Ernst Stavro Blofeld - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

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  • Pleasence's incarnation as Blofeld in You Only Live Twice served as inspiration for Dr. Evil, the chief villain of the Austin Powers films, portrayed by Mike Myers, complete with facial scar, grey collarless suit and (hairless) cat.
  • Waldorf released a desktop synthesiser named Blofeld, after Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Waldorf has also released a software synthesiser named Largo, perhaps after Blofeld's henchman Emilio Largo.
  • The Inspector Gadget cartoon series features a character named Dr. Claw who was a parody of Blofeld, including signature shots of just the chair, and arms, similar to shots of Blofeld. Like Blofeld, who was head of SPECTRE, Claw was the head of a large criminal organisation, called MAD and had a cat ("Mad-Cat").
  • In the Evil Genius computer game, the character of Maximillian is based on Blofeld.
  • In the TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and TimeSplitters 2 computer games, the character of Khallos is based on Blofeld. Khallos in Future Perfect also appears with a robotic white pet cat named Strudel.
  • Additional parodies of Blofeld can be found in:
    • Police Squad! episode "Rendezvous at Big Gulch (Terror in the Neighborhood)".
    • The Teen Titans episode "Episode 257–494 aka Don't Touch That Dial".
  • In the video game Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4, Uzi Bazooka is shown on the video left in the office sitting in a big chair, head out of view, stroking The Cheat.
  • Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic The Hedgehog SatAm series owned a robotic chicken instead of a white cat.
  • In the Dragon Ball cartoon series, the Red Ribbon Army and his commander are loosely based in Blofeld and SPECTRE. In this fact, the Commander Red's face isn't seen in early episodes of the Red Ribbon Army Saga, and only shows his hands with a cat. Mission failures are punished with the execution, like SPECTRE, and his members are identified with colours instead the numbers on SPECTRE.
  • In the Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon, villain Mr. Han (Kien Shih) cradles a white Persian cat while showing Roper (John Saxon) around his museum of weaponry. The film has been referred to as "a low-rent James Bond thriller", a "remake of Doctor No" with elements of Fu Manchu.
  • In the Operation: Jet Fusion of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius TV series, a film starring Jet Fusion (a parody of James Bond) has two villains, one who resembles Blofeld and another who looks like Auric Goldfinger.
  • In the 1972 animated film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, the main villain, Rastapopoulos, is based on the Blofeld character. In the first part of the film only his arms and his chair are visible, but later on his face appears.
  • In the Danger Mouse cartoon series, the main antagonist, Baron Greenback, is also based on Blofeld. In his scenes he appears stroking a white-haired caterpillar instead of a white angora cat.
  • The main villain of Charles Stross' novel The Jennifer Morgue patterns himself after Blofeld consciously, including the white cat, Nehru suit, and elaborate plan for world domination (using the Glomar Explorer to raise a Chthonian superweapon from the Caribbean sea floor). In the afterward of the novel, Stross discusses Blofeld's influences (Doctor Mabuse, Professor Moriarty, and Fantômas), as well as featuring a fictional interview between Stross and Blofeld. The 'real' Blofeld is currently serving as the Minister of Interior Investment of Transnistria and, as a follower of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, was attempting to restore liberty to Britain after he considered it taken over by communist agents such as Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.
  • The Disney-Pixar animated film Cars 2 has a Zündapp Janus 250, named Professor Zündapp with a persona like Blofeld.
  • The Nickelodeon show Penguins of Madagascar features a bottlenose dolphin named Dr. Blowhole, which last name is a rephrase of Blofeld's.
  • The Nickelodeon animated show T.U.F.F. Puppy has a rat named Verminous Snaptrap, who wears a Nehuru-like vest similar to Blofeld's.
  • In the Pokémon animated series, Giovanni is a reference to Blofeld, being the head of a criminal organisation, being rarely shown (often with just his lower body visible) while having a white Persian cat. This appearance only lasted until near the end of the first season.
  • The main villain of children's drama MI High (called the Grand Master) is very similar to Blofeld, except he strokes a rabbit instead of a cat.
  • The Simpsons animated series has briefly parodied Blofeld on several occasions, most elaborately in the 1992 episode Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie in which Bart Simpson amuses himself by melting a plastic figurine of James Bond in a microwave oven — "Stick around, Mister Bond. Things are really starting to ... cook!" — and laughing evilly while petting Snowball II, the family cat.
  • In the 1969 Monty Python episode "Owl-stretching time," the Big Cheese (the arch villain of that particular sketch) enters stroking a rabbit, although he quickly shoots it.
  • Larius Nefarious from Johnny Test episode "The Quantum of Johnny" is a parody of Blofeld as well as Emilio Largo from Thunderball esque the cat and the eyepatch. Also, in the episode "00 Johnny," there is a brief scene where Mr. Mittens's butler is stroking him and not showing his face, parodising Blofeld.
  • Writer/animator Bruce Timm has cited Blofeld as an influence on the way Lex Luthor was portrayed in Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League: "In my mind, I always saw Luthor as being like Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one of my favourite James Bond movies, where he, in essence, portrayed Blofeld as a cultured thug. He was basically like this bruiser who wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to be treated like a baron and I thought that was like a good way to treat Luthor.
  • Dr Calico in the Bolt film is similar to Blofeld owning a cat and planning World Domination but his entire body is seen. "
  • On an episode of the improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, during a playing of Greatest Hits about which the subject was James Bond, performer Wayne Brady improvised a showtune in the style of Ethel Merman entitled "Blofeld On My Mind."

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