Basic Trope: Bad guys who adhere to the principles of National Socialism as advocated by Adolf Hitler.
- Straight: The heroes fight against Nazi villains in a World War II setting.
- Exaggerated:
- The Nazi villains are portrayed in a stereotypical way, shouting stock German phrases, having ridiculous accents, being obsessed with the occult, possessing anachronistic super-science, etc.
- The heroes fight against Nazi villains in non-European settings (Africa, Middle East, etc).
- The heroes fight against neo-Nazis seeking to establish a Fourth Reich.
- All Germans Are Nazis
- Gratuitous Nazis
- Downplayed:
- The Nazi villains are portrayed in a naturalistic manner, emphasizing the "banality of evil."
- A Nazi by Any Other Name
- Justified: The Nazis weren't exactly the best guys in Real Life, so it's only natural that fiction would feature them as villains now and then, especially in works that take place during World War II or around that time.
- Inverted: Nazi Protagonist
- Subverted: It appears the villains are Nazis, but actually according to the Nazis, it's a False Flag Operation by the Dirty Communists.
- Double Subverted: The Nazis turn up as villains later, for real.
- Parodied: The Nazis are depicted in a very over-the-top, cartoonish fashion, and perhaps not even in their correct time period.
- Zig-Zagged: The story takes place on the Eastern Front, and the main characters are constantly torn over whether they should regard Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia as the greater evil.
- Averted: Nazis are not present in the story.
- Enforced: The Meddling Executives insisted that the villains be Nazis because they're acceptable to ridicule.
- Lampshaded: "Nazis. Why did it have to be Nazis?"
- Invoked: With everyone already hating him anyway, the villain decides to become a neo-Nazi.
- Exploited: The Dirty Communists point to the threat of the Nazis as evidence for why people should support everything Josef Stalin does, even The Gulag, the purges, and the assassination of Leon Trotsky.
- Defied: A Jewish-American protagonist signs up to fight Imperial Japan in the Pacific Theater so that he won't have to face the Nazis.
- Discussed: The villains are not Nazis or Nazi-esque, but are compared to them anyway.
- Conversed: Two characters talk about there being more World War II movies with German villains than Japanese or Italian villains, and why that might be.
- Implied:
- In a circa 1940s setting, the villains seem to be militaristic German nationalists, but there are No Swastikas.
- Putting on the Reich
- Deconstructed: Allied atrocities, such as the Japanese internment and the firebombing of Dresden, are focused on, making it look like the Allies were similar.
- Reconstructed: It's emphasized that Axis atrocities were still committed on a much larger scale.
- Played for Laughs: Adolf Hitlarious
- Played for Drama: The main characters are victims of a Nazi atrocity, such as the Blitz or The Holocaust.
Back to Those Wacky Nazis