You Cloned Hitler!

"Führer me once, shame on you. Führer me twice..."

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 Bros.

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.

Sub-Trope of Resurrect the Villain. Related to Apocalypse Hitler. Hitler as a Brain in a Jar is a common subtrope, as is Stupid Jetpack Hitler. See also Historical Domain Crossover. Contrast with Clone Jesus.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 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 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.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ it is revealed that Glemmy Toto is a sped-up, napoleon-complex harboring clone of Gihren Zabi, himself a Captain Ersatz of Hitler. He's a scheming, manipulative little bastard, who uses his superficial charm to maneuver himself into greater and greater positions of power.
• One of these shows up in the Spriggan manga. He was very unhappy when he learns of this.

Comic Books

• This has happened quite a few times in the Marvel Universe, usually in the form of the Hate-Monger, who is actually the disembodied consciousness of Adolf Hitler (or a copy of his mind that think it's the original, if the writer doesn't like the idea of Hitler being alive and well in the MU), jumping to a new clone body whenever the current one dies. In one notable instance, Captain America actually teamed up with the Nazi supervillain named 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 Flaming Carrot comics. An obvious riff on the cinematic 'gem' They Saved Hitler's Brain, this story features an army of jackboots that goosestep around and fight the heroes by kicking them.
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Lazarus Bale cloned Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Nemo: River of Ghosts features a Nazi base in the Amazon with several school-age clones of Adenoid Hynkel, as well as a few clones of Janni's old enemy Queen Ayesha. While Janni is prepared to wipe out the entire area, her grandson Jack decides that the clones are innocent of the things their originals did and tries to save the youngest Ayesha clone. Regardless, the clones turn out to hold the same ideologies as the originals.
• The Outsiders: In an issue of Batman and the Outsiders, a group of Nazis created a mature clone of Hitler that they had being watched by a simple-minded Jewish girl. They then showed him movies of his predecessor's accomplishments, intending for him to kill the girl once his memories returned. The clone, whom the girl had saved from choking on his food at point, shot himself out of horror once he understood his origins. Turns out that clones aren't really the same person the original was.
• Superman: 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.

Fan Works

• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Howard Locke turns out to be one of several Hitler clones made after World War 2.
• Partly done in Supper Smash Bros: Mishonh From God. After Hitler dies a second time (having been brought back to serve as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), Satan takes his DNA (as well as that of King George III and Mao Zedong) and uses it to create Goalith.
• With This Ring introduces this trope in the story arc Triumph of the Will when the Justice League are tracking Nazi supervillains Wolf Krieger and Captain Nazi. Orange Lantern comes across a man named Helmut Schreiber, a Brazilian citizen who turns out to be the only survivor of a post-WWII project to clone Hitler. However, the project had fallen apart and Schreiber had simply been raised in a normal orphanage completely unaware that he was in any way out of the ordinary, and would go on to become a successful architect and marry a black woman with whom he has three children. Krieger eventually hunts him down, planning to use him as a focus to pull the remains of Hitler's soul out of Hell and create a magical embodiment of fascism, but he is stopped by Orange Lantern and Rocket. Schreiber is portrayed as just a normal man with nothing in common with the original aside from genetics.

Films — Live-Action

• The Boys from Brazil, in which Nazis not only clone Hitler several dozen times, but attempt to recreate his upbringing as well.
• The villains of They Saved Hitler's 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.
• A strange example in Century Rain, where it's not only Hitler who has been copied, but the entire Earth circa 1935. This world's Hitler lost the war early when his troops bogged down invading France. History records him as one among many unpleasant dictators rather than a symbol of ultimate evil, and he is now a sad old man slowly dying of cancer in a nursing home.
• Evil Clonation, a novel by Heriberto Cintron, features a clone of Hitler.
• In The Fourth Reich, a novel by Robert Van Kampen, Hitler’s spirit leaves Hell and enters an embryo produced from his cloned DNA.
• In The Goodness Gene, the protagonist discovers that he's a Hitler clone.
• The Iron Dream: The end of the novel-within-the-novel Lord of the Swastika (in-universe written by the famed Austrian-American pulp sci-fi illustrator Adolf Hitler trying his hand at writing for a change) involves the obvious stand-in country for Nazi Germany cloning the obvious stand-in for Hitler by the millions to colonize the galaxy. No seriously.
• The Last Adventure of Constance Verity: Connie has killed too many clones of Adolph Hitler to even mention, finding it irritating that there always seem to be more of them no matter how many she kills.
• In one story in the Church of the SubGenius's anthology Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob," "Bob" Dobbs stops the Deroes from cloning Hitler by using a little sleight of hand to replace the bloody cloth they were using as a DNA source with a scrap of the Shroud of Turin.

