Gratuitous German: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"The entire ''Gestalt'' of the ''Weltanschauung'' of these former ''Wunderkinder'' was characterized by a certain ''gemütlich'' attitude toward each other's ''Schadenfreude''."''|''Why Not Me?''}}

 

 

 

BTW, if you use a German noun in a post, remember: ''In der deutschen Sprache werden Substantive immer groß geschrieben''. (In German, nouns are always capitalized.)

 

== Anime und Manga ==

** In which he also often uses the wrong "Ein" instead of "Eins"

** The manga now adds "Das stärkste Gefängnis". (Or that is what it was supposed to say, scanlation display it as "Das stärksten Gefängnis".)

** Two songs in the soundtrack have German lyrics which are a) sung by a beautiful chorus b) grammatically correct and c) relevant. Someone associated with the anime obviously did the research involved.

** This becomes quite hilarious when they use a grand ritual to open the portal, with the words "Öffne Dich!", which translates into the command "Open!" towards the door...

** Later it turns out that the Quincies must have some German ancestry too, with most of Ishida's new attacks and artifacts having pseudo-German names (Seele Schneider, Heizen, Glitz(en), Sprenger, etc.).

*** It would seem that human tribes with spiritual powers use German, whilst Hollows and Soul Reapers use Spanish and Classical Japanese.

** Hayate's Unison Device, Reinforce Zwei, sometimes addresses her as "Meister Hayate" (By contrast, Signum, Zafira and Reinforce Eins call her "Aruji Hayate," translated as "Mistress Hayate"). Later on, {{spoiler|Agito}} does the same, even though {{spoiler|Signum}} is her actual Lord.

** Fortunately, the English dub (and [[Chris Patton]]) does a [[Translation Correction|better job]] with the accent, turning the scene into something that's...almost a little badass.

** Also, all of the readable text in the show is in German, although again the show's set in Germany, so it might not be all that gratuitous...

** The "Kübel" probably refers to the VW Type 82 "Kübelwagen" or "bucket car" (named so for its so-called "bucket seats")

*** Which literary translates as "shit!", but actually comes much closer to a genuinely felt "Fuck!" right from the heart, in contemporary German. (Though the use of swear words is mostly uncontroversial in Germany, so it's used in a very appropriate way.)

** [[Hilarity Ensues]] in the German dub.

*** Would you know it. When Asuka's "mother" calls, they have the actress switch to a more contemporary accent, rather than clean spoken German.

** Alucard also sometimes speaks German, once saying 'Heil den Ich' {{spoiler|after he makes a 90 degree landing on a aircraft carrier}}. Literal translation: vaguely 'Heal/Hail the I' and in correct grammar 'Heil mir/mich!' (depending on you going with 'to hail' or 'to heal' (probably the former in Third Realom and previous German culture))

*** One glance at the map of 'Kuchen' can make a German burst in laughter.

** Zwiback (should be Zwieback, a type of dry sweet cracker backed twice, as the name implies (Zwie-> Old German for Zwei, two. It survives in the word Zwielicht, twilight)).

** Apparently the word "märchen" has actually been adopted to mean "fairy tale" in Japanese, as no exact equivalent exists. It's surely better than [[Gratuitous English|whatever a direct English transliteration would work out to]].

* ''Geisters'' - German "Geister" (ghosts) apparently pluralized again in English just to make sure.

* Each of the Liger Zero's armor units in ''[[Zoids]]: New Century Zero'' has a German name - Jager, Schneider and Panzer. These correspond to the armor's specialty - the Jager (hunter) has incredible speed and advanced scanning equipment, the Schneider (cutter) has seven laser blades mounted all over its body, and the Panzer (tank) is incredibly heavy and equipped with ridiculous firepower. Funnily, Schneider also means tailor without technical context.

** In fact, Zoids contains more gratuitous German and Italian than you can throw a braunschweiger at, it's just that for some reason the dub worked the names out from katakana, resulting in such hilarious names as Schubaltz (Schwarz) and Alcobaleno (Arcobaleno (rainbow)). Even the seemingly normal names like Flyheight and Zeke were originally Freiheit and Sieg.

