Space Jews

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Watto you mean he's an anti-Semitic stereotype? It's not like he's a short, shady businessman, with a cap and a big nose, bad accent, dark curly facial hair, and tries to cheat his way out of... Oy vey.

The perpetuation in fiction of racial stereotypes... in space!

The Space Jew is an alien, monster, animal, or other nonhuman creature that embodies the worst aspects of a real-world racial, ethnic, or religious stereotype, whether Jewish, black, Asian, white or whatever. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's subconscious and sometimes it's just an unlucky confluence of bad characteristics coupled with a naive creative mind. We're in no place to speculate.

But whatever the reason, the end result raises hairs on the necks of people worldwide as they wonder "surely that can't be intentional... can it?"

Also remember that Tropes Are Not Bad. The example doesn't have to be over-the-top or offensive to be an example.

Compare Fantastic Racism, Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?. See also Unfortunate Implications.

Don't mix this trope up with Fantasy Counterpart Culture, which deals with fantasy/sci-fi cultures that stand in for real life cultures but don't necessarily exhibit the stereotypes of whomever they are standing in for.

Not to be confused with Space Amish, Space Cossacks, Space Romans, or actual JEWS IN SPACE!

Examples of Space Jews include:

Anime and Manga

  • Gintama has the premise that rather than the Gunboat Diplomacy of history, Edo-era Japan experienced an Alien Invasion. Thus, actual aliens take the place of "nasty gaijin" in wielding disproportionate power over the country.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Freeza: I can't quite be a racist against a race that doesn't exist. Like the Clorfors. Dirty money-grubbing Clorfors. Tried to clorf me right out of my money. Blew those little bastards up is what I did.