Live-Action TV

• 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.
• 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 New Adventures of Wonder Woman episode "Anschluss '77" (1977), a group of South American neo-Nazis... you guessed it... cloned Hitler. It provides an in-universe explanation for the trope: they were convinced the NSDAP would have not existed, or remained just a group of disgruntled men in a beer hall, without the mesmerizing personality and rhetoric talent of the Führer, and therefore to make it exist they needed a living, breathing and talking Hitler.
• The New Avengers: Not cloned exactly, but in "The Eagle's Nest," a group of Nazi holdouts and their descendants on a remote Scottish island have Hitler's cryogenically frozen body and are hoping to thaw him out and revive him to start the Fourth Reich.
• An episode of The '90s 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.
• The Red Dwarf episode "Cured" has the crew come across a deep-space research facility with clones of evil people from throughout history in an attempt to find a cure for psychopathy. Hitler is of course amongst them, as is Vlad the Impaler, Ghengis Khan and Rupert Murdoch (who according to a report is not responding to treatment). Ultimately subverted, however, as the "clones" turn out to be androids made up to look like those historical figures — with a Lampshade Hanging on how "Hitler" looks nothing like Hitler.
• One of the recurring sketches of the German Sketch Comedy series Die Wochenshow featured a bunch of Hitler clones (Cloned out of the original one's famous mustache! It was a Russian soldier's war trophy.) living in the present as flatmates.
• In Kamen Rider X, one of the monsters that the bad guys send at the hero is, picture that, Starfish Hitler. Notably, they're not Nazis out to clone their master, just seem to have a thing for crossing historical figures with animals. HITTORAAAAA~

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!"
• Simple Minds had a song called "Boys From Brazil" which borrowed heavily from the book/film.

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.
• GURPS: The eternal Reich on Reich-5 doesn't clone Hitler, exactly, but they constantly search the alternate histories for the true Hitler, who will be a superior specimen. It comes out to the same thing.

Video Games

• The original Japanese version of Bionic Commando (1988) 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. The English version refers to the main villain as "Master D."
  • Rearmed has "The Leader" (a literal translation of "Der Fuhrer") as the final boss.
• In Download 2 for the PC Engine, terrorists have saved Hitler's brain.
• Towards the end of the "Ragnarök" DLC's first part in Zombie Army 4: Dead War, it is revealed that the Hell Cult responsible for the Zombie Apocalypse and Hitler's resurrection as the leader of the undead army also briefly attempted to clone him as part of their greater plans. They admit that this idea didn't really work out all that well though, so the cult's commander has no issue with seeing you mow down dozens of defective Hitler clones with Hulk Speak and Third-Person Person while you destroy what's left of their factory in Hell.

Webcomics

• 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.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: a strip demonstrates the pitfalls of cloning Hitler even with the best(?) of intentions.
• 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 they are willing to wait for the maturation.
  • And in the same arc a descendant of General Lee wanted to clone her illustrious ancestor so "The South can rise again." But there were only enough stem cells for one clone so the Nazi and the neo-Confederate decided to settle it with a Wizard Duel which got interrupted by Spinny and friends.
  • 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. So instead he clones Nixon and Agnew for Henry Kissinger.

Web Original

• Hitler Rants: There are Downfall parodies about Hitler getting cloned (usually against his will), by either Speer, Fegelein, or some random dude.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-2430 plays with this trope in a very interesting way. SCP-2430 is a mute, presumably non-sentient clone of Hitler created by the flesh of Sæhrímnir and for the amusement of Stalin, who killed his old foe in a variety of painful ways only to have him resurrected. After Stalin's death "Hitler" was rescued by a group of Nazis and brought to Argentina, where they presumed him to be catatonic after his imprisonment and was later retrieved by the Foundation after a MOSSAD raid.
• One of the more well-known discussions from OneyPlays involved Chris asking his friends if they had a clone of Hitler, whether or not they would torture it. A tiny clone. It quickly devolves into something of a spectacle.

Western Animation

• Archer:
  • Dr. Krieger's backstory is a direct homage to The Boys from Brazil, right down to being raised in a compound in South America. He's definitely a clone of SOMEONE, considering that season 5 reveals three clones of either Krieger himself or an original genetic donor, working as scientists for a South American dictator.
    Malory: And if there is one thing I have learned in all my years as a spymaster, it's that you keep your friends close and possible genetic clones of Adolf Hitler closer.
  • However, in the season 6 finale, Krieger lampshades how he doesn't actually look all that much like Hitler, no matter how much the show jokes about it.
    Krieger: And by the way, if I was a clone of Adolf-goddamn-Hitler, WOULDN'T I LOOK LIKE ADOLF-GODDAMN-HITLER?!!
• In The Clone And The Tree Of Life, an animated short, a scientist clones Hitler as part of his plan to take over the world.
• Clone High has a clone of Hitler, who appears in a few crowd scenes. However, he appears to be wearing an armband with a peace sign on it rather than a swastika, implying he chose a less malevolent path.
• The episode of Code Monkeys where Hitler is thawed out ends with one of his "backup clones" being found in the 'fridge.
• In Futurama, Professor Farnsworth claims that he once put Adolf Hitler's brain into the body of a great white shark. He also once shot Hitler with a disintegration ray while time traveling, so... y'know, it all evens out.
• The Haunted World of El Superbeasto features Nazi zombies and Hitler's Brain in a Jar.
• Inside Job: Cognito has a stockpile of clones of practically every celebrity, including Hitler, with Reagan's boyfriend in season 2 asking how many Hitler clones they actually need. When the clone lab is first introduced Reagan and Brett release the full stock of JFK clones so the sniper who shot the original can keep his job, but it goes horribly wrong. Afterwards Tupac Shakur's clones Threepac and Fourpac are occasionally seen in the background.
• Half-example from Rick and Morty with Abradolf Lincler, Rick's attempt to make a morally neutral superleader by combining Hitler's DNA with that of Abraham Lincoln. The result is a very conflicted individual.
  Lincler: Prepare to be emancipated from your own inferior genes!
• In the first episode of season four of The Venture Bros. a group of Nazis commissions Dr. Venture to clone Hitler from a dog. He flat out refuses. Lampshaded as well, in the page quote and also this:
  Thaddeus S. Venture: Really? You went with that cliché?

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