*** In the case of the Berserk Führer, they probably [[Bowdlerized]] it.

** Ban might actually be an aversion, as he rarely (if ever) speaks the language. The closest he comes is translating a letter (written by a Romanian woman to a Japanese man, but they both worked for the Nazis, so German might have been the language they had in common...). {{spoiler|His father, on the other hand, is known as "der Kaiser."}}

** Tropen could stand for Truppen, which is of course German for troops. Spelt Tropen, it means tropics. It ''was'' [[Shown Their Work|the successor to the Dom Tropical Test Type]]...

** Also, later installments often had an edge towards German language (''Wing'' used German numbers for Zechs and Noin (actually in German written 'sechs' and 'neun'), ''SEED'' had, among others, Tolle Koenig, which translates into 'awesome king' (funnily enough, in the older use of the word it would mean "insane king"), ''00'' has the Meisters, which are simply put masters, as well as the Gundam Thrones: Eins, Zwei, and Drei ("one, two, three"). ''[[G Gundam]]'', on the other hand, surprisingly averted its gratuitous use: the only suit with a German name was [[Justified Trope|from Neo-Germany]].)

** Gundam X seems to have German in place of English (which seems to be a more common choice) as the "setting language" - note the name of the ship (Frieden) and a lot of the characters' names.

*** Which is bizarre, really, since the main characters are from (post-apocalyptic) America.

** To explain why native speakers might burst into laughter at this point, "Milch" translates to "milk" while Holstein is a breed of cattle famous for its milk output. On a more intellectual level, Gustav Stresemann served both as chancellor and foreign minister during the Weimar Republic.

** Actually lampshaded in-story: Chiaki is fluent in German, and immediately makes the connection to milk and cattle when he hears the pseudonym for the first time.

** And then there's Prussia. His song with a title that no one really knows how to translate (the one from the "Ore-sama CD") contains many lines of badly pronounced and Google Translatorish German. "Über dem Rand" (over the edge, but as in "above the edge", not "falling over the edge" - the latter would be the accusative "Über de'''n''' Rand") is just the beginning.

** The dub makes it worse, with [[Memetic Mutation|"THIS IS VUNDERBAR, JAPAN!"]] and [[Department of Redundancy Department|"Herr Shtick, mein shticky friend!"]] among others.

** All of the invisible 9 units were identified as ""Related title" Jäger", including the real-life Fallschirm Jäger (lit. Parachute Hunter, AKA Paratroopers).

** That said, it wasn't actually set in Germany at all, but a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] where evidently the exact same language is spoken. In the English dub, characters tend to pepper their speech with German phrases, and a few even have German accents.

** "Kämpfer" means "Fighter(s)" and Kämpferin would be the female version.

** Also the different types of Kämpfer are users of either Schwert (sword), Gewehr (rifle) or Zauber (magic).

* In ''Infinite Ryvius'', German names are extensively used for space ships(Liebe Delta, Gestalt, Gespenst) and space phenomena (Geduld)...

** Names: Teito Klein (small), Frau (woman or Mrs.), Fea Kreuz (cross), Verloren (lost)

** Other: Sklave (slave), Begleiter (literally 'companion'), Antwort (answer), the land of Seele (Seele means 'soul')

** The majority of the 'Lost Grounds' are made up of or take roots from German words: Dead World of Indieglut Lugh ('Dead World of into-the-embers Lugh'), Briona Gwydion the Dragonbein Range ('bein' also stands for 'bone'), Arche Koeln Waterfall (Combination of Arche, 'ark', and Köln, the German city of Cologne), Wailing Capital Wald Uberlisterin ('Tricker of the Forest'), and finally Hülle Granz Cathedral ('Shell Gloss Cathedral')-which also features the only song in-game with an actual language, in full German.

** This is just a straight trope example, as Märchen has been adopted into the Japanese language. (see above)

* Many songs with vocals that are included in the [[Guilty Crown]] soundtrack turned out to have ''German'' lyrics. The most prominent example would be the song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF3dxVJPKV4 bios] which played at the end of episode 1 and 4 during Shuu's asskicking moment. While the pronunciation is horrible enough to fool even ''native speakers'' into thinking it's another language, [[the grammar and spelling of the lyrics is - except for a few details - actually pretty good. [[Crowning Music of Awesome|The song itself is still freaking awesome]]. {{spoiler|The lyrics also aptly describe the relationship between Shuu and his sister Mana.}}

 

== Bildergeschichten und Comics ==

** Recently he addressed Beast as "Liebchen," which is inappropriate unless they were going for some all-blue [[Ho Yay]]. And words no one uses.

