh. The original version of Land of Black Gold didn't occur in a generic-looking fictional Arabic country, but in British Mandate Palestine.
• Rogues Gallery: Even though he isn't necessarily known for having a Rogues Gallery in the way of e.g. American superheroes, there are a surprising number of antagonists who show up for at least two outings in the series:
  • Al Capone (Tintin in the Congo; Tintin in America)
  • Rastapopoulos (Retconned cameo into Tintin in America; Cigars of the Pharaoh; The Blue Lotus; The Red Sea Sharks; Flight 714; possibly "Tintin and the Alph-Art")
  • Allan (retconned into Cigars of the Pharaoh; The Crab with the Golden Claws; The Red Sea Sharks; Flight 714)
  • Dawson (The Blue Lotus; The Red Sea Sharks)
  • General Tapioca (behind-the-scenes roles in The Broken Ear and The Red Sea Sharks; then on-panel in Tintin and the Picaros)
  • Pablo (The Broken Ear; Tintin and the Picaros)
  • Dr. Müller (The Black Island; Land of Black Gold; The Red Sea Sharks)
  • Colonel Jorgen (King Ottokar's Sceptre; Explorers on the Moon)
  • Sheik Bab El Ehr (Land of Black Gold; behind-the-scenes role in The Red Sea Sharks)
  • Colonel Sponsz (The Calculus Affair; Tintin and the Picaros)
  • Additionally, both Gibbons (The Blue Lotus) and Trickler (The Broken Ear) were slated to reappear in the unfinished Tintin and Alph-Art, though there's little to suggest they were to return in anything more than cameo roles.
• Running Gag: Many throughout the series.
  • Haddock's drunken shenanigans.
  • Calculus being hard of hearing/his Berserk Button (being called a goat).
  • Thompson/Thomson injuring themselves.
  • People calling Marlinspike Hall trying to reach Mr. Cutts, the butcher.
  • Castafiore's ear-piercingly loud singing of Gounod's Jewel Aria.
  • The Calculus Affair has this with a piece of sticking plaster that keeps following Haddock around.
  • Snowy getting his tail or a paw trodden on.
  • The Temple of the Sun, in which Captain Haddock gets spat on by annoyed llamas. At the end of the book, he returns the favor by spitting water on one (who hadn't done anything).
• Scenery Porn: The art work and detail in the backgrounds of Tintin are a marvel to look at. Much of it was done by Hergé's assistants, though.
• Screaming Woman: Though not exactly screaming, Bianca Castafiore's opera singing has the effect of scaring off humans and animals because it is so loud and able to shatter glass.
  • Although Bianca Castafiore's singing voice is remarkably loud, there's very few occasion that actually features actual glass-shattering effect in-universe. When Tintin met her for the first time, he jokingly said to himself that it was lucky that the automobile they were riding had safety glass (so that it didn't break because of her voice).
  • 2011 film showed said actual glass-shattering effect, not only as an inside joke, but also an important plot point.
• Series Continuity Error: In the English version of The Seven Crystal Balls, Tintin mentions encountering Bianca Castafiore in the Red Sea, which took place several books later.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the English dub of the Nelvana version of The Red Sea Sharks, Bianca Castafiore mispronounces Captain Haddock's name as Captain Harlock. Ironic considering the Dub Name Change entry in Harlock.
  • USA is described a similar plutocracy as in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
• Shown Their Work:
  • After Hergé announced at the end of Cigars of the Pharaoh that Tintin's next adventure was to be set in China, he was introduced to Zhang Chongren, a Chinese art student living in Belgium, who offered to consult on The Blue Lotus in order to avoid the stereotypes and caricatures typical of depictions of his homeland. Hergé accepted the offer, leading to a lifetime friendship. Zhang was even included in the story and known as Chang Chong-Chen. A humorous sequence has Tintin telling Chang about European stereotypes of China, which leads him to think that the Europeans are crazy.
  • Hergé was particularly meticulous in his research. He kept a huge collection of photographs, newspaper articles, and anything else possibly useful in future stories, and so many places and objects in the comic books are real places. For instance, the house of Prof. Calculus' Italian friend in The Calculus Affair is a real house that is still standing to this day. Furthermore, much of the scientific information in the books is accurate, or at least was accurate for the knowledge of the time, some apparent errors being a case of Science Marches On. In a odd case to Science Marching a 180 Degree Turn, one of Hergé's most well known "mistakes" was in depicting ice on the Moon (Explorers on the Moon), but since Indian astronomers have indeed found ice there, we probably owe him an apology.
