Film / Iron Sky

"We come in peace!"

— A class of Hitler Youth

A Sci-Fi comedy by the makers of Star Wreck ^note and several other production companies about Moon Nazis invading Earth in flying saucers in the year 2018. It premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival on February 11th, 2012, and released to theaters on April 4th.

The history: In the year 1945, Nazi scientists under Hans Kemmler develop revolutionary anti-gravity technology at a secret base in Antarctica. While the technology offers an enormous advantage in many fields, it comes too late to save the Axis cause. The last representatives of the Third Reich construct saucer-shaped spaceships using the anti-gravity technology and retreat to the dark side of the Moon. There, they establish a new base, Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun), and spend 70 years developing new technology and preparing for a full invasion of Earth.

Meanwhile on Earth, things have been going about as normally as you'd expect. After the apparent defeat of the Third Reich, there was the Cold War, The Space Race, various social upheavals, unpopular wars, technological revolutions, and economic rollercoasters. Now the United States is set to re-elect a Sarah Palin expy to a second term as President. In a publicity stunt, she decides to send a black man to the dark side of the Moon.

Hilarity Ensues.

A sequel called Iron Sky: The Coming Race was released in 2019. It features Nazis riding dinosaurs inside the Hollow Earth. Another sequel, Iron Sky: The Endgame about a Russian megapolis on Mars was announced on the official website for 2020/2021, yet financial troubles have put a halt on the project.

An official Roleplaying Game of the setting obtained full funding through Kickstarter, yet hasn't surfaced after the main production company's bankruptcy filing.

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Iron Sky contains examples of:

• Adolf Hitlarious: It's a comedy film about moon nazis.
• An Aesop: The film is a treatise against extreme nationalist mindsets that encourages competition rather than cooperation among nations.
• Affably Evil: The Nazis, in many cases. Sure they want to blow up the Earth, but they're also generally rather intelligent and polite, especially compared to the Earthling characters.
• Alas, Poor Villain: It's a little difficult not to feel bad for Kortzfleisch.
• All There in the Manual: How the Nazis got the Moon, for starters.
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • In one of the trailers the Nazis are shown landing on the Moon, unfurling a flag on a fixed flagpole, saluting the audience, and even draws similarities to the "Small Step For Man" line.
  • The assault on Earth begins on 5:45 a.m., not unlike the German invasion of Poland that started World War II.
• America Saves the Day: Referenced. The American president claims that America always saves the day, and is therefore entitled to the Helium-3. Unfortunately this sparks World War III.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Vivian bases the President's re-election campaign speech on Renate's pro-Nazi propaganda. Even campaign images are inspired by it, plus a symbol. No one notices, though.
• Apocalypse How: A Planetary Societal Disruption at the very least, shown as the nuclear warheads light up the Earth in the final shot, though in the stinger it's implied that someone could go start a new civilization on Mars.
• Artistic License – Biology: By the time the movie takes place, two or three generations of Nazis have been born and raised on the Moon. Despite this, none of the Nazis who travel to Earth have any problem with gravity six times stronger than what they're used to. This could be handwaved through artificial gravity in the living areas of their base (hey, they have anti-gravity, artificial gravity isn't that big of a leap).
• Artistic License – Physics: The explosion that tears off about 10% of the Moon has little effect on the rest of it beyond a tiny quake. Such a comet impact-level event should make nuking the Moon unnecessary.
• Artistic License – Space:
  • There is no such thing as a "dark side" of the moon, but, since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, there is a "far side" of the moon, which always faces away from Earth. The moon base that's supposed to be on the dark/far side of the moon can be seen with both sunlight hitting it and the Earth in view.
  • Klaus, when told that Earth is under the horizon, states that it was the full moon yesterday, which is supposed to mean that Earth is close to the horizon now. The phase of the moon has nothing to do with where Earth is, since the Earth always stays at (almost) the same place in the Moon's sky.