** A Leibchen, by the way, is an item of clothing. It can mean vest, bodice, jersey... A Liebchen on the other hand is an out-of-date expression for "darling"

* Marvel has a little-known German superhero called Vormund, which means Guardian. Legal guardian, to be precise. He was previously known as Hauptmann Deutschland, which sounded much like something the Nazis would have come up with.

** The German edition of the MAD Magazine once presented German Marvel Superheroes. Their Cap equivalent? Oberst Deutschland.

** Though until the 80's they did translated all titles and names. Interesting they renamed the X-men as X-Team.

*** Also known, back in the day, as "Gruppe X" (literally "Group X").

* [[Savage Dragon]] gives us Brainiape, who is of course {{spoiler|[[Adolf Hitler]] s disembodied brain in a glass bowl on top of an ape body}} with zome of ze worst violence ever visted on ze german sprache in a bildergeschichte.

* ''[[Commando (Comic Book)|Commando]]'' has this, spoken by none other than [[Those Wacky Nazis]]. Most commonly used are various military ranks and exclamations in the middle of other dialogue. ''Commando'' is even a [[Trope Namer]], as Gratuitous German is commonly referred to as "Korkkarisaksa" (Commando German) in Finnish.

 

 

 

 

== Filme ==

** And what could be a [[Lampshade Hanging]] thereof; Hans Gruber has to repeat orders in English because [[The Dragon]] - much less the audience - doesn't understand [[Black Speech|the "German" orders]].

* ''[[Shutter Island]]'' has actually rather decent German, though a native speaker notices the heavy accent and small mistakes.

* This trope is [[Older Than They Think]]. In [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s ''[[The Great Dictator]]'', Hynkel speaks German gibberish when speaking to the public or when he is angry.

*** Not like German perhaps, but like the cleanest Hitler speech...

** It's a variety act called "speaking Double Dutch" that Chaplin had learned to do when he performed in music halls and vaudeville, before he got into movies.

* Averted in Sergei Eisenstein's classic WWII-era propaganda film ''Alexander Nevsky'', noted for its musical score by Sergei Prokofiev. In this film, the villains are Germans, but recite their famous chant in nonsensical ''Latin.''

* The German in ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]'' is often a bit mangled. A particularly noticeable example is a button labeled with "Dringlichkeitsfreigabe", which then gets translated as "Emergency Release". It should be "Notfallfreigabe/-abkopplung/-entriegelung/-freisetzung".

* Monty Python did a couple of sketches specifically for german television. Since none of them spoke or understood enough german, they just memorized their lines and delivered them as they saw fit, which resulted in hilarious mispronounciations.

* The German in ''[[The Incredible Mr. Limpet]]'' starts off sounding legit but quickly descends into this.

** Amunsingly the first means pizza hut, which is called just that in german too. The latter are just capitalized english words with a german ending tacked on.

* ''[[Kindergarten Cop]]'' includes Arnold saying "Das macht mich stinksauer! Jetzt bin ich sauer!"

 

== Fernsehserien ==

* The German characters in ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'' throw in a few easily-translated German phrases.

** She also mangles it quite horribly, the first it time it comes up. Granted she is angry with Dr. Kelso, but it takes a German a couple of viewings to realize that it is supposed to be German and a couple more to understand it. Other times she has a clear accent, but everything else is quite right.

* Used regularly by comedians for [[Those Wacky Nazis]] implications, even ''[[The Daily Show|Jon Stewart]]'' is a regular offender. Of course in the complete package, with ze dialect, angry and even (or especially) as German native unintelligible pronunciation and of course scrambled grammar.

* Dwight Schrute sings a couple of verses of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" during an episode of the US version of ''[[The Office]]''.

* ''[[Fringe]]'' has quite a few examples. E. g., there's "Wissenschaft Prison Germany". What exactly is a "science prison" supposed to be?

*** Apart from that, writing "Wissenschaft Prison" as it is, is the German equivalent for what "Sciencegefängnis" is for English, complete with the (non)existent spaces between the words.

** Most of the background chatter on the airplane in the cold opener of the series pilot. Hilariously badly spoken/accented, too.