Film

  • The Star Wars universe, being love-letters to films that didn't know any better, contains a few examples:
    • Watto, from the prequel films, raised concerns about being a Jewish caricature, being a hook-nosed, penny-pinching merchant and slave owner. His raspy accent sounds vaguely Yiddish, but the voice actor was actually going for Italian. It doesn't help that in the second film, Watto even wears a beard and black hat vaguely similar to a style favored by Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. Perhaps to dissuade these accusations, in Star Wars: The Clone Wars the king of Watto's species has a vaguely British accent, and despite his small stature is depicted as a proud warrior. Although Toydarians are all grasping and unpleasant, they are rarely portrayed as outright villains.
      • The Russian Gag Dub Star Wars:Storm in the glass took this even further: Watto is named "Boris Abramovich", has an absurdly thick Yiddish accent, and his shop is called "Mossad Torg" ("torg" is a contraction of the Russian word for "trade").
    • The Star Wars prequel films also feature the Neimoidians - a race of slit-eyed, inscrutable, unscrupulous villain aliens who speak with a vague Asian accent, wear Qing dynasty robes and hats, and threaten the galaxy with their trade routes and mass production technology. Many English-speaking critics saw the race as a collection of Asian stereotypes. Interestingly every localization of the film gives the species new accents. In Germany, for example, they got French accents.
    • The Sand People/Tusken Raiders in the original films come across as a violent caricature of desert-dwelling Bedouin-like groups, being low-tech, desert-dwelling nomads wearing robes and head coverings. Lucas apparently intended the species to resemble the depiction of American Indians in old Wild West movies through their violent behavior toward the more technologically advanced settlers. The females also wear papoose boards. Whether Lucas realized the Unfortunate Implications or not is anybody's guess.
      • Lucas may well not have thought of it as having such implications. Arabs were not always in the forefront of American fears and Bedouin were sometimes romanticized depending on the writer. As for being violent, certainly no one ever accused Bedouin in real life or fiction of being pacifistic but that has not always aroused horror in movie audiences to say the least.
    • Many critics accused Jar Jar Binks of resembling black caricatures in minstrel shows and early American cinema, highlighting his broken English, clumsiness, naivety and shuffling gait, all typical traits of minstrel characters. Physically, he has large nostrils and his "lips" make up half of his face, both traits commonly exaggerated in black caricatures. The Gungan accent, which sounds vaguely Caribbean, doesn't help the issue. Jar-Jar's first lines in the series, "Me-sa your humble servant," call slavery and domestic servitude to mind. The character was voiced and motion-captured by black actor Ahmed Best, who denied any attempt to make Jar Jar a black caricature. The Gungan race as a whole, however, does not embody the trope.
    • The Clone Wars movie features Jabba's uncle, Ziro the Hutt, who exhibits Camp Gay stereotypes. He's purple, wears feathers and facepaint, owns a nightclub on Coruscant, and talks vaguely like Truman Capote. However, Ziro is as straight as a hermaphrodite can be.
  • The race of banker goblins shown in the Harry Potter movies are squat, long nosed, and run the banks, leading to comparisons with Jews. And they also believe (stated in The Deathly Hallows) that everything ever made by Goblins really belongs to them, even if humans may think they acquired it.
  • The Transformers film series features a few robotic examples:
    • Jazz is a somewhat Jive Turkey Transformer, possibly in reference to Scatman Crothers, who was the original voice of the character in the cartoons. He's also only Autobots who dies. According to at least one interview, Jazz was killed because he was the only Autobot in the movie who hadn't already died at least once. It's also been claimed that it was because Jazz is the third most popular character after Optimus and Bumblebee.
    • "The Twins," Skids and Mudflap, drew controversy for embodying a number of black stereotypes in their appearance and behavior. Michael Bay alternately claims they were meant to mock wiggers or claims there was no racial parodying going on at all.
  • In his review of Predator 2, Roger Ebert accused the alien's design, which includes tentacles that resemble dreadlocks, of encouraging the audience to connect its menace with fear of black males. It's rather interesting to note that the second film's hero is a black male, but it also includes a number of dreadlocked black crooks. The Predator is also played by a black actor.
  • District 9 features the prawns, a race of impoverished aliens living in South Africa who have been herded into ghettos and taken advantage of by the more powerful humans. The government justifies the ghettos, much like they did in apartheid, by claiming that the prawns can't take care of themselves. However, the director has explained that the prawns are members of a "working caste" who can't get anything done without their "leader caste" to direct them. Thus, the government is more or less correct, and prawn society is actually very similar to the racist way that apatheid portrayed black society. It's also worth noting that Christopher and his son, the only prawns with the intelligence or gumption to resist, are a different color than all the other prawns. Within South African, the prawns are generally interpreted to represent immigrant workers from more impoverished parts of Africa.
  • Played with in The Brother From Another Planet, in which an alien who looks like a black man escapes slavery on his own planet and tries to hide out in a black ghetto on Earth. When two of his species track him down, they of course look like white men, but it turns out that they consider the "brother" an inferior race not because of his skin color, but because he's got three toes.
  • The film adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia depicts the witch's dwarves (except her bodyguard) as Mongols. Not just in the way they dress, but also their faces are decidedly Asian.
  • The nebulons in Arena (1989) conform to Yiddish stereotypes.
  • The Gremlins in Gremlins have been accused of displaying negative stereotypical behavior of African-Americans. In one particular scene, unruly Gremlins take over a bar while wearing sunglasses and "street clothing," smoking, drinking, gambling, fighting, listening to wild music, engaging in prostitution, and breakdancing. Critics accused the film of exploiting white fear of black culture invading white suburbia.
  • Deliberately played with in Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I, with its alleged preview for the sequel including a segment called Jews In Space!