    • Alternatively, this can be explained by the fact that the German phrase said by Klaus ("Vollmond war gestern") has two meanings, a literal one of "It was the full moon yesterday" and an idiomatic one to the tune of "The full moon is a thing of the past". It is likely that the second meaning is what was meant, shortly after saying this phrase the Götterdämmerung's main guns are used to blow out a huge chunk of the moon, meaning that there will be no more full moon.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Nazi flagship, the Götterdämmerung, is about the size of a small city and has guns that can destroy about 10% of the Moon with each shot. Although most of its workings appear to be mechanical, Nazi computer technology is stuck in the 40s and they can't get it off the ground without the processing power of a simple handheld smartphone or tablet. This falls in line with many real Nazi experimental weapons that were ridiculously oversized.
  • The Moon Nazis technology relies almost entirely on Rule of Cool, with flying saucers armed for Old-School Dogfighting, space zeppelin carriers dragging asteroids to Colony Drop, and a Mile Long Flying Saucer with metallic hydrogen cannons that can blast a new horizon into the lunar surface with one shot. All incredibly cool...but absolutely useless against modern (and slightly above modern) military forces. The only thing that is useful is the giant ship, which itself is useless until modern computers can be brought back to control it.
• Big Bad: Klaus Adler, who kills Kortzfleisch in the second act and assumes control of the Nazi attack fleet.
• The Big Board: The Nazis have some kind of operations room to plan their invasion, and we see Wolfgang Kortzfleisch playing with the models like plastic army men. Also, their targeting overlay is literally a large grid that is suspended over the window.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the space battle the U.S.S George W. Bush is finally starting to be overwhelmed by the Nazi ships and needs reinforcements, even though there should be none due to an international treaty that bans creation of armed spaceships. Cue an incoming armada of ships consisting of nearly every major nation in the world, all of which violated that treaty just like the US did. Except Finland.
  • A bit of Fridge Brilliance at that last one. Of all the European Axis countries, Finland was the only one that escaped W.W.2 relatively unscathed and free of Soviet dominance thanks in large part to the military aid it got from Nazi Germany.
  • Possibly made all the funnier by the knowledge that Finnish broadcaster YLE was one of the film's (several) major financiers.
• Bilingual Bonus: Most of the Nazi dialogue is in German, albeit subtitled in English except when dealing with proper names and a few other things.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The film pokes fun at many countries, including Finland (the only country who didn't arm their ships) and Australia (whom the President was considering arbitrarily bombing). Two of the main sponsors of the film are from Finland and Australia, and one of the directors is himself Finnish. The fact that Finland fought a common enemy as the Nazis during WWII definitely pays no favors to the sponsors, or at least ignores proper rules of decorum
• Black Comedy whether it's a black man who has been injected to look white or a woman commander blithely giving the order to launch nukes despite the presence of women and children (all in the name of revenge over a man), this film has plenty of examples of "off-color" humor.
• Bling of War:
  • Klaus Adler ordering "a uniform fit for a Führer". Later we see him in a uniform trimmed with an excessive number of chains.
  • Vivian Wagner's inexplicable feather-trimmed catsuit, which she wears on the bridge of the USS George W Bush. She seems to have been hired for the job almost exclusively because she'd look good doing it.
• Bound and Gagged: Vivian, though it doesn't stop her talking.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Mir, a space station that was launched in 1986 and supposedly destroyed upon re-entry in 2001, is part of the armada that reinforces the U.S.S. George W. Bush's battle against the Nazis in 2018.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: The Nazis have a "Department of Racial Purity" that authorizes couples to have relationships.
  Adler: Our genetic match is 97 percent.
  Renate: How romantic.
• Butt-Monkey: The North Korean representative, who tries to take credit for the spaceships the Nazis use. Everyone in the room immediately dismisses it.
  N. Korean Delegate: The spaceships are ours. Our Beloved Leader designed and built them himself.
  Assembled Delegates: *laughter*
  Secretary of State: Alright, North Korea, sit down.

• Cassandra Truth: James tries to warn people on Earth about the moon Nazis, but obviously it doesn't sound very believable. Him looking like an established hobo by that point doesn't help spread his message either.