* ''[[Frasier]]'' played with this a few times throughout its run, most notably in the episode 'An Affair to Forget', where, after one of Frasier's listeners calls into his psychiatric-advice program thinking her Bavarian, fencing-coach husband was having an affair, Frasier begins to think (with good reason) that his sister-in-law is the 'other woman', leading to quite a bit of German; including a scene where [[Hilarity Ensues|the characters must translate from English to Spanish to German, then back again]].

** Frasier is even enraptured with a new love interest when, among other interests, she admits to speaking German and liking the German war film ''[[Das Boot]]''.

* ''[[Grimm]]'''s monster names and related terms are all ''terrible'' German. They go from simple grammar fail (e.g.: using adjectives as nouns; wrongly cobbled-together compound words; e.g. werewolves are called blutbaden. In fact, "Blutbad", plural "Blutbäder", means "bloodbath" or "massacre''. 'blutbaden' itself looks like a verb infinitive, 'to bloodbath' (which doesn't exist)) to horrible dictionary slips (e.g. the supposed 'bee queen' is called "bee gay [person]") and mess-ups of cultural context of phrases that completely destroy the tone of a scene (e.g. the quote "Alles hat ein Ende nur die Wurst hat zwei." which comes from a very well known comedic [[Break Up Song]] from the late 1980s, but is used in the show as some kind of philosophical wisdom handed down the generations to say over a friend's dead body).

* ''[[Sanctuary]]'': In the episode ''Normandy'' during the 1944 flashbacks Watson goes undercover as a German officer and has to bluff his way past a German roadblock. This turns into a discussion (in German) about his accent, as he pretends to be Bavarian to explain his mistakes and the soldier holding him up turns out to be from Bavaria as well. Both of the actors' pronunciation was mangled so badly that even Germans watching the original version needed subtitles, and, needless to say, neither sounded even remotely like he was from Bavaria. In fact, this troper was led to expect some kind of twist where the German soldier would turn out to be a Allied spy as well.

 

== Internet-Originale ==

* This has started showing up in the animation accompanying ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'' reviews, for no apparent reason.

** In his [[Brütal Legend]] review credits, Yahtzee mentioned that he studied German...still no particular reason but at least an explanation.

 

 

* Several stories of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] make references to a book called ''"Unausprechlichen Kulten"'' as the second most popular book on cosmic horrors after the ''Necronomicon''. Unsurprisingly, the grammar of the title is just wrong. It would be either ''"Unaussprechliche Kulte"'' (unspeakable cults) or ''"Von unaussprechlichen Kulten"'' (of unspeakable cults). It could be referred such in a proper German sentence with the right grammatical surroundings, but not on its own without the grammatical German context.

* [[Erma Bombeck]] wrote a humor column [[The Sixties|early in her career]] about borrowing her husband's <s> VW Beetle</s> [[Writing Around Trademarks|small mouse-gray car]] and his insistence that the driver has to speak to it. In German.

* Lots in the work of [[Sylvia Plath]] (both her parents were German), most evident in ''[[Ariel]]''.

* In ''[[Rivers of London]]'', when DC Grant comes across a German family while trying to escape from the middle of a riot he yells "Raus, Raus" at them while thinking that he hopes it means "move, move" like it does in [[World War II|War Movies]], because it's the only bit of German he knows.

* Rudolf Von Flugel, from [[Richard Scarry]]'s childrens' stories, is prone to this sort of thing.

* Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist series features the Austrian Von Helrung as a mentor to the monstrumologist in the second book and let's the two exchange some very heterosexual endearments in German.

* Abounds in the two books of [[John Ringo]]'s [[Posleen War Series]] that play out in Europe, ''"Watch on the Rhine"'' and ''"Eye of the Storm"'', with sometimes cringingly hilarious consequences.

 

 

== Musik ==

* [[Blur]], "Girls & Boys": "Du bist sehr schön/But we haven't been introduced" (that means "You're very beautiful/pretty.").

** And then there's "Tell Her Tonight," which is in English, yes...but then they re-recorded it with German lyrics. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGcLODDy9Uw It's actually kind of awesome]. ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-SFac3GpxY Compared to the original]).

** Another track in the same OST is named "Batterdammerung"

* Slovenian band ''Laibach'' like to translate innocent songs like ''Life is Life'' into German and adapting the music ... slightly. The result would not be out of place at a Nazi rally.

** That is gibberish too, the words mean "come one to late". Only nouns are written as one word (that's quite common and makes for exact descriptions in one word) and the last word should be "spät" not "spadt".