Disney

  • The crows from Dumbo (especially the leader, Jim Crow).
  • Si and Am the two Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp, as well as the pound dogs and Jock the Scottish Terrier, who also embodied various ethnic and nationality stereotypes.
  • Shun Gon the Chinese Siamese cat from The Aristocats, as well as several other Alley Cats.
  • Sunflower the centaurette from Fantasia. From the waist up, she is a black girl, and a rather transparent caricature of one at that. She's so bad that she got Orwellian Retconned out of the 1969 re-release and all subsequent releases.
  • Sebastian, the Jamaican-sounding lobster from The Little Mermaid. Also, some of the fish during the "Under the Sea" song appear to be black stereotypes, including one fish that looks like a Blackface performer. The fact that her species is listed as a "black fish" really doesn't help.
  • The comical, jazz-singing, jive-talking monkeys from The Jungle Book are sometimes accused of being black stereotypes. Their desire to become "real humans" doesn't help matters much. However, their voices don't sound stereotypically black. And their orangutan leader, Louis, is voiced by Italian-American singer Louis Prima.
  • In the Goofy cartoon, "Californy er Bust," some of the Goofs (who are Inexplicably Identical Individuals) appear as stereotyped Native Americans.
  • The meerkats in The Lion King 1/2 are a group of Animal Jews in both personal relationships and in that they employ gratuitous Yiddish.

