History Main / GratuitousGerman

* In ''[[{{Theatre}} Leopoldstadt]], which is set in Austria, only uses gratuitous German at one point between the two German-speaking family members in front of an English cousin who'd fled from Vienna in 1938.

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* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', [[PunnyName which has... a thing about names]], deserves a mention for the pseudo-legendary introduced in Generation V: Hy''drei''gon. 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, Hydreigon with three. (Of course, this '''is''' the same series that used GratuitousSpanish when it first left Japan.)

* Played for laughs in ''VideoGame/JonssonliganJaktenPaMjolner''
when Sickan shows up to his nemesis' party in a disguise to avoid getting recognised. He specifically pretends to be an elderly German lady despite his poor grasp on the language and everyone else at the party being native Swedes like him; most of the voiceclips you get while talking to NPCs in this disguise are grammatically suspect sentences (such as "Guten Heute?" meaning "Good today?") followed by whichever NPC he is talking to expressing their confusion -- assuming they are listening in the first place. (Except, naturally, his nemesis who [[FailedASpotCheck simply says that "it's a pleasure [to meet you]]]]".) On another note, the protagonists actually visit Germany earlier in the game; while most of the spoken dialogue is rendered with JustAStupidAccent, the magazines you can get a glimpse of were clearly machine translated.

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* At any given time, if a ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' run isn't doing GratuitousEnglish, they're probably doing Gratuitous German. The most prominent instance is ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'', where a sizable portion of the main cast is made of this trope: Volfmon ([[WolfMan wolf-mon]]), Löwemon ([[PantheraAwesome lion-mon]]), [[AllThereInTheManual Reichmon]] ([[PuttingOnTheReich empire-mon]]), and [=KaiserLeomon=] ([[PantheraAwesome emperor-Leo-mon]]), along with all of their attack names. Other examples from elsewhere include [[Anime/DigimonSavers Duftmon, ShineGreymon Burst Mode's]] [[PlayingWithFire Torrid Weiß attack]], and [[Manga/DigimonXrosWars JagerDorulumon]].

* Many, if not most, of the {{Real Robot}}s in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' have German names. The OriginalGeneration games give these robots the main role.

* ''VideoGame/MyChildLebensborn'': One of the game's events consists of the PlayerCharacter discovering that their adoptive child sometimes randomly uses German words that they are implied to be remembering from their very early life, without realizing that they are German words. This happens little after the PlayerCharacter gets a reminder that the small Norwegian town in which they live is so zealous about getting rid of reminders of the UsefulNotes/NaziGermany occupation that the German language itself is deeply frowned upon. It's up to the player to allow the child to continue using their "funny words" in public or to convince them to stop doing it.

* In ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' the 'Nacht Baron' (Night baron) is a recurring fictional character and also a codename for several other things.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHsx4Hqa-1ORjQTh9TYDhww Kiara Takanashi]] of {{WebAnimation/Hololive}} hails from Germany, and speaks her mother tongue frequently during her streams. In particular, Kiara likes to begin her streams by shouting the German onomatopeia for a rooster's call, "Kikeriki!" This plays into her character's AnimalMotif of chickens and phoenixes. She also had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huhBjp5IByw a stream]] in which she taught Hololive's own Gawr Gura some rudimentary German.

* ''ComicStrip/USAcres'': [[http://garfield.com/us-acres/1998-04-04 Booker tried to trap a worm by sitting on its hole]]. The worm used a spiked helmet like those from German soldiers and said "Ach du lieber! A flyink chicken!"

** The names of the organizations SEELE (soul), GEHIRN (brain), and NERV (nerve) are all in German.

* In ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'', Von Bach peppers his speech with German, but betrays himself as a poser, as Captain Comet, a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII veteran, notes, no German would say ''schweinhund'', just ''schwein'', guessing Von Bach watched too many Hollywood films.

* In ''The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court'', Creator/BobWoodward and Scott Armstrong relate an incident in which William Rehnquist, then the youngest and most recently appointed justice on the U.S. [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts Supreme Court]] and at that point possessing a reputation of such extreme conservatism that he was semi-jokingly referred to as a fascist, got the attention of a babbling crowd of clerks where no one else could by standing on a stable and shouting "ACHTUNG!!"

* ''Fanfic/TheChildOfLove'': Used by Asuka here and there. Unfortunately, it is obvious that the writer did not know German and he sometimes misspelled words (like “oberarsche” or “scheist”).
-->'''Asuka''':''"Guten Morgen, Shinji-kun!"''

-->'''Asuka:''': “Hullo Shinji! Guten Morgen!”\\
'''Shinji:''' “Guten Morgen Asuka. Wie Geht Es Ihnen?”\\
'''Asuka:''' “Wundervoll! Ich wußte nicht, daß Sie Deutsches sprachen Shinji?”\\
'''Shinji''': “Uh, actually, I don’t speak German. I just learned a few words here and there after I heard you were coming over”.

* ''TimeOfYourLife'' is now doing it. Very poorly.

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdPMSd7xA7U "Das bayrische Restaurant Stück"]] is a very good example for this. The pronunciation isn't actually that bad, every sentence is perfectly understandable.