* One word of Visual Kei bands Dir en Grey name exists in german too.

* Swedish [[Power Metal]] band Sabaton uses German words frequently in their Songs, usually when singing about Germans. Anschluss, Wehrmacht, Panzer, Panzerkampfwagen and the like. They also covered the song "Für Immer" by German band Warlock, with actually pretty good German.

* The Canadian [[Industrial]] band Front Line Assembly uses it in many of their songs.

* Hilariously parodied by Eisbrecher in their song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGWFTcTRoLE This Is Deutsch]", along with [[Germanic Depressives]] and [[All Germans Are Nazis]]...but [[Bilingual Bonus|only if you actually speak German]]. Otherwise, it sounds like a straight example of all three tropes.

* When the British punk/dance band ''Fuzzbox'' covered [[Yoko Ono]]'s "Walking On Thin Ice", they translated the spoken word passage to German for some reason. The translation is flawless however and so is the delivery. In fact it sounds as if a native speaker spoke this passage, but the album doesn't feature any credits whatsoever so it can't be said for sure.

* "Hello Earth" from [[Kate Bush]]'s album "Hounds of Love" features one line in German near the end: "Tiefer, tiefer, irgendwo immer tiefer gibt es ein Licht." ("Deeper, deeper, somewhere even deeper, there is a light").

 

== Theater ==

 

 

== Videospiele ==

* The ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' games, especially the first one.

** Every QfG game features several themes, and the themes of the first one were discovery, winter/spring, and Western European mythology, which resulted in a lot of Germanic-inspired stuff.

** This is most likely a play on words with the name "Mordekai" and the word "Kaiser" (Emperor).

** The original ''[[Castle Wolfenstein]]'' was noted simply for having digitized voices (in any language) at all.

** In the book "Masters of Doom", which chronicles the history of developers id games up to Quake 3: Arena, John Romero is described as screaming ridiculous german lines into a microphone for later implementation while Wolfenstein 3D was being developed.

* ''[[Rosenkreuzstilette]]'' is not only titled in German: the characters have names like Spiritia Rosenberg, Sichte Meister, and Graf Michael Sepperin (himself [[Truth in Television|a reference to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin]]). Only Michael has a normal German given name, though.

** The weapons too: for example, Spiritia's default weapon is named Seelegewehr (Soul Rifle, almost correct - should be Seelengewehr). ''Most'' of the names are tied to the user's.

** Becomes [[Unfortunate Implications|a little unsettling]], though, when you realize that the primary antagonists, the sinister alien Balmars, label all their stuff with [[Space Jews|gratuitous Hebrew]].

** Examples include Alteisen (Old Iron, really "scrap iron") and Weissritter (White Knight), plus their upgraded forms Alteisen Riese (Old Iron Giant) and Rein Weissritter (Pure White Knight)... plus the [[Alternate Universe]] Alteisen Nacht (Old Iron Night) and Weissritter Abend (White Knight Evening). Some of the German names found in [[Endless Frontier]] also double as fairytale references, including but not limited to Aschen Broedel (Aschenbrödel, aka Cinderella), Haken, Zeit Krokodil (Hook and "Time Crocodile", Peter pan references?) and Schlafen Celeste. ("Sleep Celeste")

** And of course all the [[Abusive Precursors|Einst]], who name ''all'' of their units and attacks in German. Even the mundane stuff like "Energy Drain" which becomes the blatantly obvious "Gewinnenergie". ("Winnergy")

* In the GBA game ''[[Harvest Moon]]: Friends of Mineral Town'', in at least one cutscene, you can get Pastor Carter to speak German. At no other time in the game does Carter even hint that he's of another nationality (other than the nebulous one wherever Mineral Town is located).

** His unlockables also share the Germanity (if that is a real English word), being named The Blutsauger (Bloodsucker, also: Vampire) and The Kritzkrieg (causes crits, named after the Nazi tactic of Blitzkrieg.) As part of a development theme, his lines have numerous grammar errors, namely the plurals of "Dummkopf", and his voice actor isn't German.

* Prosecutor Gavin from the fourth ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' game.

** His name, Klavier, is the German word for piano. It was changed to Konrad (a proper German name) in the French localization, and became Kantilen in the German localization.

** Of course, the "Klavier Gavin" name originated in the English-language localization. In the original Japanese version, his name is Kyouya Garyuu.

