Jonny Quest - Parodies and Homages

Parodies and Homages

The characters and setting of Jonny Quest have frequently been the subject of brief parodies, especially in later animated programs, some of which have aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night programming block. (Time Warner owns both Cartoon Network and the rights to the entire Hanna-Barbera library, including Jonny Quest) In addition, there have been several substantial references to the show:

• Adult Swim's The Venture Bros. features characters who are satirical analogues of the Jonny Quest cast: Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture, his bodyguard Brock Samson, and his sons Hank and Dean. Flashbacks reveal that Rusty is himself the son of a Benton Quest analog, now coasting on the fame of his late father. During the first season, the creators of the show realized that Cartoon Network's parent owned Jonny Quest and began using the actual characters, including Jonny as a paranoid drug addict severely damaged by the constant danger his father put him in, Race Bannon as an OSI agent that Brock Samson calls "one of the best" until his death, and Hadji as a hard-working competent engineer for Rusty's successful brother Jonas Jr. However, starting with the third season, the Jonny Quest characters were renamed: Jonny was renamed "Action Johnny", Race Bannon was referred to as "Red" and Dr Zin was simply called "Dr. Z"; there was no in-show explanation for the change.

• Adult Swim's Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law features the cast in several episodes. In "Bannon Custody Battle", Bannon and Dr. Quest fight for custody of Jonny and Hadji, and in "Return of Birdgirl" the men try to marry. Other episodes featured the Lizard Men from "Mystery of the Lizard Men", the mummy from "Curse of Anubis", a yeti from "Monsters in the Monastery", a gargoyle from "The House of the Seven Gargoyles", the robotic spider from "The Robot Spy", etc.

• An 8-minute parody appeared in 1995 on the animated series Freakazoid!, under the title Toby Danger, featuring the voices of Scott Menville, Don Messick (in his last role before he died), and Granville Van Dusen (all of whom provided voices for the original series). It was written by Tom Minton as a twelve minute stand-alone short for Animaniacs, but edited by director Eric Radomski to fit into the available Freakazoid! time slot.

• Matt Fraction's spy-fi comic book series Casanova features a genius villain going by the name of Sabine Seychelle, who works with a large Indian bodyguard named Samir; Fraction recounts his inspiration for them in the text column at the end of Casanova #4 that "I liked the idea of Jonny Quest, all adult and crooked. The son of an adventure scientist and his bePolo'd sidekick would grow up...how, exactly? Bent, I supposed. Weeeird. The kind of guy that would create phenomenal machines...and then sleep with them three at a time."

• Brazilian pop rock band Jota Quest is named after the series. Originally, they performed under the name J. Quest, but to avoid legal conflict with Hanna-Barbera, the J. was expanded to Jota (the Portuguese name for the letter J) from their second album onward.

• The Indianapolis-based punk band Racebannon takes its name from the Jonny Quest character.