--> ''Was ist rückweise bewegen?''
*** Neither of those lines are understandable to a German, though, despite using more or less actual German words. "Fühlung" doesn't exist, but from constructional logic it would need to mean something like "feeling", though not in an emotional but tactical sense, which doesn't mean really much in this sentence. Similarily "rückweise" should be "rückwärts" and has nothing to do with hike. Also "die Fühlung" should be followed by "die", not "das".

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]] shows that Japan doesn't have the monopoly on Gratuitous German: [[AC:"Exterminieren! Exterminieren!"]] Especially grating since "exterminieren" is not even a proper word (at least not one anyone actually uses), just the usual [[AC:"Exterminate!"]] with a common verb ending. More accurate alternative would be [[AC:"Eliminieren!"]] (which was used by the actual German dub), or [[AC:"Vernichten!"]], which, while being closer to "destroy" or "annihilate", was what the... [[ANaziByAnyOtherName main inspiration for the Daleks]] used in a similar context.
* Two of the people aboard the ''Demeter'' in Episode 2 of ''Series/Dracula2020'' are of German descent (the helmsman and an elderly Grand Duchess, both allegedly from Bavaria). Dracula feeds on the former to have a brief but inconsequential conversation in perfect German with the latter.

* "Hello Earth" from Music/KateBush's album [[Music/HoundsOfLove "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").

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--->'''Phoenix''': I like your affected Euro-rock accent, by the way.

-->'''Gustav''': Willkommen! Hier findest du nur dein Grab! (Welcome! Here you will find naught but your grave!)

--> '''Wakko''': Ist das nicht ein incredibly long name to have to try and say?

** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E11BurnsVerkaufenDerKraftwerk "Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk"]] ("Burns Sells the Factory") in grammatically correct German would be "Burns verkauft das Kraftwerk". That's probably because German words ending in ''-en'' [[RuleOfFunny just sound funnier to English speakers]] (which is also referenced in a brief "Germanglish" gag with Smithers in that same episode).
** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS9E14DasBus "Das Bus"]] would be "Der Bus". [[RuleOfFunny It's a pun]] on the movie ''Film/DasBoot''.

** Krusty's German-dubbed show in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS20E14InTheNameOfTheGrandfather "In The Name Of The Grandfather"]]:
-->'''Krusty''': ''"Heil! Heil!"'' (which actually got its soundtrack deleted in the German version)
-->'''Sideshow Mel''':''(soaked by Krusty's mineral water gag) "Oh nein, Krusty spritzen der Gaswasser!"''
*** The correct translation (without the allusions "Heil" and "gas") would be
--->'''Krusty''': ''"Hallihallo! (Hello, hello!)"''
--->'''Sideshow Mel''': ''"Oh nein, Krusty spritzt mit Mineralwasser! (Oh no, Krusty squirts with Mineral water!)"''
** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E3WhenFlandersFailed "When Flanders Failed"]]
--->'''Lisa:''' Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is? (...) It's a German term for 'shameful joy', taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
--->'''Homer:''' Oh, come on Lisa. I'm just glad to see him fall flat on his butt! He's usually all happy and comfortable, and surrounded by loved ones, and it makes me feel...What's the opposite of that shameful joy thing of yours?
--->'''Lisa:''' Sour grapes.\\

** The only times ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ever got spoken German correct (or close to it) was when Homer sang the original German version of Music/{{Nena}}'s "99 Red Balloons" (that was on the episode [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E17TheHeartbrokeKid "The Heartbroke Kid"]]) and when Lisa was going over the different conjugations for the German verb "to eat" on her German verb conjugation wheel (she left out "Du isst" ["you eat"] but everything else was correct) and Homer responds, "Ich bin hungrig!" (though Homer's pronunciation of "hungrig" sounded Americanized). In the same episode, a German backpacker calls [[TemporaryBulkChange the then-obese Bart]] a "strudel-sucking Globenheimer", which isn't even a real German word!

* ''Fanfic/{{Jericho}}'', a ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfiction, has the [[FirstPersonSmartass narrator]], the eponymous Jericho, drop bits of German when he speaks. Jericho also notes that when he gets nervous or otherwise heavily emotional, he tends to speak in more a more literal German-to-English manner, which effectively makes him sound as if he were speaking straight out of Shakespeare. Justified in that German—in-universe, called ''Teutsch''—is his first language, and (very rarely) he does mistranslate.

** Some of Medic's items have pseudo-German names (i.e
"Metalmeatencasen", "Feelingbetterbager", or "Hazmattenhatten")

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* There used to be a German parody strip, ''Deutsche Helden'', in which Nachtkrabbler (Nightcrawler), der Rote Schädel (the Red Skull) and Elektroblitz ([[UnfortunateName Blitzkrieg]]) share a flat. The first two are literal translations of the English code-names and sound unintentionally funny to German ears. Which is probably why in the official German editions they generally prefer to use the English names.

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--->'''Lisa:''' Sour grapes.
--->'''Homer:''' Boy, those Germans have a word for everything.

& The Music/{{Warrant}} song "The Bitter Pill" busts into German about halfway through the song.