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You know Marvel's "X-Men" as defenders of justice, but a TV show -- in Hungary of all places -- claims Wolverine and co. are guilty of stealing the theme song to their hit cartoon.

A guy named Zoltan Krisko is suing every media giant you can imagine -- Marvel, Disney, FOX, Apple, Amazon and more -- claiming the TV execs behind the animated series from the '90s jacked the intro music from an even older show ... called "Linda."

Bear with us ... "Linda" aired in Hungary from 1984 to 1991, and according to a lawsuit filed by Krisko it was a hit cop comedy/thriller. Hey, genres are different over there.

Anyway, Krisko says he manages the estate of a Hungarian composer named Gyorgy Vukan, who created and copyrighted the "Linda" theme song in 1983. Krisko says it sounds exactly like the tune the "X-Men" cartoon used years later.

As for how the composer would have been exposed to the "Linda" theme -- in the suit, Krisko claims the "X-Men" maestro and TV execs rubbed elbows with Hungarian film professionals in the '80s. He suggests they definitely would have known about "Linda" because it was such a massive hit at the time.

Krisko says he didn't learn of the "X-Men" series and its theme until 2017 -- little behind the times -- but he alleges in docs, all the success the franchise achieved for Marvel and many other companies is a result of that iconic and, as he claims, stolen theme song.

Now, he's saying it's time to pay up in a major way -- meaning he wants Vukan's estate to get a big chunk of the profits "X-Men" has made since the '90s.