Narrator: Would you please stop imitating me? It is starting to get very annoying.
"Supposedly Cousteau and his cronies invented the idea of putting walkie-talkies into the helmet. But we made ours with a special rabbit ear on the top so we could pipe in some music."
— Steve Zissou, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Whenever an oceanographer or marine biologist character must be shown on TV, there is a high chance that they will be based on Jacques Cousteau. They will speak with a French accent when talking about fish, and often wear a red woolly hat like he did.
A similar example would be how every TV terrestrial biologist/documentarian would resemble David Attenborough. We give it another five to ten years before they start basing characters off Steve Irwin (without it being a direct parody of him, that is). Compare Wildlife Commentary Spoof, of which this is a component. A subtrope of No Celebrities Were Harmed.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A 2011 series of commercials/
for the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD feature the character Marco LeMonde, "the world's laziest explorer". He follows this trope except for the fact that instead of conducting research out in the field, he goes to the aquarium.
- A 2013 advertisement for Sea World features a young boy walking around Sea World while spouting on about how beautiful the ocean is. He's wearing Cousteau's trademark blue button-up shirt and red knit watchcap.
Comic Books
- Submerman, a French comic from the 1960s and 70s, had the Cousteau-expy Captain Goujon as an ally of the Apparently Human Merman hero.
- Carthago, a French comic based on various myths and rumors about sea monsters, adapts an Urban Legend about Cousteau hiding a shocking discovery because The World Was Not Ready with the character of retired explorer Major Bertrand. (Bertrand being most famous by his military title and last name even mimics Cousteau being commonly called "Commandant Cousteau" in French media.)
Fan Works
- Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Captain Proton makes contact with the Fish People of Deep Sea Nine — a frog-like humanoid wearing a red watch cap.
"I am an aquanaut! Why do you theenk I 'ave thees outrageous accent, you silly Queen of Rocket Men?"
- In Hardcore Entertainment presents "Seven Does Voyager", Captain Janeway watches the distant descendant of David Attenborough present a documentary on tribbles, only to be rapidly buried under a pile of the Explosive Breeders.
Films — Live-Action
- The titular character of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Cousteau is explicitly mentioned as a rival of Steve Zissou at one point. (Steve does not, however, speak with a French accent at all.)
- The AM Today segment of The Kentucky Fried Movie features a marine biologist with a French accent talking about the poisonous fish, clearly meant as a Cousteau Expy, and used for all sorts of Boom Mic Gags.
Live-Action TV
- The classic The Carol Burnett Show sketch "Jacques Too Close'' staring Havey Korman and Tim Conway.
- A sketch from The Ben Stiller Show features Andy Dick as an alcoholic Cloudcuckoolander version of Cousteau who does bizarre impressions of manatees.
- Flight of the Conchords: Referenced in "Foux du fafa" in which Jemain and Bret show off their very limited smattering of French vocabulary by walking through a grocery store and naming items they pull from shelves. When Bret pulls out a fish, he calls it "Jacques Cousteau!"
Music
- One of the Bob Rivers Christmas albums include a sketch entitled "The Under Tree World of Jacques Cousteau", in which a Cousteau impersonator narrates about exploring underneath a Christmas tree, instead of underneath the sea.
- The novelty surf pop song "Jacques Cousteau" by the band The Young Jacques features spoken vocals from a Cousteau impersonator.
- Ogden Edsl, a novelty music act which gained recognition on the Dr. Demento Show, released a skit called "Jean Paul" which also featured a Cousteau impersonator.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street features a sketch with "Captain Elmo Cousteau", who goes exploring the depths of the ocean for "the treasure of the missing soap".
Radio
- "The Underseen World of Claude Jateau" series on Pacifica radio in the early 90s, notable for being the length of real documentaries, complete with imitating other characters and telling coherent (if comical) stories.
Tabletop Games
- Not a marine biologist, but the narrator in one of the Wizards of the Coast videos for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons uses a silly French accent and speaks as though he's describing a "rare species" (D&D Players).
Video Games
- Back to the Future: The Game has Jacques Douteux, a diver at the science exhibition in Episode 5. His suit is taken by Doc Brown as a disguise.
- Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon features the seemingly antagonistic marine biologist Henri Crousteau, who reports his battle with Crypto in Wildlife Commentary Spoof style.
Web Animation
- The Demented Cartoon Movie: "Today in ze underwater world, we explore ze territory of ze dreaded bubble fish."
Western Animation
- Averted, oddly enough, by the animated series Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Tales, where Cousteau's voice actor is Canadian.
- The French-accented narrator from SpongeBob SquarePants is intended as an homage to Jacques Cousteau, as he documents the antics of the titular character and those around him as if he were narrating a nature documentary. In the few episodes he appears (as a live-action human), he even wears a hard-hat diving suit with a red beanie on top of the helmet.
- The Simpsons: Bart Simpson in the The Tracey Ullman Show short "Bathtime".
- The French Guy on Sealab 2021, whose lines were always subtitled even though he spoke in Just a Stupid Accent. "For me, ze ocean was a return to the womb."
- An episode of Muppet Babies has Gonzo pretend to be Jacques Cousteau.
- In Tiny Toon Adventures, Fifi la Fume naturally does one hunting for the "mysterious Sea Minkee (monkey)". Only slightly subverted in that Fifi stayed high and dry with Plucky and Hamton in the boat while Elmyra does all the chasing.
- In the episode of Babar where a sea serpent is discovered in Celesteville's lake, Babar calls in an old friend to investigate — a bird based on Jacques Cousteau who rambles on about "ze astonishing wondairs of ze deep" at every opportunity.
- Eek! The Cat has a maritime episode centered around one Jaques Le Duck.
- The leader of the diving team exploring the Titanic in the Superfriends episode "Terror on the Titanic", right down to the red cap. His divers even call him "Jacques" at one point.
- In Seven Little Monsters episode "My Favorite Crustacean" Three spends the episode as the French-accented "Jacques Threesteau" as he exposits to the cast about the ocean.
- Cousin Fethry from DuckTales (2017) wears a red knitted cap and works in an undersea laboratory befriending sea life. The kids actually mistake him for a marine biologist when they first meet. He doesn't have a French accent, though.
- In the first episode of Pinky and the Brain, Brain is aboard a submarine and challenged as to his identity, freezes and declares that he is Jacques Cousteau, then ad-libs such a convincing impression of the man that the authorities are briefly convinced and shaken in their mission to destroy him. (The gambit ends when Pinky audibly says, "Good Cousteau, Brain!")
