Nightmare Fuel / Er Ist Wieder Da

• The premise may sound ridiculous and purely Played for Laughs at first... but as the story progresses, the idea of Adolf Hitler returning, now armed with even greater instruments of propaganda and a new political climate of fear and anger for him to exploit, stops being funny and becomes terrifying. The movie especially makes it very clear that yes, he is going to go back in politics and seize power once again.
• Most comedies about Hitler go out of their way to defang him, painting him as a harmless clown that gets humiliated (the Adolf Hitlarious trope describes exactly that)... although there are some comedic moments regarding Hitler being a Fish out of Temporal Water, the moment he gets his shit together, it becomes clear that this Adolf is not 'hitlarious' in the slightest: he is the very same genocidal bigot as his historical counterpart, and really, he's not stupid; he is intelligent, adaptive, and charismatic, and the moment he is introduced to the internet and social media, he immediately realizes how he can exploit them for his own goals.
• His mere sight is nightmare fuel for one of his staff members's grandmother, an old Jewish woman... despite the dementia, she not only recognizes him, she knows he is the genuine article... How would you feel to spend decades with the meager consolation that the man who exterminated all of your loved ones is dead and cannot do more harm, only for him to reappear, completely unchanged by time, right in your house, brought there by your moronically-oblivious nephew? When they tell her he is a 'comedian' and 'just a joke', she coldly replies that even back then, people laughed at him at first.
• Add to more creepy fuel: upon realizing the staff member who introduced him to the internet/social media is of Jewish descent, he immediately begins to show disappointment that someone with 'such promise' is a Jew, showing that even when knowing someone who is Jewish, Hitler is still bigoted and nothing will change his mind.^note The actual Hitler's mother was treated by a Jewish physician, and he thanked the man for this by letting him emigrate from Germany. Also with a Jewish commanding officer he had in the army who recommended him for promotion. However, this still didn't stop his genocidal antisemitism.
• When he hijacks a 'politically incorrect' (read: a charade of racist, offensive-for-the-sake-of-being-offensive screeds) comedy show, breaking the supposed script to make a grand speech, summoning all the tricks of propaganda with practiced ease, it reminds everyone how much of a master demagogue the real Adolf Hitler really was, and it reflects how in real life 'ironic' bigotry in media is hijacked by actual bigots that use it as a platform to normalize and preach.
  • The original German version of his first television appearance ends on a brilliant and chilling pun: "Jetzt beginnt die Rücksendung". After giving a speech at how TV these days is crap, it can be read as "and now we will be fighting (transmitting, 'Sendung' is a TV transmission) back". But it also literally means 'sending back', as in deporting everyone who is 'not German'.
• Playing parallel to Hitler's triumphal words about the possibilities this new but just as cruel and idiotic world opens to him, the movie's end shows scenes of far-right demonstrations and neo-fascist violence. These scenes are not posed; they are actual recordings of real life demonstrations, with people shouting expletives and throwing stones and burning objects. And now imagine you see these scenes at the cinema and recognize them because they were recorded in your hometown, and you realize how screwed up reality is and how actual people in your environment do behave... can get the blood freezing in your veins. Especially when Hitler specifically cites the rise of far-right groups like them as proof he "can work with this" and get back into politics.

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