"Look at the new porn book! Can I buy it? ...I take it as a yes!"
— Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin: The Abridged Series is an abridged series created by cyanrazorCel that began in October 2014. In similar fashion to the first wave of abridged series, the creator is responsible for all of the writing, editing, and acting. While it retains some elements from the source material, its surrealist presentation stretches the concept of a parody to unparalleled lengths.
Overview[]
For the most part, similarities to The Adventures of Tintin begin and end with the source visuals. Episodic and overarching plots are entirely unique to the abridged series, and characters are extreme and absurd deviations from their original counterparts, sometimes with no recognizable elements in common (including their names).
Being an abridged series, each episode is shorter than its original counterpart. However, their order and how they connect is spontaneous. For example, the first episode is based on The Secret of the Unicorn and the second Cigars of the Pharaoh; both episodes are part of multi-episode story arcs and feature a wide chronological gap, presented in reverse order on top of that. A more recent example is Red Rackham's Treasure, the direct sequel to The Secret of the Unicorn, debut episode for Professor Calculus in the original series, and fourteenth episode of the abridged series.
The series is characterized by surrealist humor. Recurring gags include:
- Tintin and Captain Haddock are a couple, and most of the other characters are gay as well to account for the lack of females.
- The many questionable and deadly business practices of Chipotle, impacting the characters and attracting the attention of other restaurant franchises. The location in Salem (state not specified) is especially notorious as a testing ground for them.
- The main cast's great affinity for opium, cocaine, and alcohol. Taverns are known for serving the first two.
- Tintin's obsession with the Jazz Phone Radio, a radio station accessible by phone that plays jazz.
- Tintin is chronically uncertain of his favorite activity, although rock climbing is up there.
- Tintin and the Captain sometimes say their passwords to Internet services by accident.
- "I never said I pinky promised!"
- "Daaaamn youuuuu!"
Episodes generally begin with sequences of bizarre and incongruous lines that are then expanded on and explained throughout the rest of the episode using the source video material.
Major characters[]
Tintin: An aggressive, impulsive, and insensitive traveller whose primary interests include opium, the Jazz Phone Radio, and his love-hate relationship with Chipotle. Constantly antagonizes the other characters, and unlike them, is never on the receiving end of such actions himself.
The Captain: Tintin's primary companion and romantic partner, united by a similar demeanor and attitude toward life, although less cynical. (Never referred to as "Captain Haddock".)
Thomson and Thompson: Two agents who are always "on a mission" that explains their actions for the episode. Despite being part of the police force, they manufacture both cocaine and a unique brand of "special black opium". While their names are a frequent joke concept in the original series, a more realistic approach is taken here: no character ever attempts to differentiate them.
Professor Calculus: A clueless academic who frequently accompanies Tintin and the Captain. Casually enjoys amateur opera and singing.
Snowy: Tintin's dog, who sometimes comments on happenings in a low voice. The most tame of the bunch by far. It is perpetually unclear whether or not the other characters can understand or hear him, on account of how little difference that fact would make in a world like Tintin Abridged.
M. Night Shyamalan: Taking the place of Tintin's arch-nemesis Rastapopoulos, often seen directing a film the other characters find distasteful.
A shot from episode 3.5's intro. Each episode has a different one.
Episodes[]
Episode 01 - The Secret of the Unicorn (Transcript): Tintin purchases a coveted model ship. He and the Captain visit a Chipotle in Salem. The two are attacked by another gay couple trying to steal their stock of cocaine.
Episode 02 - Cigars of the Pharaoh (Transcript): Tintin interferes in the production of the movie The Last Airbender. In the process, he wins a raffle for a padded cell and spends a night in the Wish Room at Hotel Dusk.
Episode 03 - Flight 714 (Transcript): The main cast take a flight to a deserted island. Following a series of misadventures, they become stranded in the ocean and M. Night Shyamalan is driven to resign from directing.
Episode 03.5 - The Lost Episode [Destination Moon] (Transcript): Tintin gets the Captain fired from his job by spreading the rumor that all of his porn is in JPEG format. Professor Calculus ends up filling his position. Originally withheld from release as the creator wasn't comfortable with its content, but later released in an unfinished state.
Episode 04 - Tintin in Tibet: In a parody of the pilot episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Tintin travels overseas to punish his slave Chang for stealing a burrito.
Episode 05 - Prisoners of the Sun (Transcript): Tintin and the Captain become caught in the crossfire of a secret plot against Chipotle's business, involving Dunkin' Donuts and the secret Order of the True Spanish Nation. They survive the wrath of restaurant warfare by the skin of their teeth.
Episode 06 - The Broken Ear: Tintin's life is targeted by two rogue GameStop employees, and then, following an incident with a Japanese prostitute, ends up on an island with an uncontacted tribe. In a moment of lucidity, he realizes he hallucinated some of the events. The episode then cuts to a scene of him haggling to buy a statue before concluding.
Episode 07 - Tintin In America: Tintin unintentionally aids a sabotage against the boss of Chipotle, and fulfills his dream of becoming a knight with a gun.