** His constant use of "Fraulein", however, is a little painful to native European German speakers, since "Fräulein" (with an Umlaut, you mind), being the diminutive of the title ''Frau'' and equivalent the title "Miss", is obsolete nowadays and only used when scolding or mocking someone. Calling a woman this can be considered being borderline sexist in some cases.

* The underwater theme park in which ''[[Ever 17]]'' takes place is run by a German pharmaceutical company, so all the signs and automated announcements are in German, and the computer system appears to operate in German as well. Additionally, all the tracks on the soundtrack have German titles except for the opening and ending themes.

* Happens quite a bit in the earlier ''[[Atelier]]'' games, to accentuate the fact that the setting is meant to be a kind of faux-Renaissance Germany; [[Translation Convention]] breaking for flavor, basically. This is essentially thrown out the window from ''Atelier Iris'' onward.

* A lot of Square (now [[Square Enix]]) games have used German in their titles and other places, such as [[Einhander]] (in which German is Earth's global language) and ''Ehrgeiz'' (Ambition). ''Einhänder'' also features an animated video billboard in the first level that cycles through the text "leben - fallen - Volksgasmaske" ("to live - to fall - the people's gas mask"). Volksgasmaske is the name of a gas mask produced during WWII for civilians.

* Sieg Wahrheit (Victory Truth), the player character in ''Chaos Legion''.

* The main theme of ''Atelier Iris 3'' is called Schwarzweiß -Kiri No Mukouni Tsunagaru Sekai- (Blackwhite -Reaching Through Mists-) and even mixes the opening and ending with ominous German chanting. ("Ich gieren! Ich morden!")

* ''[[Soul Series|Soul Calibur 4]]'' has lots of German names. Usually with horrible pronunciation and very bad grammar.

* ''[[Ace Combat]] Zero'' had multiple major and minor aces. A good 95% of them have squadron names or callsigns named after things in German, almost all of them surprisingly accurate. The major aces are named after colors sans ''Schnee'' which is German for ''Snow.''

* The names of the twelve Dark Warlords in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Genealogy of the Holy War'' are simply the [[You Are Number Six|numbers one through twelve]] in German.

** The replacement characters in the Japanese version of ''Shadow Dragon'' are also German numbers.

* Two of the characters in the DS game ''Soma Bringer'' are called Welt (world) and Einsatz (mission).

* In the [[H-game|X-rated]] [[Visual Novel]] [[Madou Souhei Kleinhasa]] (Magic Trooper Kleinhasa), the protagonist and his squadmates all have pseudo-German names (Belcelica von Meltmann, Nicola Schonheit, Felicia Claushitz....)

** Perhaps they meant "Kleinhase", which literally means "little hare"...

* The bosses in ''[[Jett Rocket]]'' have oddly German names. The devs ''are'' German, but one wonders why the bosses have German names when nothing else does.

* In ''[[Might and Magic|Heroes of Might and Magic V]]'' a few of the ''Haven'' units have text written on their robes. You can clearly see "Die Heiligkeit" (the sanctity/saintliness) written on the cape and the robe of the Angel/Archangel. Other ''Haven'' units also have text written on their robes and various ribbons and parchemins. You cannot precisely read them due the low resolution, but they seem to be in German and of the same kind, too. Though this is never explained why.

** It's a game that came out only in Japan, this wasn't a translated version for the German market. Considering that Dracula is supposed to be of Romanian origin, and there's the [[Vampire Vords]] trope, it makes little sense. Also, [[Hammer Horror]] was obviously one of the influences for the Castlevania franchise, and considering English is the international language, English with a British accent would make sense as well. However, it definitely sounds appropriately Gotik.

* The original ''[[Legacy of Kain|Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain]]'' (1996) by [[Silicon Knights]] has several German-sounding names for cities/villages (e.g. Vasserbünde, Coorhagen, Nachtholm, Steinchencröe, Uschtenheim - German speakers might know if they make sense or not), while the original script and voice acting of the game is in English.

** "Vasserbünde" might either be "Wasserbünde" (Waterbounds?) or "Vagabunden" (Vagabounds), Steinchencröe might be Steinchenkrähe (Pebble-Crow, Steinchen meaning "Kleiner Stein" = Little rock. As for Uschtenheim: No idea.