• Centrifugal Gravity: Appears to be the case for some ships of the Earth Fleet.
• Clothing Damage: Renate gives the audience some gratuitous fanservice when the airlock is opened, as the vaccuum of space yanks her skirt down to her ankles and rips open her uniform to expose her bra.
• Clown Car: Invoked with numerous (more than how many would realistically fit) Nazi officers coming out of a Volkswagen Beetle.
• Colony Drop: The Nazi spaceships drag large chunks of the Moon to toss at the Earth.
• Combat Stilettos: Renate wears them in her Vivian Wagner-designed costume. She uses one of them to kill Klaus by ramming her heel into his forehead.
• Compensating for Something: The Götterdämmerung, as pointed out by Vivian.
  Vivian: [Klaus] must sure have the smallest dick in the universe.
• Computer Equals Tapedrive: The moon-nazis scoff at James' smartphone when he tells them what it is. The scientist interrogating him points to a room-filling beastie festooned with blinking lights and a tape drive, and says "This (smartphone) is not a computer. This (room-filling beastie) is a computer!" He's forced to admit defeat upon using the smartphone.
• Condescending Compassion: Renate doesn't understand why James reacted with horror upon finding out his skin, hair, and eyes were dyed a lighter color, since, in her mind, he was done a great favor by being turned into a white man.
• Cool Starship: The Nazi spaceships look like Cool Airships.
  • Stating the obvious but The Götterdämmerung. Looks like the aftermath of an explosion at a girder factory, but has destructive power equal to many sci-fi planet-killers.
  • The Earth Fleet, especially U.S.S. George W. Bush probably outdo the Nazi ones, having a much more modern aesthetic (the Moon Nazis' are extremely Diesel Punk), evidently much more powerful weapons (not counting the Gotterdammerung's cannons), and being extremely varied. A few vessels of note are the I.S.S., a rebuilt Mir with a Wave-Motion Gun, and The TARDIS.
• Crapsack World: Nazis are planning to invade Earth to "save" it from the hordes of untermenschen they believe have overrun it since they left. The Moon Führer and his top brass want to forego "saving" it and plan to just bomb it into oblivion. Said top brass can't stop backstabbing each other for control of their tiny space empire. The best bet against them are the Americans, greedy warmongers who only care about stopping them for the sake of getting reelected and getting more fuel, and can only fight back because they can't stop breaking every treaty they sign. The rest of the world are a bunch of bickering, equally greedy warmongers who can only help because they also break every treaty they sign, and themselves only do so because they want to one-up America. The leader of the Earth fleet is just a jilted lover who wants to torture her ex and nuke civilians as revenge by proxy, and probably would have joined the Nazis in their genocide for the price of sex with said ex. The leaders of Earth haven't won for a solid minute before they disband their alliance and nuke each other into oblivion over a few towers of fuel. Crapsack is too kind a term for this world.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Earth Fleet against the Shwarze Sonne's fighter compliment. All Nazi strike craft got destroyed within seconds.
  • Every battle before then is varying levels of curbstomp against the Nazis. Their saucers are taken out entirely over New York by the US Air Force and Navy, with only one on-screen casualty on the American side, in the form of an F-22 that flew ridiculously close to the Nazi craft. The USS George W. Bush is able to fight on near equal terms with the Nazi fleet, taking only a tiny impact in the battle...and that's before the rest of the Earth Fleet arrives. For all the Nazi's plotting, they never stood a chance.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: To astounding levels. Just the Helium-3 synthesizing technology (or the material itself) would make the Fourth Reich an economic superpower overnight. Let's not forget the ability to colonize other worlds and remain totally self-sufficient for decades, their anti-gravity spacedrives and their massive transports, high-speed vehicles for moon travel (and automatic weapons that work in hard vacuum)... yeah, if they really wanted to take over the world - they could have just bought it.
• Darwinist Desire: Brought up by Klaus Adler as a rather unromantic way of telling Renate Richter that he wants her babies.
• Death by Woman Scorned: Klaus Adler, who made the mistake of scorning two women.
