he aim of this paper is to investigate how Italian and Spanish fansubbers cope with the translation of intertextuality in order to exploit others’ experience in translation teaching practice. Examples of solutions employed by amateur translators were provided from the serial 'Supernatural', where visual and verbal references to US culture are largely employed. Studying a small corpus of solutions, especially the wrong ones – i.e. those not conveying both reference and function of quotes – we understood that the inadequate level of encyclopaedic knowledge mastered by the young amateur translators may be the cause of erroneous translations. In fact, the procedures they employ to solve intertextual challenges show that most of the fansubbers are not able to recognise the reference behind the quotations, or if they do it, hardly can they recover the proper source or its codified translation into the target culture. As a result, sometimes textual coherence is affected, leading spectators to a general incomprehension of the use of intertextuality.