Literature

  • Terry Pratchett's Discworld series frequently uses Dwarfs and Trolls as stand-ins for any and all oppressed or angry minorities. This can cause much confusion and debate among fans as to which groups they really represent (see the discussion for about two pages of such).
    • In "The Art of Discworld", Pratchett mentions that there is a (mostly Jewish) group of fans who compare the dwarfs quite favorably to Jews. The author insists that this was not a deliberate parallel, though he has now got used to fans telling him they spotted it. To quote The Art of Discworld: "I was just trying to come up with dwarfs that fitted the modern fantasy tradition but worked.
    • The early non-Discworld novel The Dark Side of the Sun has a background group of humans named the Whole Erse who sound suspiciously like (negative) stereotypes of the Irish. 'Erse' is a (slightly unfortunate) obsolete term for the Irish language (Gaeilge). Interestingly the Irish are one of the few European groups which seem to have no stand-ins at all on the Disc (they even have a Violent Glaswegian race in the form of the Nac Mac Feegle).
    • Thud!, a novel about racism and tradition, uses the escalating conflict between the Dwarfs and Trolls to stand in for any number of racially and/or religiously charged real-world conflicts, past and present.
    • The people of Klatch are Middle-Eastern. They ride camels in a desert setting and are derisively referred to as "Towel Heads." There are also strong hints of India/Pakistan culture in their cuisine and their interaction with the quasi-English inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork. The stereotypes are lampshaded in Jingo when Colon and Nobby go to Klatch. Colon works off of every stereotype Morporkians have about Klatch, while the Klatchians seem to think he's crazy and don't understand where he got all these ideas about their culture.
  • Battlefield Earth contained an effeminate, weak, but highly intelligent servant race of the evil Psychlos (themselves moneygrubbing, sexist, drug abusing exploiters to a man), known as the Chinko. This was probably intentional, as L. Ron Hubbard said that the main problem he had with China was that it had Chinese living there. (L. Ron used a different word here than "Chinese".) In the film, they were called clinkos, but still had the exact same behavior and voice.
    • Though Hubbard probably wouldn't have known it, chinko is also the Japanese word for "(small) penis."
    • That Scientology uses the word "wog", dated but still offensive British slang for someone from the Indian subcontinent, to refer to an unbeliever might be another reflection of Hubbard's views on race.
    • Later in the novel Hubbard introduces a race of interuniversal bankers that are apparently descended from sharks (or local equivalents). They were short, big-nosed, and thought of nothing but cash, going so far as to attempt to foreclose on the Earth after the humans free it from the Psyklos.
  • Subverted/Deconstructed in Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a book presented as a work by a science fiction writer named Adolf Hitler, where the Exclusively Evil mutants are obvious stand-ins for Russians and/or other ethnic groups, with the worst of the lot clearly stand-ins for Jews. At the end of the book a reviewer rubbishes the idea that Hitler was writing about Jews—after all, no-one would seriously believe that the notoriously anti-Semetic Russian Communists are being controlled by Jews, right?
  • In Robert Asprin's Myth Adventure fantasy novels, the race of "deveels" are hard-bargaining master traders and look like traditional red-skinned hoofed devils. When Phil Foglio adapted the first tome in the series as a comic book, he tossed in a lot of Jewish references and got hit with enough complaints that he (sort of) apologized in a later issue.
  • Some readers have identified H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones as "water negroes," and their interbreeding with humans is often seen as an allegory for miscegenation. This is one of many examples of racism in Lovecraft's works, who was often outspoken in his beliefs.
  • Realizing it can't avoid it, Stationery Voyagers runs with this one like it's a marathon baton. A lot of the Fantasy Counterpart Cultures may also double as Space Romans. Most of the Minshan denominations and Minshanism-based faiths are kept ambiguous (i.e., who's Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran or what-not,) but it's made pretty obvious that the main leaders of the Statonian government are Mormons, who suffer similar criticism as they do in Richard Dutcher's film Brigham City. The Yehtzigs' Religion of Evil serves as a reminder of what can happen at the crossroads of The War On Straw and Political Correctness Gone Mad with actual devil worship.
  • Submicroscopic by S.P. Meek and its sequel have three factions of aliens differentiated by skin color. One forms the heroes, one's a group of giant but stupid savages that constantly attack them, and one is technologically advanced but ethically stunted. Guess which correspond to which colors? (Admittedly, one of the technologically advanced folk who had a grandparent from the heroic faction is portrayed as a Worthy Opponent, but the protagonist doesn't hesitate to kill him, saying that his death was saddening but necessary.