• Death Glare: Klaus gives a genuinely frightening one to Kortzfleisch when the latter begins the invasion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Klaus kills him shortly afterwards.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The Götterdämmerung's cannon shells are made up of "metallic hydrogen". They're powerful enough to blow up large chunks of the Moon with a single volley. Metallic hydrogen actually exists as an experimental material, and could theoretically be weaponized if it could be made in significant quantities.
• Detonation Moon: About 10% of the Moon gets blown up.
• Diesel Punk: Having adapted separate from our own technological advancements, the grim, pistons-and-gears approach towards spaceship design, particularly the Götterdämmerung, gives this feel as a stark contrast to the more traditional approach to 20 Minutes into the Future that Earth has grown with.
  • Even the Reichsflugscheiben sound like they've got warbird piston engines.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Okay, so Klaus Adler ended his affair with Vivian Wagner and went back to the moon. Her response involves a heavily armed spaceship and the complete destruction of the Nazi moonbase in order to kill Klaus. The Nazi invasion just happens to get in her way and helps her vent some of her anger.
• Downer Ending: Quite so. The Nazi invasion force is defeated, but the heroes (and the civilians on the Moon) are stuck in a nuked Moonbase. Not to mention every nation on Earth descends into a nuclear war, with the end credits rolling over a slow panning shot of the Earth tearing itself apart. However, the very last image in the film is that of a spaceship of unknown origin orbiting the planet Mars.
• Eagleland: The United States is a shallow, greedy bully that misses no opportunity to toot its own horn. It does, however, take the lead when it comes to defeating the Nazis. For the publicity, that is.
• Einstein Hair: Doktor Richter, complete with the mustache as well.
• Engineered Public Confession
• Everything Makes a Mushroom: Inverted. The nukes the USS George W. Bush fires on the Nazi base don't, even though they should.
• Evil Hand: after his "Aryan-ification, Washington is required to give a Nazi salute and is seen to struggle against his right hand in direct opposite mirror to similar scenes in Dr. Strangelove
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Schwarze Sonne is a giant swastika.
• Evil vs. Evil: All of the world's countries are just bickering warmongers, while the Nazis are either cluelessly naive or... you know... legit Nazis.
• Fake Orgasm: Vivian loudly fakes an orgasm while Klaus still has his pants on.
• Fantastic Racism: Moon Führer Wolfgang Kortzfleisch sees all humans on Earth as sub-humans that must be eliminated from Earth.
• Fictional United Nations: United World Confederacy
• Flying Saucer: The staple transport of the Nazis, the Reichsflugscheibe, working something like a Space Tank in terms of armament.
• Fourth Reich: After World War II, the Nazis have built up a secret society on the dark side of the moon. They come in conflict with the Earth when a black astronaut discovers them, and they start planning to Take Over the World.
• Fun with Subtitles: Long title gags and spelling mistakes that get corrected on screen.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Nazis are seen wearing these as they load up into their flying saucers.
• Groin Attack: With a hilarious reaction to boot!
• Heel–Face Turn: Renate.
• Heel Realisation: When Renate sees the unedited version of The Great Dictator and runs into some Neo-Nazis.
• Herr Doktor: Doctor Richter, naturally.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Renate realizes the horror of the Nazis and decides to reeducate the survivors on the Moon.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • The Russian throwing his shoe at the UN conference is a reference to the alleged Khrushchev shoe-banging incident in the UN as well as the shoe-pelting of George W. Bush.
  • A member of the UN stands up and shouts, "You lie!" at the US president, which is a reference to US Representative Joe Wilson's outburst during Barack Obama's state of the union address.
  • In the final battle, the Japanese spaceship, in kamikaze fashion, rams itself into another ship.
• Homage: Vivian shouting at her employees is very similar (almost shot for shot) to the infamous Hitler ranting scene from Downfall.
• Hypocritical Humor: The Americans are unbearably smug about having ignored international treaties against arming space vessels... and then go into a tantrum when it turns out everybody else did too.
