text: Inspiration and cultural impact The detectives were in part based on Hergé's father Alexis and uncle Léon, identical twins who often took walks together wearing matching bowler hats while carrying matching walking sticks. Another inspiration was a picture of two mustachioed, bowler-hatted, formally dressed detectives who were featured on the cover of the Le Miroir edition of 2 March 1919. They were shown escorting Emile Cottin, who had attacked Georges Clemenceau—one detective was handcuffed to the man while the other was holding both umbrellas.
  They also make a brief cameo appearance in the Asterix book Asterix in Belgium.
  They make an appearance in L'ombra che sfidò Sherlock Holmes, an Italian comic spin-off of Martin Mystère, edited by Sergio Bonelli Editore.
  The name of the pop group the Thompson Twins was based on Thomson and Thompson.
  The detectives are regular characters in the 1991–1992 television series The Adventures of Tintin, as well as the 2011 motion-capture film adaptation The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. In the film, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost portray Thomson and Thompson.
  Names in other languages
  In the original French,  and  are stereotypically prevalent surnames (akin to "Smith") and pronounced identically (). The different letters indicate their different moustache styles: D for  ("straight"), T for  ("turned up"). Translators of the series in some languages have tried to find names for the pair that are common, and similar or identical in pronunciation.  They thus become:
  and  in Afrikaans
  and  ( and ) in Arabic