  • H. Beam Piper's Space Viking has the Gilgameshers, a mercantile people for whom haggling appears to be the planetary sport (one reviewer noted, "sadly, we are not given glimpses of the Gilgameshers accusing Trask of wanting to starve their wives and children"). It's specifically stated that they deserve admiration for having rebuilt a space-going civilization from the ground up, and "they had religious objections to violence, though they kept these within sensible limits, and were able and willing to fight with fanatical ferocity in defense." However, they are also noted for their "maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from others," which makes them generally disliked. Lampshaded when the remarks that "everyone was in favor of running out the Gilgameshers" reminds Trask of Hitler, who got into power in the First Century Pre-Atomic "because everyone was in favor of running out the Christians or the Moslems or the Albigensians or something."
  • Dwarves of The Lord of the Rings are - Word of God - deliberately based on Jews, as well as those of Norse myths. Tolkien had been reading medieval texts on the subject during their invention. Their language is based on Semitic, and their calendar is based on the Hebrew calendar. One can try to see analogues in the characterization of Dwarves with common perceptions of the Jewish people, such as their hardiness and the fact that they have been dispossessed of their homeland. Tolkien said, "I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue." Detractors have accused Tolkien of being anti-semitic because Dwarves are also very fond of gold, but this can simply be traced back to the original dwarfs of traditional mythology and folklore. The author's admiration of the Jewish people is a matter of public record in a famous Take That letter to Nazi publishers (which he wrote in 1938), who wanted to make a German translation of The Hobbit (which was written in 1937). As per race laws in Nazi Germany at the time, they informed Tolkien that the translation would only be published if he could confirm that he was of "Aryan" descent. In a scathing response that was filled with the precision of a master-philogolist, Tolkien tore apart Nazi race ideology, pointing out that the word "Aryan" actually refers to certain Hindi-speaking groups in Iran, and concluding by saying, "if I am to understand that you are inquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people." In another of his letters, Tolkien told his son that, given that he had devoted his whole life to researching Germanic myths and languages, he quite literally wanted to personally beat up Hitler, for promoting a twisted and warped version of a Nordic "master race" which did not have any basis in reality.
    • Also, the Dwarves' love of gold is presented as having less drastic consequences than other race's perennial temptations. Dwarves were, for instance, able to resist being fully corrupted by the seven rings, whereas the nine reduced men to ghosts. Part of the reason given was that they were psychologically tougher and part was that they did not want worse than wealth.
  • The Stars Wars Expanded Universe develops a number of species seen or unseen in the films into this trope:
    • Also in the Expanded Universe, come the Ryn, which are basically Space Roma. They travel a lot, love to sing and dance, some fortune telling. The one that Han befriends for a while is even named Droma, which is Roma without the D.
    • Duloks, judging from the article.
    • Even weirder are the Muuns, which seem somewhat like space caucasians, given the nasally voices, chalky skin and gangly physique. Of course, they're an entire race of bankers - they run the Intergalactic Banking Clan - so they seem to be a generic parody of frail, dweeby, miserly accountants.
    • Kevin J. Anderson's Massassi may have a name derived from Maasai, but they have red skin, build pyramids, and ultimately exist for the sole purpose of the Sith, who merged their DNA with them in a similar manner as one 19th-century Atlantis myth. The Massassi correspond to the belief that ancient Mayans built their pyramids to serve some superior extraterrestrial power.
    • Twi'leks are Space Thais. Corresponding to the stereotype of Bangkok as a home of child prostitution, the female Twi'leks we see are often slaves. Their portrayal in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, on the other hand, does a complete 180 and turns them into Space Frenchmen, portraying them as proud, noble resistance fighters against the Confederacy, with accents to match.
  • Blackjack, Percy's Winged Horse and Sapient Steed from the Percy Jackson and The Olympians series. A comical, dark-colored Jive Turkey, who constantly refers to Percy as "boss," named Blackjack of all things, whom Percy rescued from slavery...Surely he's not the equestrian version of a stereotypical African American?
  • Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick has Martian Bleekmen, who resemble and are thought to be genetically similar to Earth's African Aboriginals.
  • The Hoka, the alien species at the center of a series of humorous science fiction stories by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, can turn themselves into Space Jews, because of their tendency to imitate human fiction and restructure their societies to match.

Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek has a few of these:
    • The lumpen-nosed, big-eared, insatiably greedy Ferengi are seen by some as antisemitic characters, and their earliest appearances were criticized as being Japanese stereotypes. In reality, the Ferengi were meant to be strawmen for American capitalists in general, and were compared to "Yankee Traders" in their first appearance. The Unfortunate Implications comparisons to Jewish stereotypes came in after they were ditched as villains and became comic relief. However, it should be noted that in later series, the trope could by some seen as an inversion, as the four most notable Ferengi characters, Quark, Nog, Rom and Zek, are all played by Jewish actors. Likewise, that their name 'ferengi' is derived from an Arabic and Hindi slur for white people.
    • The Klingons started out as obviously based upon Cold War stereotypes of Russians or Chinese. The original description for them in the script for their debut episode, "Errand of Mercy", describes them as "Oriental, hard-faced". Their original appearance includes pencil mustaches and a dark complexion. Roddenberry having been a police sergeant in Los Angeles during the 1950s may have something to do with it.
    • Kivas Fajo, from the Next Generation episode "The Most Toys," is a greedy, amoral trader who specializes in collecting—by whatever means necessary—especially rare and precious items. Fajo was played by the very Jewish Saul Rubinek. This was the result of a last-minute recast after the original Jewish actor, David Rappaport, committed suicide.
    • The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Patterns of Force" features a peaceful race called the Zeons who are being scapegoated by the Ekosians. The whole episode is an allegory for the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. During the episode, The Space Nazis note that Spock's ears are a non-Aryan trait. The name "Zeon" is most likely a play on the word "Zion." In this case, the Nazi regime was instituted by a Federation professor who wanted to elevate the species. The Ekosians were not originally Nazis.
    • While Vulcans are not strongly based on any single human culture, Leonard Nimoy did suggest a few Jewish traditions that have become canon aspects of Vulcan culture. The famous "live long and prosper" Vulcan hand gesture was taken from a gesture made during the Priestly Blessing in some Jewish services. The expressions "live long and prosper"/"peace and long life" also resemble the Jewish "peace be upon you"/"upon you be peace".
    • It has also been suggested that the cool, stoic, yet "passionate on the inside" Vulcans also double as an allegory for the Japanese. Visual depictions of the planet Vulcan in Star Trek: The Original Series and some of the movies include quite a bit of visual similarity to some Southeast Asian cultures.
    • The Vulcans and their cousins the Romulans together fit the longstanding stereotypes about the ancient world, as well: the scientific and philosophical Greeks, who invented logic, are the Vulcans and their less-refined militaristic offshoot culture is Rom(ul)an.
    • Like the Klingons, the Romulans have bounced from allegory to allegory over the years. In the past they have been equated with North Korea as a cold militaristic society that have both common links with and gross differences from their Japanese/Vulcan counterparts. Some have argued that their Roman-like aspects made them an allegory for the Nazis/fascists who also stole aesthetic elements of the Roman military for their own. In the new Star Trek canon, the Romulans seem to fill the roll of terrorists in general, with the main antagonist declaring Jihad seeking revenge against the Federation and its members.
    • The Original Series once ridiculed the concept of racial segregation by displaying members of the two races inhabiting the planet Cheron. They were both half black half white (vertically), but with an opposite color pattern. The half-blacks persecuted the half-whites, who in turn launched a permanent uprising against them. To cut the long story short, the two races slaughtered one another. It brings to mind such social phenomena as apartheid, but also the Tutsi-Hutu conflict.
      • If one was to take a guess, it was aimed at American racial troubles. However the point could really be transplanted to quite a few places. It is not as if anyone has a monopoly on bigotry.
  • In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the wedding episode heavily implies that Lord Zedd is Jewish. The third season Christmas episode "I'm Dreaming Of A White Ranger" features a plot of Zedd's to control the children of the world by taking over Santa's work shop, replacing the toys with brainwashing spinning tops. In other words, the Evil Space Jew plots to ruin Christmas with what could only be described as hypno-dreidels. The putty patrollers are basically golems. They can be defeated by striking the emblem that gives them power, and the original Super Sentai actually calls them golems. Fortunately, the fact that both series producers Haim Saban and Shuki Levy are Jewish means that this was probably done tongue-in-cheek with no real ill will intended.
  • Flash Gordon villain Ming the Merciless, an obvious Yellow Peril type villain. The film version in the '80s gave him a Race Lift with Swedish actor Max von Sydow, and since then, he's been white. In Defenders of the Earth and the '96 cartoon, he was green.
  • In the Doctor Who episode "The Long Game", we learn that a consortium of bankers has been covertly manipulating the mass media to control Earth. This is more or less the plot of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What makes this extra-strange (or something) is that we eventually learn that the Daleks were behind it the whole time. However, villains from pretty much every other profession in Britain have also been shown manipulating Earth folks' perceptions and/or trying to covertly take over. Bankers were just one among many, for a very, very, very Long Runner.
  • In Firefly, the Reavers are a race of violent and savage raiders who inhabit the frontier regions of the solar system in which the series takes place. They're known for mutilating and raping their victims, as well as using Tribal Face Paint and Savage Piercings. Since Firefly is a Space Western, Reaver territory is analogous to Injun Country in old-fashioned Westerns.