• I Know Mortal Kombat:
  Renate: Do you have any idea how to fly this thing?
  James: Can't be any harder than Wing Commander.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Kortzfleisch seems to get long bouts of indignant coughing whenever someone greets him with "Heil Hitler!"
• Insistent Terminology: Adler is deliberately taunting Kortzfleisch by hailing Hitler instead of him, something the Führer points out every time.
  Adler: Heil Hitler!
  Kortzfleisch: Das Heißt. NICHT. HITLER!^note My name's not Hitler! Literally: 'That's not called ("named" or "known as") Hitler.'
• Insult to Rocks: When Vivian Wagner is chewing out the department heads in a shout-out to the Hitler rants from Downfall, she calls them morons, and then clarifies that is an insult to regular morons.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Adler is about to bang Vivian on the floor of her office when he notices Kortzfleisch sitting comfortably just a few meters away, flanked by several bodyguards wielding machine guns. Cue Adler standing up and doing a Nazi salute with his pants down.
• Ironic Echo: Intertextualist echo on a Shout-Out line: after Vivian orders her crew to fire the nukes on Schwarze Sonne, they hesitate:
  Crew member: What about the women and children?
  Vivian: The USA does not negotiate with terrorists!
• Jive Turkey: From a black man, naturally. "Invasion? Y'all must be trippin'!"
• Just Plane Wrong: A-10 Thunderbolts, which are ground-attack planes (used mainly to destroy tanks or harass massed enemy infantry formations), are shown to be used as anti-air fighters, though it's not the first movie guilty of that. F-22 Raptors are engaging their targets at distances and altitudes more consistent with Old-School Dogfight just so that the Nazi flak guns would be shown actually having any effect.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: According to All There in the Manual, before leaving, the Nazi elite killed off all excess people in the Antarctic base to leave no evidence warning of their return.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In-Universe use of Visual Effects of Awesome: In the middle of the high-budget space battle, Vivian comments, "This is beautiful!"
  • One imagines that this was not the intention later, when the Götterdämmerung is anti-climatically destroyed and Vivian comments, "Well that was disappointing!"
  • Only taking the in-universe side, it comes off rather creepy, with her finding a slaughter beautiful and her enemies not being tortured disappointing.
• Literal-Minded: Klaus. When asked if he ever "breaks character," he replies, "No. I can never be broken."
• Macross Missile Massacre: The American spaceship attacks this way. With nuclear missiles, no less.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Renate.
• Magnetic Weapons: Two Gauss guns aboard the USS George W. Bush.
• The Man Behind the Man: It is fairly evident that for all her flaws, the president had no idea about the Helium-3 deposits, and was simply being guided by the Secretary of Defense, even asking him why they were really going to the moon in an early scene. One scene later he is seen becoming (supposedly) very confused when a U.N. delegate asks if they are going there for "Natural Resources Activity", and claims to have no idea what the man is talking about. When the Helium-3 is discovered, the Secretary is the only one in the room not to be confused, quickly and quietly informing the president that "It's ours".
• Meaningful Name: The Nazi spaceships are named after the operas of Wagner's Ring Cycle.
• Mile-Long Ship: Both Siegfried-class warships (space zeppelins, which are roughly 2.7 kilometers long) and Götterdämmerung count.
• Monumental Damage: One of the first things the Reichsflugscheibe destroy is the Statue of Liberty.
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: "Washington. James Washington."
• Next Sunday A.D.: The movie was screened in 2012 and is set in 2018.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If only he had banged Vivian, Klaus wouldn't be facing Earth's fleet, or at least not against the USS George W. Bush.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Moon Nazis in flying saucers and space zeppelins, vs. President Sarah Palin.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The US President is thinly veiled parody of Sarah Palin.
• No Mere Windmill: The flying saucer space Nazis are very real, but when a certain hobo tries to warn people about the threat they all just think he's crazy.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Klaus manages to shrug off Vivian's advances, which is to be expected given that she's not Aryan. She does not take it well.
