References to Calvin and Hobbes

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Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin and Hobbes reached considerable heights of popularity, which as of 2006 it continues to maintain. Many later artists incorporated references to Watterson's work within their own, and Watterson's cartoon duo continue to appear throughout popular culture. While many Calvinian references are homages or artistic allusions, Calvin and his tiger have also appeared on illegal merchandise produced expressly against Watterson's wishes. In addition, fans who have lamented the strip's 1995 conclusion have continued it in fanfic, much of which may potentially fall outside of copyright law's fair use provisions.

Contents

[edit] Written works

  • In 1992's X-Factor Annual, a short episode entitled "Cal And Guido" written by Peter David shows an older Calvin (now known as Cal) who hires X-Factor member Guido as a bodyguard for protection against Moe, the bully. Susie also appears in the comic with a shortened name (Sue) and Hobbes' face appears on the shirt of a fellow bully on the first page. The characters in this story are very much similar to Watterson's characters: Moe's speech is written sloppily within the bubble, Calvin is very sarcastic and self-centered (and takes advantage of his new-found power) and "drifts off in class" pretending to be a "space cadet" (an obvious reference to Calvin's low attention span and his fantasies of being Spaceman Spiff), and Susie threatens to tell Calvin's mother about his mischief. Another interesting note: Calvin's clothes and hair are the same as in the original comic strip, as is Susie's hair.
  • In a Mad Magazine parody of Batman: The Animated Series (originally printed in issue #322, later reprinted in the hardcover Mad About Superheroes), Calvin makes a starring appearance, playing the role of Ribbin'. In one panel, Hobbes can also be seen on a poster in the background. Also, in a parody of School of Rock, Calvin can be seen on the schoolground being mugged by Charlie Brown.
  • Sam Kieth's The Maxx has a few panels at the beginning of one issue that feature a boy dressed in a similar manner to Calvin with a pet ocelot named Nietzsche.

[edit] Comic strips

  • The ninth installment of the webcomic Cat and Girl is an allusion to Calvin and Hobbes' predictably disastrous toboggan adventures, going so far as to mimic the artwork of one such ride panel by panel. The cartoon has a strong metafictional feel due to both the dialogue and the title ("Cat and Girl are Highly Derivative 2"). The strip, drawn by Dorothy Gambrell, is particularly suited to this sort of homage-parody in that one of the characters is, in Girl's words, "a large anthropomorphic cat."
  • The titular character of Jef Mallett's comic Frazz bears a striking resemblance to Calvin, both in his physical appearance and his role as—in the words of Gene Weingarten—a "brilliant underachiever." Mallet has acknowledged many times that he was heavily influenced as an artist by Bill Watterson's work, and while he asserts that the similarity is unintentional, he has not gone so far as to call it coincidental.
  • Bill Amend's FoxTrot has referenced Calvin and Hobbes several times, including a strip in which the character Jason Fox appears dressed like Calvin and holding a stuffed tiger, a strip in which Roger Fox wears a Calvin and Hobbes T-Shirt, and several strips featuring Calvin within a large crowd. One store where Jason and Marcus looked for rocket equipment was titled "Calvin's Hobbies." Moreover, some of the characters occasionally reference a newspaper strip entitled "Luther and Locke," a reference to Bill Watterson's approach to naming Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin and Luther are both religious figures, Hobbes and Locke are both philosophers). One FoxTrot strip, done specifically as an homage to Calvin and Hobbes, features snow effigies of Calvin and Hobbes creating yet another tableau to add to their Snowmen's House of Horrors.
  • In a Sunday strip of Jim Davis' Garfield comic, Garfield locks his owner Jon outside of the house when he goes to get a newspaper. People gather around him, staring at Jon's embarrassing pajamas. Among the crowd of people are two characters who resemble Calvin and Hobbes.
  • In Bil Keane's long running Family Circus, there was a Sunday strip where Billy was in his bedroom reading Calvin and Hobbes, and wondered how Hobbes became a live tiger when no one else was around. One of the stuffed teddy bears answers Billy with "...it's all in little Calvin's imagination", a point which, actually, Watterson contests.
  • A "Dilbert" Sunday comic from 1993 begins with Dilbert's computer sucking him into the internet, which is drawn like a somewhat crude fantasy comic. Dilbert exclaims, "Wow! It's like a 'Calvin And Hobbes' fantasy, but without the artistic look to it!"
  • There is a Far Side comic which shows a number of television monitors, with Far Side characters "spying" on other comic strips. One monitor shows Hobbes attacking Calvin.