• Sigil Spam:
  • The symbol of Kih-Oskh in The Cigars of the Pharaoh is used on cigars and the costumes of the members of the secret organisation. And in The Blue Lotus, Rastapopoulos wears it as a tattoo on his arm.
  • In The Calculus Affair, the symbol of the Bordurian regime are "the whiskers of Kûrvi-Tasch," a stylized representation of the dictator's moustache. It's absolutely all over the country, from flags and official buildings to military rank insignia, hotel lamps and car radiators. This goes as far as written and spoken Bordurian, which uses a circumflex shaped like a curved moustache.
• Single Serving Friend: In The Shooting Star, Tintin and Haddock are stuck when the local fuel company, which is owned by their adversaries, refuses to supply them. Fortunately, they happen to run into Haddock's old friend Captain Chester, whom he describes as "a shipmate for more than twenty years", but later on he's only ever mentioned in passing, like in The Castafiore Emerald (when Haddock is falsely announced to be engaged to the diva, he's among the first to send a telegram to congratulate him).
• Skintone Sclerae: Most of the characters are drawn with black dots for eyes.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Somewhere in the middle but leaning more towards the idealistic end.
  • This is reflected in the characters. Generally speaking, Tintin is the idealist, modern Knight in Shining Armor, while Haddock is less trusting, more cynical, and often expresses his (eternally frustrated) wish to drop the heroics to peacefully enjoy his retirement.
• Space Cold War: Syldavia and Borduria are used as a No Real Countries Were Harmed version of this. And, of course, the real thing was going on in the background.
• Steel Ear Drums: Various occasions where explosions, gunfire and other loud events don't seem to matter despite characters being far too close and without hearing protection. Notably:
  • Mr Baxter's proximity to both the rocket takeoff in Destination Moon and its landing in Explorers on the Moon.
  • The sequence in Land of Black Gold where Tintin is trapped in a room full of fireworks going off.
  • The volcanic eruption in Flight 714. Volcanic eruptions in Real Life have been known to cause hearing loss and even rupture eardrums of those miles away, let alone those floating just offshore in a little liferaft.
• Symbol Swearing: Used when the characters really have to swear, usually with Captain Haddock.
• Tap on the Head: Done oh so frequently to Tintin which is a practically a tradition among Franco-Belgian Comics, to the point where his tendency to get knocked unconscious by the bad guys has been repeatedly mocked and Lampshaded by the fanbase.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Jolyon Wagg, the most obnoxious and irritating man Haddock has ever met and who keeps inviting himself to his house.
• Threatening Shark:
  • Both inverted and subverted in Red Rackham's Treasure, Haddock almost gets his hand bitten off by a shark and then we discover the famous shark submarine designed by Calculus. Later Tintin ventures underwater in his seadiving suit and has to face a shark who swallows a valuable chest and then the rum bottle that Tintin had been using as a Improvised Weapon.
  • Likewise, the Lake of Sharks animated movie (although this wasn't written by Hergé) only features one actual shark, which is seen in an aquarium tank at the very beginning of the movie (the lake's "sharks" are the bandits).
• Tour Guide Detective: Half of the stories have Tintin solving mysteries in a variety of exotic locations; some real, some imaginary (Syldavia, Borduria, San Theodoros). While the earlier volumes feature poorly-researched and stereotypical depictions of the USSR, the Congo and the USA, from The Blue Lotus on these locations are exhaustively researched and stunningly detailed, often depicting genuine locations.
• Traveling Salesman: The Portugese man Oliveira de Figueira, who is always seen selling stuff in the Sahara Desert and helps Tintin out a few times.
• Tuckerization: One of the mummified archaeologists in Cigars of the Pharaoh is named "E.P. Jacobini", from Hergé's friend E.P. Jacobs (author of the Blake and Mortimer comic book series).
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Tintin to his friends in general, and Snowy and Haddock to Tintin in particular. This dynamic is best exemplified in Tintin in Tibet, where Tintin is ready to go across the world face the Hymalayas just on the one small chance his friend Tchang is still alive. Haddock believes the enterprise futile and irrational, but follows him anyway.
  • Interestingly, Tintin and the Picaros reverses this, with Haddock jumping at the opportunity to go to San Theodoros to help the Castafiore, while the more Properly Paranoid Tintin initally refuses to go, but (after a few days) eventually comes along anyway.
• Writing for the Trade: Averted in the early books, where the last panel of almost every page constitute a Cliffhanger, often resolved in the first panel of the next page as something completely innocuous. Later books weren't quite as heavy on the cliffhangers, though they still happen from time to time.

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