• Nuke 'em: Vivian Wagner travels to the Moon as the commander of a space battleship blistering with nukes which she's more than willing to make use of. Not to fight Moon Nazis. Not to stop the Moon Nazi invasion she just happens to stand in the way of. No, she wants to nuke Klaus Adler to kingdom come because he didn't fuck her when he should have and went back to the Moon without her.
• Old-School Dogfighting: The Nazis saucers are designed almost exclusively for this, being armed either with extremely rapid fire machine gun turrets or slow firing large caliber cannons. In the battle over New York, a handful of F-22s and A-10s humor them before the rest of the air force (and a navy battlegroup) decide to cut to the chase and knock the slow moving craft from the sky with volleys of missiles.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Of the German variety: "Götterdämmerung muss fliegen, Maschine steigt in den Himmel!"
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Dr. Richter may be a Nazi quack, but you have to give the man credit for how quickly he adapted computer technology generations ahead of his own to the Nazi's purposes. He even wrote a Nazi app for the smartphone and tablet. However, the entire plot hinges on him apparently being unable to build a 5v charger.
  • Special credit simply to this line: "I invented this cable to connect this machine with our main computer. I call it Universal Systematic Binding - USB for short."
• Once More, with Clarity: In-universe: Renate teaches her students on the Moon that The Great Dictator is a ten minute short film showing how Adolf Hitler wished for peace and unity across the globe. After Renate arrives on Earth, she tries to convince Washington of Hitler's "message" by taking him to a theater playing the movie. Too bad Earth's copy of the film isn't edited... (and is 124 minutes long)

• One-Hit Polykill: The USS George W. Bush does this during the beginning of the attack on the Schwarze Sonne, managing to destroy three Nazi fighters with a single shot of the Gauss gun.
• Oppose What You Suffered: In Iron Sky, James, who is African-American, is pretty much the only decent person in the entire film (apart from the people of Finland). While this isn't difficult when the antagonists are actual Nazis From Space, James also both fights the Nazis with violence as well as by working to deprogram those who just don't know things could be different. Additionally, the fact that the US President deliberately sent James to the moon in a publicity stunt to get the Black vote shows that discrimination against African-Americans is a thing in the film's setting that requires patching up, or at least papering over, in the President's eyes.
• Orion Drive: The USS George W. Bush seems to be designed with one. Might explain the shit-ton of nukes it was carrying.
• Our Presidents Are Different: The US president is a buffoonish Sarah Palin expy. In the trailer for the sequel, it's revealed she's actually a reptilian.

• Overly Long Name: Some of the Moon Nazi military titles spoof actual Nazi military titles with glee. One of them is long enough to take a full row in subbing.
• Personal Horror: Renate has a Heel Realization followed by a Heel–Face Turn when she finds out who the Nazis were.
• Playing with Syringes
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: A modern smartphone, followed by a tablet, is interfaced with 40s-era vacuum tube technology.
• Point Defenseless: Played straight with the Nazis, but averted with the USS George W. Bush. Until they start to overwhelm it with numbers, the Nazis can't even land a hit.
• Precision F-Strike: From the Berlin trailer:
  Narrator: You know what I'm talking about: Motherfucking space Nazis in a film called Iron Sky!
• Ramming Always Works: During the final space battle, the Japanese spaceship goes all kamikaze.
• Recycled In Space: Nazis, ON THE MOON! Alien Invasion movie, WITH NAZIS!
  • The space battle itself carries enough similarities to be Star Wreck WITH NAZIS!
• Rescue Romance: Washington stops Renate from being blown out into space when he unwittingly opens an airlock door.
• Riding the Bomb: Very briefly towards the end of the movie.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The movie is, ultimately, all about this; first with the Nazis wanting revenge on Earth, then Vivian taking revenge on Klaus and the USA waging revenge for the Nazi attack, then the other nations of the world get into the fight back against bullying America...
• Rule of Funny/Rule of Cool: The film lives on these tropes. Nazis on the Moon with doomsday weapons and an army of space zeppelins. Also, almost every nation in the world has an armed space program to join battle against said space zeppelins.