There is another comic where a group of air-traffic controllers are frantically monitoring the skies of "toontown". Spaceman Spiff appears along with various other characters from different comics.

  • Several strips of Off the Mark reference Calvin and Hobbes including what really happened to Calvin and Hobbes being part of an imaginary friend support group.
  • The Boondocks lampooned strip creator Aaron McGruder's former business relationship with Jayson Blair, a New York Times reporter who was caught plagiarizing and fabricating articles, by running a series of strips apologizing for McGruder's own supposed plagiarisms and fabrications, including one that apologized for a supposed former edition featuring Calvin shouting "BLACK POWER!"
  • In one strip of The Boondocks, two of the main characters are about to go down a snowy hill on a toboggan when the first one chickens out, saying that he doesn't want to share the same fate as a third boy who was struck by a crazy white blonde kid with a stuffed tiger.
  • The Big Picture, a semi-autobiographical comic strip written by Lennie Peterson, often featured the lead character and creator reading or in some way referencing Calvin and Hobbes. For most of the strip, Lennie also had a "sidekick" in his cat (Ginger), who has her own thoughts, much like Hobbes is to Calvin.
  • In one strip of Liō, Liō sees a homeless person on the street with a sign reading "Retired too early, please help." Next to the homeless person is worn-out looking stuffed Hobbes. [1]
  • In the now defunct comic strip Bleak Street, published in the Indiana Daily Student, Calvin appeared on the campus of fictional Comstock University in January of 1996, after Calvin and Hobbes ended, ostensibly looking for somewhere else to live.
  • In late November/early December 2006 strips of Gasoline Alley, Calvin and Hobbes are mentioned as being residents of the "Old Comics Home" along with the protagonists of other now-defunct comic strips.

[edit] Film

  • The short film How My Next Door Neighbor Discovered Life on Mars (2005) contains Calvin's favorite breakfast cereal, "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs". In the movie, the "cereal" resembles chocolate bars floating in milk.
  • In the film Phenomenon, in a scene where John Travolta's character is reading in bed, a copy of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" can be seen.

[edit] Music

  • The Seattle group Pure Joy, which formed in the late 1980s, recorded a song entitled "Calvin and Hobbes" for their first album Unsung (1988).
  • The geek comedy rock group Lemon Demon recorded a one minute song named "Bill Watterson", after the creator of Calvin and Hobbes.
  • Bluegrass mandolinist Chris Thile included an homage to Calvin and Hobbes called "Club G.R.O.S.S." on his third album, "Not All Who Wander Are Lost." The title references Calvin and Hobbes club, "Get Rid Of Slimy girlS."
  • "Cereal Wars", a song by rock group AFI, references Calvin and Hobbes and "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs".

[edit] Television

  • In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode entitled "Rainy Daze", Babs Bunny has an imaginary space adventure reminiscent of Spaceman Spiff. Not only does Babs possess a costume and spaceship that are extremely similar to Spiff's, but a scene of an alien city is shown that is identical to one featured in Calvin and Hobbes.
  • During an episode in the eighth season of Friends, the characters Joey and Rachel are talking over dinner, and Joey says that he's wearing a Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt, one in which "Calvin is doing Hobbes". Upon seeing the shirt underneath his sweater, Rachel remarks, "Wow, I wouldn't think Hobbes would like that so much". The existence of such a T-shirt, of course, would be inconsistent with Watterson's stance against merchandising, though the obscene subject matter does seem consistant with the sort of crude, bootlegged Calvin and Hobbes material that has been produced over the years.
  • In an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Fatman and Littleboy," Bart opens up a homemade t-shirt stand. Moe Szyslak asks for a t-shirt "with Calvin peeing on Hobbes", a reference to the urinating-Calvin stickers illegally produced against Watterson's wishes and seen attached to car bumpers and windows.
  • The Robot Chicken episode, "Lust for Puppets", featured a segment where Calvin had various therapy methods due to him believing Hobbes is real and ends up in an asylum wearing a strait jacket with the delusion that he's on Mars.
  • In an episode of the short lived cartoon The Maxx based off the comic of the same name, a young blond boy who looks remarkably similar to Calvin is seen briefly in a hallway, where he is adressed as "Calvin" by an elderly woman.

