History Main / GratuitousGerman

** Yes, they were actually speaking German. But hearing "Achtung!", "Schutzstaffel!" and "Mein Leben!" (and precious little else) hundreds of times was ''extremely'' gratuitous.

** Oh God... You know, a more appropriate translation for 'Elefantglied' would be elefant penis. I'll just go over there and die laughing, okay?

* The American band {{Tool}} has a song "Die Eier Von Satan," in which the singer growls out a menacing speech in German, punctuated by shouted crescendos that are received with wild applause by an audience. It all sounds incredibly Naziesque until you discover that the speech is actually a recipe for [[LyricalDissonance hash brownies]]. The band also has a Gratuitous Italian song, "Message for Harry Manback," in which the speaker frequently curses in Italian.

* Two character from ''TouhouProject'' have German "names" as well: Keine (no one) and Reisen (to travel).

* ''FafnerInTheAzureDeadAggressor'' includes some examples of this trope, the Fafner units are named after German numerals (Mark Elf, Mark Zwei, Mark Sechs, etc) without forgetting the famous "Mark Sein". It might not be a case of completely gratuitous German, though, as Fafner is a concept taken from Germanic mythology.

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* ''AxisPowersHetalia'' has this for, [[CaptainObvious who else]], Germany. He says "MEIN GOTT!" once and one of his [[ImageSong Image Songs]] is titled "Einsamkeit" (Solitude).

** The dub makes it worse, with [[MemeticMutation "THIS IS VUNDERBAR, JAPAN!"]] and "Herr Shtick, mein shticky friend!" among others.

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** A hack revealed that he was to have an additional taunt during that line in which he [[MushroomSamba huffs his Medigun]].
*** Which has now been officially implemented. 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.) If only he'd gotten his plurals of Dummkopf right. Dummköpfe!
**** Maybe he's just a bit rusty after spending so long in the States?
**** There's a popular EpilepticTree right now that none of the classes are the nationality they pretend to be, so it may be [[TVTropesDrinkingGame gratuitous]] after all.

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(with an {{Umlaut}}, you mind), being the diminuitive of the title ''Frau'' and equivanlent the title "Miss", is obsolete nowadays and only used when scolding or mocking someone.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

-> Krusty: ''"Heil! Heil!"'' (which actually got its sound track deleted in the german version)
-> Sideshow Mel:''(soaked by Krusty's mineral water gag) "Oh nein, Krusty spritzen der Gaswasser!"''
** The correct translation would be
-> Krusty: ''"Hallihallo! (Hello, hello!)"''
-> Sideshow Mel: ''"Oh nein, Krusty spritzt mit Mineralwasser! (Oh no, Krusty squirts with Mineral water!)"''

* DieHard has some gratuitous [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign German sounding gibberish]].

* ShutterIsland has actually rather decent German, though a native speaker notices the heavy accent and small mistakes.

* ''HouseonHauntedHill'' (the 1999 version) uses German writing printed on the walls of the haunted cellar, probably because someone thought that if you have a mad doctor performing vivisections on the inmates, you got to throw in a nod in direction of [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Evil Nazis (TM)]]. The problem(s): first off, using German for official text makes no sense whatsoever in an asylum that's in the US, secondly the phrases are so mangled as to be barely understandable, and on top of that even what they mean - "stand away from the windows when the alarm sounds" - makes little sense when written on the walls of a _cellar_.

The German subbers used the more appropriate "vernichten!". The German translators used "Eliminieren!" (eliminate) since extermineren isn't a real German word, but 'Deutschlish'.

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

*** [[Exactlywhatitsaysonthetin Home of the Uschtens?]]

*** Home of the Uschtens?

* ''SuikodenTierkreis'' has quite a bit of this: "Tierkreis" means "Zodiac", if memory serves; also, the nation of Ritterschild ("Knight Shield"), and its three representatives Geschutz, Minen and Buchse. Geschutz's name has probably been misspelled ("Schutz" means protection, and I don't recall his name being an actual word, but I'm not a native speaker), but Minen means "Mines" and Buchse has a bunch of meanings, "Bush" being one of them.

* ''Suikoden'' Tierkreis has quite a bit of this: "Tierkreis" means "Zodiac", if memory serves; also, the nation of Ritterschild ("Knight Shield"), and its three representatives Geschutz, Minen and Buchse. Geschutz's name has probably been misspelled ("Schutz" means protection, and I don't recall his name being an actual word, but I'm not a native speaker), but Minen means "Mines" and Buchse has a bunch of meanings, "Bush" being one of them.

* The Medic from ''TeamFortress2'', a strange American example, ''is'' German , and likes to pepper his sentences with German words, even if they don't really make any sense in context ("Oktoberfest!").