* ''[[Shikigami no Shiro]] 2'' has this between-stages dialog during a two-player game with Kuga Kohtaro and Kim De John:

'''De John:''' Yes! Sturm und drang! }}

::: At least, that's what the text box says. However, instead of "sturm und drang", the voice actor says "strong and dumb".

* Neinhalt Sieger from ''[[Samurai Shodown]]'' II has every single one of his special moves named in German, so we get odd stuff like Elefantglied (Elephant member (as in body part)), Vulkan Weinen (Vulcan Cry [as in 'weep', not 'shout']), and Blitz Jaeger (Lightning Hunter) mixed together with no apparent heads or tails to it besides "it sounds cool".

* Japanese fighting game developer Subtle Style LOVES this trope, evident in the titles of some of their games (Akatsuki Blitzkampf, its arcade revision, Akatsuki Blitzkampf Ausführung Achse, and En-Eins Perfektewelt), character names (Elektrosoldat, Fritz, Tempelritter), and special events held for their games (Es gibt keinen Gott, Ein ewiges band, Adventskranz, Der kampf von meistern).

** The line in question is "Die Waffen, legt an!" (Ready your weapons), but can be easily [[Mondegreen|misunderstood]] as "We want war, wake up!"

** Additionally, its first and second forms are D''ein''o and ''Zwei''lous, respectively. Hy''drei''gon is the third and final form. The head numbering also matches: Deino with one, Zweilous with two, Hy''drei''gon with three.

** [[Those Wacky Nazis|Let's not forget that they're Dark-typed]].

** [[Emotionless Girl|Lambda]] counts in German during her Drive combo. Some of her attack names also use "Zwei" instead of "Two."

 

== Webcomics ==

* The German-bred Kroenen often lapses into this in ''[[Abe Kroenen]]'', and his accent is spelled phonetically. The same goes for Johann Krauss.

 

 

== Westlicher Zeichentrick ==

** Ja, das ist ein incredibly long name to have to try and say!

** "Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk" in grammatically correct German would be "Burns verkauft das Kraftwerk", "Das Bus" would be "Der Bus".

*** [[Rule of Funny|The latter one is supposed to be a pun]] on the movie ''[[Das Boot]]''.

** And ''Üter'' is not a name. Not a German one. At least not in Western Europe.

** Oh, and Krusty's German-dubbed show:

'''Sideshow Mel''':''(soaked by Krusty's mineral water gag) "Oh nein, Krusty spritzen der Gaswasser!"'' }}

*** The correct translation would be

'''Sideshow Mel''': ''"Oh nein, Krusty spritzt mit Mineralwasser! (Oh no, Krusty squirts with Mineral water!)"'' }}

*** [[Those Wacky Nazis|May be intentional, though.]]

** "When Flanders Failed"

'''Homer:''' "Boy, those Germans have a word for everything." }}

* In [[Phineas and Ferb]], [[Herr Doktor|Dr. Doofenshmirtz]] sometimes slips German words into his lines. Slightly justified seeing as he is German.

 

 

** On the flip-side, the un-fanboyish use of the German language for convenience in trade in the Middle Ages, before national feeling really developed, leads to German names cropping up in weird places. The national epic of Estonia was first written down by a man called "Friedrich Reinhold Kreuzwald". Not the most Finnic-sounding thing in the world.

** This was aided by the fact that German populations ended up scattered all over Eastern Europe, ranging from the Transylvania Saxons or the Teutonic and Livonian Orders (the cause for the aforementioned Estonia) to as far away as Russia.

* Japanese [[Professional Wrestling|wrestler]] Masahiro Chono promotes his own line of clothing, ArisTrist, with the tag line "...geborene Kämpfer" ("born fighters"), which also appears on much of the line's apparel. There's a reasonable explanation, however - Chono's wife and co-designer of the collection is German.

** "Blinkenlights" in turn is inspired by an infamous computer room sign from [[The Fifties]]:

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN. }}

** You'll see this a lot with gamers.

* The classical music world runs on this trope along with [[Gratuitous Italian]]. While the latter language is the standard for sheet music markings, larger musical concepts/philosophies tend to use German words (e.g. ''Gesamtkunstwerk'', ''Klangfarbenmelodie'') thanks to Germany and Austria's place as the center of the musical world from the 18th century to the early 20th century, both in terms of great composers and the people studying and writing about them.

 

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[[Category:Language Tropes]]

[[Category:Gratuitous Foreign Language]]

[[Category:Gratuitous German]]