Tabletop Games

The Ferrets are a disgusting culture who look like chimpanzees made up as Prince Charles. They dress in scarves, gold jewelry, vests, and caftans, and often act as travelling thieves, peddlers, or money-lenders. The PR department of the Ferret Corporation is quick to point out that they have no connection with any possible stereotypes of any ancient Earth cultures. None whatsoever. The very idea is insulting. Then they will try to cheat you out of your money, the little bastards.

  • Warhammer 40,000
    • The Eldar, though mainly being Space Elves, also display traits that could qualify them as Space Jews, partly to a point where one could suspect a downright anti-Semitic influence in their creation process. They are a spiritual, yet shady and opportunistic race at the brink of extinction after the "Fall" of their old empire for which they were themselves to blame, but still seeing themselves as The Chosen race that will rule the galaxy after the coming of their (new) god.
    • Aside from being the "Predators of the 40k Universe", the Kroot are heavily based on stereotypical Native Americans in looks, to the point that one of their legendary chief's name translates to "Sitting Krootox". Being of a lower-than-average technology level (albeit still possessing technology from firearms to FTL travel) doesn't make things better. They also play on the belief once prevalent in many tribal cultures (most famously the Iroquois) that eating a defeated enemy allows you to absorb their strength. Their Bizarre Alien Biology lets the Kroot absorb DNA from their meals into their own genetic code.

"Together, we will eat them all!"

Theatre

  • Richard Wagner is often accused of this, with entire books dedicated to finding anti-Semitic stereotypes in his operas. Most Wagner scholars today would agree that Klingsor from Parsifal was intended as this trope. Other Wagner villains considered to be Space Jews are the Nibelungs (dwarfs who mine gold underground and are led by the Big Bad), specifically Alberich and Mime, from Der Ring Des Nibelungen, though the evidence there is considerably weaker and it's less widely-accepted. The nazis considered Alberich's son, Hagen, who impales Siegfried in the back to retrieve the ring in Götterdämmerung, as a personification of Jews, while they considered Siegfried as a pure Aryan-blooded hero.