Episode 08 - Explorers On The Moon: The crew travels to space accompanied by Calculus's twin brother. Tintin joins forces with the Jazz Phone Radio, Dunkin' Donuts, and disgruntled employees in an operation against corrupt Chipotle executives. (While the script is no more extreme than that of the other episodes, it was removed from YouTube due to its overuse of signed music.)
Episode 08.5 (Tintin and the Picaros; officially untitled): A shapeshifting deity and a Comcast employee interfere with everyday life at Marlinspike Hall. In the creator's words, "unfinished and diminished".
[NSFW] Episode 09 - The Black Island: The Thompsons struggle to fulfill their agreement to buy Tintin a chili dog. Tintin falls into Hell when running from cyborgs, but remains alive. After escaping, he performs a stunt for 10 million dollars. Following a timeskip, he buys the Thompsons a plane, steals a boat, and confronts Trayvon Martin's reincarnation.
[NSFW] Episode 10 - The Blue Lotus: Tintin foils the activities of a sexual trafficking ring led by Mitsuhirato and Klaus Kinski. At the end, he leaves on a boat to signal the start of an indefinite series hiatus (lasting from June 2017 to September 2019).
Episode 11 - The Crab with the Golden Claws: Tintin and the Thompsons square off against a violent anti-Asian gang. The Captain attempts to spearhead the creation of 7-Up-flavored cake, sparking a worldwide controversy.
Episode 12 - Land of Black Gold: Tintin undergoes a phase of financial turbulence, leading him to join an old friend for a door-to-door scam operation. We encounter the infamous Abdullah, whose complete disregard for human life makes him a perfect fit for the series. The characters give widely varying mental health advice as the episode descends into the usual chaos.
Episode 13 - The Shooting Star: Tintin goes to California in the midst of wildfires to visit the grandson of Herman Melville. A businessman attempts to defame the owner of Papa John's, and is arrested for it at the end. Tintin visits an island that he suspects has Biblical connections.
Episode 14 - Red Rackham's Treasure: The opening continues a plot thread from The Crab with the Golden Claws, a first for the series. Boarding Professor Calculus's submarine, the "Bugaboo Creek 3.0", the gang goes on an unsuccessful hunt for whales in Japanese seas. To cheer up after their failure, they get dinner at a Bugaboo Creek in Michigan off-screen, and then file a lawsuit against the company to finally buy Marlinspike Hall.
Additional videos[]
The Making of Tintin Abridged: A handful of actors are interviewed about their roles in the series. While Tintin appears near the end, minor characters are the primary focus; many of them give lengthy monologues about their fearsome experiences on set, even if they only had one line in the entire series. The intelligibility of the recording mysteriously decreases over the course of its runtime.
food processing: A parody of LittleKuriboh's "Processing", highlighting its vagueness and distrusting its motives. (The source material is from The Calculus Affair.)
TFS buys Tintin Abridged!: A scathing commentary on the Abridged community in the style of a new episode, which rightfully extols the virtues of this series. (The source material is from The Castafiore Emerald.)
Controversy[]
The series quickly attracted a lot of negative attention for its style of humor and editing, weighed out by a small handful of dedicated fans. Torn between his internal motivation and the series's reception, the creator took down all of the episodes in 2016 and shared new ones privately for the next few years. Later on, all existing material was accidentally destroyed, but the finished and uploaded videos were retrieved from the hard drive of a fan.
All episodes were reuploaded in 2019 accompanied by a fresh outlook from the creator. In response to a critical comment on one of the reuploads, cyanrazorCel said:
"I didn't need any people. Just me. And it's everything I wanted it to be."
Music used[]
The series frequently features musical interludes, especially during appearances of the Jazz Phone Radio.
Full list: Music used in Tintin Abridged
Trivia[]
- In episode 5, Tintin's last name is said to be Theadventuresof. However, later in the same episode, Tintin claims to not have a last name. According to the creator, he used a fake last name because the signup form for his Jazz Phone Radio appearance required one, but not for a government-issued ID because he considers Social Security a joke.
- A subplot involving "voice boxes" is briefly mentioned in episode 7, which is also the only one to include a guest voice actor. This could possibly be an in-universe explanation for why every character is represented by the same voice actor.
- The music samples in the "Jazz Phone Radio" segments have inspired some fans to play Hotel Dusk.
- Particularly dedicated fans refer to the PlayStation Vita console as the "PS McVita" or "McVita" in allusion to Episode 3.5.
- In spite of ambivalent sentiments from his characters, cyanrazorCel has gone to Chipotle hundreds of times, a huge fan of the restaurant chain. However, he claims that this might change as the result of a food poisoning incident in December 2020.
- In spite of ambivalent sentiments from the creator himself, the series doesn't hide its respect for LittleKuriboh founding the scene, making various references to his work including an entire episode based off the Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged pilot.
- By sheer coincidence, Cigars of the Pharaoh is the second episode of both the animated series and the abridged series.
- The cast took 9 years of abridged series episodes to gain ownership of Marlinspike Hall. This is consistent with nearly all the episodes before it, with them only living in the estate in the discarded Episode 8.5.
- Under a different name, cyanrazorCel created the first ROM hack to date of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for Game Boy Color. [pre-patched Archive.org link] While he was working on it, music from the game featured occasionally in the episodes.
