Also both the tables need to have same character set.
for e.g.
CREATE TABLE1 (
FIELD1 VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
FIELD2 VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL
)ENGINE=INNODB CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;
to
CREATE TABLE2 (
Field3 varchar(64) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
Field4 varchar(64) NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT FORIGEN KEY (Field3) REFERENCES TABLE1(FIELD1)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;
Will fail because they have different charsets. This is another subtle failure where mysql returns same error.