Revenge of the Pink Panther as an informant to lure Clouseau into a trap, but the Chief Inspector's car and clothes are stolen by transvestite criminal Claude Russo (Sue Lloyd), who is unknowingly killed by Douvier's men instead. Subsequently, Douvier and the French public believe Clouseau is dead; as a result of this assumption, Clouseau's ex-boss, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), is restored to sanity and is released from the lunatic asylum to perform the investigation (despite being seemingly disintegrated in the previous film). In Russo's clothes and insisting on his true identity, Clouseau is taken to the asylum himself but escapes into
The Pink Panther Strikes Again success. During the film's title sequence, there are references to television's "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Batman", also the films "King Kong", "The Sound of Music" (which starred Blake Edwards's wife, Julie Andrews), "Dracula A.D. 1972", "Singin' in the Rain", "Steamboat Bill, Jr." and "Sweet Charity", putting the Pink Panther character and the animated persona of Inspector Clouseau into recognizable events from said movies. There is also a reference to "Jaws" in the ending credits sequence. The scene in which Clouseau impersonates a dentist and the use of laughing gas and pulling the wrong tooth are clearly inspired by Bob Hope