You Cloned Hitler

"Of course! Don't you know anything about science?"

Hank: Is it me, or does like every Nazi want to clone Hitler? It's like the only thing they think of!

Sergeant Hatred: It seems that way, right? I guess when everybody hates you, you fixate on making rotten Hitlers.

—The Venture Brothers

Those Wacky Nazis have an obsession with their leader Adolf Hitler and now that he's gone they just can't seem to do anything without him. The solution? Simple! Clone him!

One of the most recurring plot elements when Nazis are involved. Neo-Nazis out to rebuild the Aryan Nation need their leader to tell them what to do, or maybe Hitler's underlings in the Thule Society believe that they can call the mustachioed villain from the Great Beyond but they need a body to hold his spirit. Lo and behold they just happen to have some of his DNA lingering in some forgotten drawer and they're off to clone Hitler.

Related to Apocalypse Hitler. Hitler as a Brain In a Jar is a common subtrope, as is Stupid Jetpack Hitler. See also Archived Army. Contrast with Clone Jesus.

Examples of You Cloned Hitler include:

Anime & Manga

• One of these shows up in the Spriggan manga. He was very unhappy.
• In the Gag Dub of Crayon Shin-chan there is a character named... you guessed it, Dr. Hitler Clone.
  • Subverted: He's really a robot. Still sounds and acts just like the fuhrer, though.
• One of the clones in Afterschool Charisma is Hitler who feels obligated to accept punishment for the sins of the real Adolf Hitler, which goes part with the theme that some of these clones do not want to turn out like their originals.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ it is revealed that Glemmy Toto is a clone of Gihren Zabi, himself a Captain Ersatz of Hitler. He's a scheming, manipulative little bastard, who uses his superficial charm to manouvere himself into greater and greater positions of power.

Comics

• Superman: At Earth's End has Superman fighting two clones of Hitler that are declared by him to be the root of all Earth's misfortune.
  • Luckily, that wasn't Superman. It was Bearded Idiot.

Scientist 1: Hey, Steve! You wanna clone Hitler?
Scientist 2: Nah... Hey I know! Why don't we make two of him!

• • And causing a Running Gag

Cloned Hitler: Of course! Don't you know anything about science?!

• The Marvel Universe villain Hatemonger is a Hitler clone. At least one of them. His supervillain costume is a purple Ku Klux Klan outfit.
• In an issue of Outsiders, the clone shoots himself out of horror after being shown films of the "accomplishments" of his predecessor. Turns out clones aren't really the same person the original was. How surprising.
• Has happened a few times in Marvel Comics. In one notable instance, Captain America actually teamed up with Nazi supervillain The Red Skull to stop such an attempt, because the Skull wasn't interested in Hitler coming back and taking charge again.
• Comes up by name in "THEY CLONED HITLER'S FEET", a story in Dark Horse's Flaming Carrot comics. An obvious riff on the cinematic 'gem' They Saved Hitlers Brain, this story features an army of jackboots that goosestep around and fight the heroes by kicking them.

Film

• The entire plot of The Boys from Brazil.
• The villains of They Saved Hitlers Brain are trying to clone a new body for Hitler, whose head has been preserved in a jar.

Literature

• This is the whole point of the novel The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin, which was made into a rather good movie starring Gregory Peck (as Josef Mengele of all people) and Laurence Olivier.
• In The Goodness Gene, the protagonist discovers that he's a Hitler clone.

Live Action TV

• An episode of The Nineties remake of The Professionals played this trope painfully straight, with a bunch of old crypto-Nazi bad guys planning to clone Hitler from his finger, which one of them managed to cut off somehow a few days before Berlin fell.
• In The New Adventures of Wonder Woman episode "Anschluss '77" (1977), a group of South American neo-Nazis .. you guessed it ... cloned Hitler.
• There's a Mr. Show sketch about how, once human cloning technology had been invented, the world immediately set about mass-producing Hitlers, but forced them to be slaves to Jewish families.
• In the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Deadly Games Affair", a former SS scientist attempts to reanimate the body of Adolf Hitler. Since it was written in 1964, the episode makes this perfectly clear without ever actually mentioning the name Hitler.

Music

• Rapper mc Chris has a song called "006" featuring a villain called Robot Hitler Head.
  • "Fuck you Robot Hitler Head, I'll never join you! You expect me to believe that's Hitler's body? What a bunch of bullshit!"

Tabletop Games

• Genius: The Transgression: Every time someone kills Hitler, the Time Police agents clone a new one to enforce Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act. (They have a problem with officers committing suicide afterwards.)
  • Originally it wasn't even Hitler in the position, but after Hitler was killed they realised it would be easier to start cloning than find yet another replacement.

Video Games

• The original Japanese version of Bionic Commando had cloned Hitler as the final boss. In all versions, you get a cutscene of Hitler's head going boom when you win the final battle.
  • Rearmed has Hitler "The Leader" (a literal translation of "Der Fuhrer") as the final boss.

Web Comics

• This strip demonstrates the pitfalls of cloning Hitler even with the best(?) of intentions.
• Bob the Angry Flower's Good Hitler was brought back to life as an indestructible abomination by Nazis, but death so profoundly changed him that he's now dedicated to doing good in the world. It doesn't work out.
• Done in Irregular Webcomic, by the heroes, in order to weaken him. It Makes Sense in Context.
• In Spinnerette, an old nazi asks Dr Universe to make him a clone of Hitler in order to take advantage of the planet alignment to come to summon Hitler's soul back. Doctor Universe points out that the clone will be a baby after all, but their willing to wait for the maturation.
  • Later on, after said Nazi was defeated, Universe states that he only helped them because he knew they would fail. He states that the idea of the future of humanity lying within a single strand of DNA is laughable and points out that even if the clone were to grow up to become a dictator there is no way that Germans would allow history to repeat itself.

Western Animation

• In the first episode of season four of The Venture Brothers a group of Nazis commissions Rusty to clone Hitler from a dog. He flat out refuses. Lampshaded as well, in the page quote and also this:

Rusty Venture: Really? You went with that cliche?

• The episode of Code Monkeys where Hitler is thawed out ends with one of his "backup clones" being found in the 'fridge.
• Clone High DOES have a clone of Hitler.In the episode "Tears of a Clone", he's one of the attendants of the Student Film Festival. However, he appears to be wearing an armband with a peace sign on it rather than a swastika.
• The Haunted World of El Superbeasto features Nazi zombies and Hitler's Brain In a Jar.
• In Archer, Dr. Krieger's backstory is a direct Homage to The Boys from Brazil. He may or may not be a Hitler clone, since doesn't look like Hitler, but he is a clone created by a Nazi scientist.