  • The President's re-election propaganda campaign being led by a pair of actual Nazis, one of whom even writes her speeches.
• Running Gag: Moon Führer Kortzfleisch is annoyed when his subordinates salute him with "Heil Hitler!"
• Schizo Tech: The Nazis have a secret Moon base, flying saucers, GIANT space zeppelins, and Helium-3 fusion power, but they're still using trenchcoats, motorcycles, MP-40 submachine guns, and computers that fill up an entire room, and their space-going Reichsflugscheiben are powered by piston engines.
• Screen Shake: In the USS George W. Bush, when fired upon, the entire ship shakes in a way reminiscent of another show. Not surprising, given the special effect studio commissioned for the film previously worked on Star Wreck.
• Secret Weapon: In violation of the UN treaties, every major nation turns out to have one or several secret militarized spaceships, apart from Finland. Not only have these nations secretly planted weapons systems on their spacecraft capable of shooting down Nazi flying saucers and space zeppelins, they also managed to cram enough fuel into those tiny space frames to send them all the way to the Moon, "just in case."
• Selective Obliviousness: The Nazis are very confident in their technological levels.
  Klaus Adler: What is this device? *holds up a smartphone*
  Washington: Oh that? That's my kickass cellphone... and a computer.
  Doktor Richter: That... is not a computer. This is a computer! *Motions to a room-sized Zuse computer*
  • To his credit, Richter studies the device and confirms Washington's story later on.
• Self-Deprecation: The only nation without a space warship is Finland. The makers of this film are Finns.
• Sequel Hook / The Stinger: After dealing with Moon Nazis for the entirety of the film, the final shot of the film shows the Moon eclipsing the sun, which slowly pulls back to show an Earth ruined by nuclear war, until finally it pulls back far enough that Mars appears at the bottom of screen... with a man-made satellite of undetermined origin in orbit. Hmm... the Red Planet, huh?
  • It might be the Finnish ship.
• Sex–Face Turn: Vivian, in all likelihood, would have betrayed America had Adler simply boned her like she obviously wanted.
• Shout-Out:
  • Der Untergang, in Vivian's first scene is a recreation of the famous Downfall rant.
  • Washington seems to have troubles keeping himself from saluting.
  • If you look again closely at the first shot of the Earth Fleet, there's a little blue box that you might have missed...
  • Plenty to Wagner, from the ship names to some of the musical themes.
  • The scene where Adler crawls towards Renate who tries to stop the Götterdämmerung is accompanied by the shark theme from Jaws.
  • The Australian satellite is named the Dundee 01.
    • This also happens to be a bad pun and shout out to Dante 01, a french sci-fi movie.
  • Star Trek, in the design of the USS George W Bush's bridge and in the way the whole crew stumbles about whenever they get hit.
  • The music for the space battle includes a few bars of synth from "On The Run" by Pink Floyd. No prizes for guessing the album.
  • When Adler is rallying his troops as he enthusiastically waves an iPad at them (complete with little glowing Apple logo), it shares resemblance to another iconic Apple Shout Out.
  • The logo of the George W. Bush bears a strong resemblance to the Weyland-Yutani logo.
  • The mayhem on the streets of New York City during the Moon Nazi attack is reminiscent of Independence Day. So are shots of the zeppelins in space readying for attack.
  • Vivian Wagner's name may be an allusion for not only Composer!Wagner but also a popular Finnish newspaper comic Viivi & Wagner.
• Shown Their Work: The Moon motorcycle runs on biodiesel distilled from the waste of a hydroponic greenhouse, and has a separate oxygen tank to allow it to work in the vacuum. The official explanation is the motorcycle engine is converted to run on hydrogen peroxide monopropellant. Peroxide is introduced into the cylinder via a catalytic nozzle, which turns liquid peroxide into superheated steam and replaces the combustion in power stroke. Peroxide is run through hollow cylinder liners which act as regenerative coolant jackets. Also they wear their trenchcoats over pressurized suits.
