Fanon / Hetalia: Axis Powers

• Some parts of the Hetalia: Axis Powers fanon comes from Real Life since they're based on interpretations of world events. Others, however, are 100% fanon or only very loosely based on history. Some examples below.
  • First type:
    • During The American Civil War or the Korean War (neither touched on by the author), there is a personification of CSA and North Korea. CSA is killed, North Korea is alive and continues to be crazy. In case of Korea this stems from a translation issue, as the Korea in Hetalia canon is South Korea (he's called ?? "kankoku", which specifically means South Korea), so presumably there's a canonical North Korea as well.
    • A variation of this is that America has a split personality during this time period.
    • Another one is about North Korea being female, to further illustrate the contrast between her and South Korea. It's based in some Himaruya doodles that have a female Korea, even though the design was intended to be South Korea (although he ultimately went with making the character a guy. He'd once said that North Korea would be a boy, but it's highly unlikely a canon NK would appear at this point). North Korea characters almost always have long hair, whether male or female.
    • The Holy Roman Empire really did grow up to become Germany. This question is still unresolved in canon though the Valentines strip hints (as well as a few other strips drawn by Himaruya for Christmas events) at this one possibly being canon, but the fandom can't stand the thought of HRE being killed. We can't blame the fans, tho.
    • Vietnam's transition from an innocent fisher girl to a hardened warrior.
    • Those who follow the "North Korea is female" fanon bit also give her a similar treatment.
    • It's also quite popular to show North Korea in general as having once been a good brother and sane person overall to being broken and abused (usually involving time spent in Russia's care) until he or she is completely brainwashed and suspicious and hateful towards all other Nations. Fans tend to show North Korea in present times as showing signs of being in an abusive relationship with his/her boss.
    • Fellow Anime Chinese Girl Taiwan either being a Dragon Lady during World War II, or having bound feet per China's orders.
    • Depending on the time period discussed (usually the Cold War era), Russia and America are depicted as rivals or full-on enemies who hate each other's guts.
  • Second type:
    • Egypt's hair. Fanwork almost always described him as longhaired, but a Himaruya doodle showed him without his kefiyeh headgear... and with very short hair◊.
    • Taiwan and Hong Kong being Half-Identical Twins, as well as the Italies and America and Canada being twins too. The Italies aren't twins, since Romano is 23 and Veneziano is 20. America and Canada also likely aren't twins, because they have different birthdays (their respective Independence Days)^note Though there have been rare cases of twins being born days apart; however, they resemble each other enough that Canada is frequently mistaken for America and Canada doesn't have a canon age, so the fanon abounds. IN the case of the Asian's, this has neither been confirmed or denied.
    • Sweden having a war hammer as his weapon... despite having a BFS (and sometimes a quarter-staff) in official art and Himaruya doodles.
    • Denmark being a Yandere for either Sweden or Norway. And Norway being a Tsundere for Denmark.
    • If not made into a Broken Bird, Vietnam will be shown as the East Asians' Team Mom.
  • Actually, when many characters are either just mentioned or show up only in supplementary materials, fanon is just around the corner. Since the fans have no real idea of what the characters are like, except for their looks and some basic personality traits spelled in the character profiles, you find yourself with many options to play/write/etc. them. Such as Hong Kong being depicted as a Sugar-and-Ice Personality and Belgium being a mix of The Ojou and Hard-Drinking Party Girl, personality wise.
  • Also, it's believed that the infamous "vital regions" memetic line has been used by either Prussia or Russia in a regular basis. Thing is, they have not. The ones that have used it in canon are actually Austria (in the "Maria Theresa" series) and Spain (in Spain's Lazy Morning")
  • In the Western fandom, everybody seems to believe that Sweden speaks in a horribly mumbled speech. In some cases it's portrayed as so bad that only Finland can decipher it. In the original Japanese, Sweden speaks in a northern Japanese dialect. Quirky? Yes. Unintelligible? No. He does speak very little, though, which might reinforce the image of him mumbling. Note that he's not the only character to have an accent but the others are usually translated speaking normally. Examples: Spain, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and informedly at least Belgium.
    • Funnily enough, no one seems to do this to Norway whose dialect in Japanese is actually a lot more quirky and more difficult to decipher than Sweden's.
  • The heights of certain characters. Russia tends to get portrayed as huge (admittedly, he is definitely one of the taller) and America also seems to gain a few inches every now and then, but especially France grows quite a bit in fanworks. Canada and England, then again, have a strong tendency to shrink in fans's minds. Occasionally Finland too. It's worth noting that the author himself doesn't seem to stick to these heights very strictly, especially England is often drawn as really being quite shorter than he's supposed to be. The main eight's (supposedly) canon heights are mentioned in a note with an early strip (scroll down for the list). Also, Taiwan is once drawn with 150 cm in a lost height chart but is moved up to about 160 cm in others.