Video Games

  • A literal example is in Fallout: New Vegas with the Repconn ghouls, a band of mutants on an exodus, seeking a "promised land" with a leader who proclaims to have divinely inspired visions.
  • In Mass Effect, the volus are a race of short, weak, and nasally speaking people who live as a "client race" amongst the taller, more militaristic turians. The turians allow the volus to run their finances and commerce in exchange for protection. This is all pretty analogous to the way Jews were viewed in early Christian and Muslim cultures. Several volus are quite shady, feeding into the stereotype of greedy Jewish bankers and crooked merchants. The quarians also seem to be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture blend of Jews and Roma, but (despite enduring more in-universe Fantastic Racism) without the Unfortunate Implications.
  • Master of Orion II features the Gnolams, a race of spacefaring traders whose insidiousness, obsession with money, visage and gesturing all hit way too close to home... They were also short of stature with big noses and wore little skullcaps. Moreover, of the various species' "hero lieutenants" the player can hire, the Gnolam example was named "ZOG", which may or may not have been intended as a reference to a delusional Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The name was changed in a patch. Even their racial music theme is based on Chassidic dance.
  • Shareware game Escape Velocity Nova has a side quest about mercenaries from New Ireland, a planet full of Irish colonists, that includes every Oireland stereotype imaginable, as well as some severe Unfortunate Implications when the mercenaries explain why they're so good at guerrilla warfare. The game's creators seem not to have intended any of this to be offensive, as the player's character goes on at length about how much he admires Irish culture.
  • World of Warcraft has a lot of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, some of which verge on being Space Jews:
    • The Darkspear trolls are obviously inspired by Jamaicans, and pepper their speech with word "mon." The other trolls, particularly the Gurubashi, are spinoffs on Aztecs/Mayans. Their Blood God is a feathered serpent, much like Quetzalcoatl, though ironically Quetzalcoatl was the one Aztec deity thought to oppose human sacrifice. The Sanfury Trolls, on the oher hand, are based on what appear to be ancient Egyptians, with their mummified dead.
    • Goblins are New Yorkers with New York accents. Their dialogue includes cliches from a variety of common New York ethnicities. They're also short, big-eared, obnoxious voiced, shrewd businessmen. In the Cataclysm expansion, the newly-introduced Bilgewater Cartel resembles the Mafia.
  • In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, gnomes have large noses, tend to be wealthy bankers and statesmen, and were involved in a giant morally depraved conspiracy for personal gain. Coincidence? Maybe.
    • On the other hand, this might be intentional: it's set in the 19th century, and reads rather like a novel from that time, when pinning such things on the Jews would have been perfectly acceptable.
  • The Gerudo from The Legend of Zelda series are this (for Bedouin culture) combined with Amazon Brigade. On one hand they are patriarchal and Dark skinned thieves who live in the desert and are considered lower than the Hylians who are "chosen by the gods" they use a moon as their symbol (later changed into a random squiggly thing). On the other hand most of the Gerudo are women, who posses Honor Among Thieves save for the Big Bad.
  • The Cetra from Final Fantasy VII. Not only are they a nearly-extinct tribe of wandering chosen ones searching for a 'Promised Land', the main villain's name is lifted directly from a Hebrew concept, the 'Sephirot', which deals with how God manifests in the material world.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • The South Park episode "Cancelled" features a literal version in a race of aliens known as the Joozians, a Planet of Hats people characterized by their gigantic noses, wealth, and control of the intergalactic entertainment business. Kyle, the Jewish kid, is implied to be related to Joozians after discovering that he's the only human in the group who likes their cuisine.
  • Squidbillies, rather obviously, is about squids who display hillbilly stereotypes.
  • Futurama has a few intentional examples, played for comedy:
    • The Native Martians are obvious analogues to Native Americans. They sold their home planet for a bead and are forced into small reservations; Their clothing and speech are based on old Western film cliches.
    • Zoidberg and his Decapoidian species are based on Ashkenazi American Jews. They speak with a thick Yiddish accent, use many Yiddishisms in their speech, and display a number of Jewish stereotypes, such as complaining and being fussy over money. Zoidberg's name is a play on common Jewish names ending in -berg. His profession is also stereotypically Jewish. Likewise, his uncle is an old Borscht Belt-style performer who removed the -berg, just as many Jewish actors hide their heritage when taking stage names. Zoidberg himself is a play on the classic Yiddish concept of the mooching "schnorrer." Ironically, being shellfish-creatures, they're not kosher. In one episode, Zoidberg gets kicked out of a "bot mitzvah" held by overtly Jewish robots.
    • The Cygnoids are Space Italian-Americans and display some stereotypical Italian-American behavior. Things get a little ironic when a family of Cygnoids open a pizza shop and show a comical level of ignorance about human cuisine and physiology.
  • Tripping the Rift pretty much runs on Refuge in Audacity and this is pretty much the least offensive thing about the show, but there's at least two species of purple-skinned alien (or possibly sub-species of the same species) that have a lot in common with humans of African ancestry. One is for all intents and purposes basically a typical basketball player (only with chainsaws) and the other looks like 1940s cartoons of black people. Especially "Natives" as opposed to black characters who were born in America.
  • Fantastic Max had an episode were the characters runs into a group of thieving, flamboyant, swarthy (but in the end, helpful) alien con artists that literally refer to themselves as "Space Gypsies".
  • In some Golden Age cartoons, crows are portrayed as being African American. Interestingly, ravens aren't portrayed this way despite having all-black plumage rather like crows.
  • The two titular gophers of the "Go Go Gophers" segments of Underdog are portrayed as stereotyped Native Americans.
  • The Goodfeathers and the Godpigeon in Animaniacs are portrayed as Italian-Americans.
  • The two "Siamese cats" from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers embody a negative Chinese stereotype.
  • The pandas from the Tale Spin episode "Lost Horizons" are Chinese stereotypes, so much so that the episode was taken out of circulation and only showed up again when the show was released on DVD.
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