• Space Is Noisy: The surface of the Moon is supposed to be a near-perfect vacuum. This doesn't prevent us from hearing the Moon motorcycle's internal combustion engine, though.
• The Starscream: Adler.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: The Nazis have Flying Saucers, a Moonbase Space Zeppelins, Helium-3 mines, and a Diesel Punk Doomsday Device.
• Sucking-In Lines: Particle cannon of the Mir does that when firing at full power.
• Supervillain Lair: Schwarze Sonne, a swastika-shaped Nazi base ON THE MOON.
  Vivian: Obvious and overstated as always, Klaus...
• Switch to English: At the start of Renate's class, she instructs her students to speak English as a way of learning it before they return to Earth.
• Take a Third Option: Adler's original mission to Earth was to simply get some cellphones to complete the Nazis' superweapon. However, he gets a bit sidetracked due largely to Renate convincing the US president to try for a more peaceful resolution, and probably would have just gone along with it were it not for the untimely arrival of the Führer accusing him of treason and forcing his hand.
• Technology Porn: Surprisingly massive amounts of glorious CGI for a comedy title made on a ten million dollar budget, without any noticeable Special Effects Failure.
• Theme Naming: All the Nazi spaceships have been named after Richard Wagner's operas. Including Götterdämmerung.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Vivian's choice of weapon for her revenge on Klaus? A space battleship filled to the brim with nukes. Justified in that she can fend off his Nazi invasion while she's already at it.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Wackier than ever.
• Toilet Humor: Notice the dove on the teaser poster.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Washington isn't aware he's been turned into a blue-eyed white man until he encounters some gangbangers.
• Tone Shift: For the greater part of the movie, the plot is played mostly for comedy, with tons of toilet humor and racial jokes. Then around the time the nations of Earth start fighting back, things get more serious, and the film ends with the world slipping into a nuclear war.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Well, in 2018, to be precise.
• Villain Protagonist: The comics are told from the Nazis' POV.
• War Crime Subverts Heroism: The US ship fires a bunch of nukes at a position they know to be full of noncombatant women and children.
• War for Fun and Profit: Although she didn't start the war, the US President is overjoyed when the Nazi's attack Earth; she is now a war time president, which significantly increases her changes of getting re-elected, and gives her a chance to invoke America Saves the Day with their space weapon, the USS George W. Bush.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Russian ship, the re-purposed MIR space station, has a giant particle cannon, which, at full power, deals damage, comparable to the nuclear missiles of the USS George W. Bush.
  • The Nazi's superweapon, which manages to shoot through part of the moon, creating a huge valley to reveal Earth after it disappeared over the horizon.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Japanese Banzai-class space warships are armed with "lazers", which are depicted on-screen as a pretty realistic pulsed lasers, albeit visible in vacuum.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In an Apollo-style mission (as was the American moon landing at the beginning) a third astronaut is left aboard the CSM in orbit while the 2 aboard the LEM land and return. The CSM is never mentioned after its brief appearance in the intro, nor is its occupant.
  • It is mentioned that other groups of Nazis went to Earth before Adler but never returned. Were they killed, captured or did they just decide to stay on Earth?
  • What happened to the rest of the Nazi soldiers who arrived with Klaus on Earth? After one is killed in the pot field the other two are seen running in a different direction than the protagonists, not to mention what happened to the pilots of the ship.
  • Renate seems completely okay with her father dying aboard the Götterdämmerung. The Stinger reveals that Dr. Richter didn't really die... he's strapped to a table and forced to listen to a modern rap song, as he "tortured" James in the first act of the film.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Renate really believes that National Socialism is all about bringing peace, cooperation, and unity. She was never told about the real outcome of World War II, which led to her Heel Realization when she discovered the truth.
• Woman Scorned: Do not ever piss off Vivian. She even quotes the preceding line of the poem (Hell hath no fury).
• Zeerust: Used with the Nazis, whose technology doesn't seem much further than the mid 1940's, such as Dr. Richter's room-sized computer.
• Zeppelins from Another World: They carry Nazi UFOs and drag asteroids behind them.

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