    • Russia's body type is also much of speculation, due to his height, thick clothes, and extraordinary strength & toughness. Some fans portray him as muscular, fat, or "bearmode"(a muscular person with some fat here & there).
  • England being America's father or father figure (sometimes also Canada's, though that's usually France). This may come from a mistranslation in the comic version of America's Storage Cleaning (the anime has it correctly), and/or the popular "FrUK family" ship in which France and England raise little America and Canada, and/or some people's firm belief that they share a father/son dynamics. Canon, by the way, makes it pretty clear that they regarded each other as brothers and had an older brother/younger brother dynamics (though that may not have translated well due to cultural differences).
    • On a similar note, a lot of fanfiction writers have a female "Native American-tan" serve as the mother to America and Canada, before they are adopted/stolen/kidnapped and raised by England and France. The series has never touched on personifications for the Native Americans, and there's no reason to think that there would be one single personification for them all, as opposed to one for each of the different tribes.
  • Some countries' human names. Yekaterina "Katyusha" Braginskaya, for example, was never an official name for Ukraine, only a very popular fanon one coming from the "Katyusha" nickname that Russians give to rocket artillery, which doubles as the diminutive of the name "Yekaterina" ("Catherine" in Russian) and triples as the Japanese term for the style of headband she wears.
  • For areas that have yet to pop up fanon typically has them as one gender. For example Scotland is almost always a boy and Puerto Rico is a girl.
    • Scotland being a boy makes sense, since England is stated to be the youngest of his brothers. For fans who want to have a few more female Nations though, many are fond of portraying Northern Ireland as England's younger sister. For that matter, however many siblings England has can vary on how many islands and so on that the writer feels like giving personifications of. It's not uncommon to see Wales depicted as a girl, either.
  • Scotland has one design that's used by most of the fandom. He's a clean shaven, Significant Green-Eyed Redhead who smokes cigarettes a lot and is depicted as aggressive, especially towards England.
    • It's also quite common to see Scotland as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, too, particularly with Himaruya mentioning him to be "friendly and brave and likes cats", and Scotland having a Big Brother Instinct isn't unheard of either.
  • The personifications of the US states are portrayed as America's children, either adopted conceived from the nations that used to own the territory (for example, Texas is either adopted from Mexico, or s/he conceived Texas with America.)
  • Austria forcing Hungary to put on dresses when she came to live in his house as his maid. In canon we only see Hungary dressed up in maid-like clothes right after getting away from the Ottoman Empire and running into Prussia, but it's never specified who exactly told her to do so: for all that we know it could have been Austria... but it could've also been Austria's bosses without his input since Hungary was technically under their "thumb", or maybe it could've been Hungary's own bosses under the idea that she should lay low — or it could have even been Hungary's own idea, as her way to familiarize herself with things traditionally seen as "feminine" as well as her current situation. It says a lot that many of those who uphold this fanon theory are Austria haters who accuse him of forcing gender roles on Hungary and "reducing" her to a Satellite Love Interest.
    • Details regarding the divorce between Austria and Hungary vary, depending on the shipping. Given how the two are shown to be very close, even while divorced, many fanfic writers go with the idea that they were forcibly separated by their bosses, or else that Austria let Hungary leave him so she would be happier.
• A disturbing number of writers subscribe to the belief that invasions and attacks between nations translate to rape. Granted the series itself makes a number of sexual jokes (the most popular of which being the "seized vital regions" one), but the show itself shows battles as the nations inflicting cartoonish damage upon each other.
  • If a fic takes place during the Soviet Era, odds are it'll make some reference to Russia brutally beating and/or raping the Nations trapped in his house. It's heavily implied in the manga that he beat Lithuania at that time, and the Baltics are plenty scared of him, but there's no canon example of him acting so brutally.
• A popular idea is that Denmark, America, and Prussia are best friends and are very similar in personality.
  • Actually while they are never seen together it could be assumed that they are on friendly terms due to history. America and Denmark are both in NATO and have had good relations and both characters have friendly personalities. Also Denmark had a on and off relationship with neighboring Prussia and has strong ties with modern Germany.
• Many authors usually like to portray certain male nations as being much more muscular than they appear even though in canon most nations are slim at best.
• Some fans also believe that male countries that own peninsulas (such as Florida, Jutland, Kamchatka) are more endowed than those without.
• In fanarts, it's common to depict Indonesia as a well-built Mr. Fanservice Hunk with larger chest.