[edit] Online

  • In 2000, the webcomic Sinfest featured a strip where two characters declare their "absolute, uncompromising originality"; they then remove their costumes, put on a new pair and walk away as Calvin and Hobbes. On the website's cast page, author Tatsuya Ishida admits that his character Slick is a "Calvin rip-off", though advanced in age to some point between fourteen and twenty-one.
  • In 2001, Galvin B. Chow wrote an article entitled "Fight Club: The Return of Hobbes", which postulates that the characters in the movie Fight Club (based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel) are in fact the characters of Calvin and Hobbes. The narrator corresponds to Calvin, Tyler Durden to Hobbes, and so forth.
  • Calvin made a guest appearance in an early Checkerboard Nightmare strip. As well, the last of the old Checkerboard Nightmare strips referenced the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip and one strip had Chex stating that "It's a Magical World", an obvious reference to the Calvin and Hobbes compilation of the same name.
  • Calvin made a few guest appearances in Melonpool, where he, along with Opus and a "Far Side kid", are trapped in a mysterious extradimensional space, one apparently reserved for comic strip characters whose services are no longer needed.
  • In one strip of Freefall, Sam, an alien, is referred to as causing the noodle incident. The robot character Sawtooth refers to "that spiky haired boy with the stuffed tiger", who tried to convince his mother that "space aliens" were responsible for the incident.
  • In an episode of Bonus Stage, the villain Stomach King and his imaginary evil partner, Brainio, are seen riding a wagon down a hill while discussing philosophy. The crash near a Ford plant, and Stomach King remarks that he has a sudden urge to pee on the plant's sign.
  • In one strip of the webcomic Kevin & Kell, Rudy and Fiona sled down a steep hill, reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes's daring downhill escapades. In one panel, a sign reveals that the slope has been dubbed "Hobbes' Hill." Another reference occurs when Kevin and Kell are searching for Kevin's mother in the wild, and an offscreen character (presumably Hobbes) is telling Calvin to "stop urinating on truck logos," referring to the illegally marketed decals portraying Calvin committing such acts. One more reference in Kevin and Kell pays tribute to the long-running strip the day after its retirement; Lindesfarne the hedgehog is seen dropping coins in a cup belonging to Hobbes, who is holding a sign reading "Will act wistful for food".
  • In the webcomic Sluggy Freelance, in several storylines that are a parody of Harry Potter, the characters corresponding to Crabbe and Goyle (Mr. Ugh and Mr. Clunk) appear outwardly almost identical to Moe and another similar bully who only appeared in one comic.
  • The Bruno the Bandit storyline "Sour Ron" shows the story's eponymous character having been traumatized as a child (then resembling Calvin) when his subjectively living teddy bear (with expressions and un-bearlike body shape reminiscent of Hobbes) was stolen by the comic's main character, who apparently looked like Moe when little. In the end, the bear seems to be a little "more" or differently real than Hobbes, as it ends up eating Ron.
  • VG Cats creator Scott Ramsoomair did a strip with Calvin and Hobbes which was removed due to "extreme suck". However, it was re-published as comic strip number 108[1].

[edit] Computer and video games

  • In Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, there is a chest in Nystul's bedroom which contains various books, one of which is Something Under The Bed Is Drooling.
  • Kingdom of Loathing makes a reference to dialogue within a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
  • Wing Commander has a member of the cat-like Kilrathi race with the callsign Hobbes.
  • The camera control program Coriander was named after the imaginary comic Commander Coriander Salamander and ‘er Single Hander Belly Lander mentioned in a Calvin and Hobbes.
  • In the game Psychonauts, here is a short time character named Mr.Bun, which is the name of Susie's stuffed rabbit.

[edit] External links

The following links were last verified 20 November 2006.


Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Characters
Calvin | Hobbes | Secondary characters
Terms and objects
Recurring themes | Horrendous Space Kablooie | Opposite Day | Transmogrifier | Noodle Incident
Other
Calvin and Hobbes in translation | List of Calvin and Hobbes books | References to Calvin and Hobbes | Setting of Calvin and Hobbes
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