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hexmixway too tired and in too much pain currently to be engaging with this on tumblr so i'm tackling it here.
re: this post and Heisenberg's purported Nazi paraphernalia
the main thing to note here if this person really wanted to push for this argument is that Sturm is lifted directly from the film Frankenstein's Army where he's a Nazi creation. and by lifted i mean that literally, Capcom just straight up plagiarized the film.
they do that a lot, actually. in fact Heisenberg's entire design is stolen from the short film Rakka.
there's also the big obvious Nazi connections the real life Karl Heisenberg had. like genuinely you can draw these connections without pretending to be fucking sherlock holmes (lol).
now, i haven't looked into the tank and weaponry you see around his factory, but i HAVE looked into the plane turbine that's attached to Sturm and it's an American sea plane, so like 100% not going to put any stock into even the barest scrap of anything from the environment being attributable to character building (in a RE game? hah!), but i saw other ppl replying to this person saying that there's a mixture of German and American weaponry in and around the factory, and i'm willing to take them at their word considering that Capcom's design philosophy when it comes to the RE games is "does this spark joy? does it rock? is it capital C Cool?"
like friend, it's really not that deep. if they wanted Heisenberg to be a Nazi he would OVERTLY be a Nazi. i think what's more likely is that they're picking up influences from things that do lean heavily in that direction (once again: Sturm) and just dumping them wholesale into the game bc that's just how the RE devs make these games. typically tho it's just B movie action schlock.
i'm about to get real mean now and definitely lose the Nice Award for this week tho so let's put the rest behind a cut.
it just irks me when i can argue something better than the person arguing it when i don't even agree with them. like put ur back into it bro, come on.
so, a few things: this person does correctly mention that it wasn't just Nazi Germany that used those style dog tags. Romania's dog tags in WW2 looked the same btw. where is the game set, hmm?
also, heads up: but Romania was originally allied with Germany in WW2. they switched allegiances when Antonescu was overthrown in 1944 but before that Germany supplied them with weapons in exchange for oil so there are very good reasons for German military equipment to be in Romania (i've actually got a whole academic article about this on my laptop if anyone wants to call me on it for whatever reason. this bitch actually does research).
do i think the devs looked into this? actually yes i think they very well might have, going off the fact that someone working on RE7 DID apparently research fungi/mold. i only know enough about the topic to know that they weren't just making shit up wholesale there; they were actually basing all the Eveline/mold nonsense on something. i think this is likely why we would see German tanks/weaponry in the game. we know that the RE devs fucking love visiting the locations their games are set in and photogrammetry-ing the HECK out of the place [remember when someone identified the specific village the devs used for the model based on the specific embroidery in the game?], so i can also believe they might try to look up enough to know what might be present at a factory, if for nothing else but to populate it with stuff.
why WW2 weaponry? the gracious answer is that they might be trying to keep the village feeling "dated." the more likely answer is that they're stealing from Frankenstein's Army again.
anyway, back to the dog tags: they're blank. those dog tags were never issued to anyone, so the idea of 'past military service' is pretty flimsy insofar as that's concerned. what's more likely, and what i've used for their origin in my own fic, is that they were being mass produced at the factory.
and the signal flashlight OP there sites with certainty as Nazi equipment was also used in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, just like the dog tags. it was also used for train signals. you can buy them on fucking etsy. (something else i know bc i spent several hours trying to identify it for a rando on twitter yonks ago.) also like the dog tags, the design of the flashlight lasted for years after WW2.
but to address a few things directly, OP says:
All awkward subtext aside, it’s safe to assume that in the year 2021, Heisenberg is not using this thing to signal long-lost time-displaced Nazis, so what’s it for? Do his Soldats respond to colour signals? Or is it maybe just a convenient case with some handy switches on the outside that he’s repurposed to house some new device entirely?
i guaran-fucking-TEE you the devs have not thought about any of this. it does not matter to them. RE devs run on vibes-only design. but sure, why shouldn't he have keyed the soldats to respond to color signals? maybe he found the damn thing in some equipment ported over by the Nazis in WW2 and has been using it as a regular flashlight (those things have a regular flashlight function btw. the 'signals' are just colored lenses you flip up over the bulb). like the existence of this thing is so minimal compared to the existence of Sturm (both in the tie to Frankenstein's Army and the, you know, human experimentation thing) and the weird line he has that's effectively 'might makes right.' like those are things i'd point to first and then use this and the dogtags as supplemental evidence bc they are so fucking unimportant OH MY GOD. you've got actual Nazis sneaking Nazi dog whistles into games that are infinitely more blatant than this come the fuck on bro.
but OP continues:
is it really so hard to not pick Nazi design elements for a character who’s supposed to be “completely unrelated to Nazis”? For all his (many and glaring) character flaws, nothing in Heisenberg’s character suggests Nazi sympathies (or any military background, for that matter), and it’s nice that the official answer on that is an emphatic 'no’. But it’d be nicer if we didn’t have to ask the question in the first place.
they stole him and his design from an unrelated short film. i'd say his character is actually closer to the whole Nazi thing than a goddamn flashlight (his namesake, Sturm, der Wille zur Macht, etc etc). it's actually weird to me that this person is so hung up on this bc like...what's their explanation for the scale he's got too? is it a Nazi scale? i guess i get the impulse to root out hidden Nazi shit in games bc fuckers are putting it into Life is Strange games even, so like, yes, i do in fact get it.
but like also Sturm is there?????????
anyway, no, based on what else i've seen from the RE devs i do not think this was in any way intentioned beyond them looking at Nosh's design in Rakka and needing some things to tack on and then going with what they think might have been in the environment, or, hell, for all i know there's another WW2 horror movie they're pulling those elements from.
i think that Heisenberg is clearly meant to be from around WW2, or at least that the factory is, and because RE8 is effectively just like a theme park of horror tropes/films they enjoy it makes sense to me that Heisenberg gets that sort of flavor but the devs can still (truthfully) maintain that he's not meant to be a Nazi.
also, bc i brought it up: i haven't read/heard the original Japanese so i don't know how much of what i read as the der Wille zur Macht shit is coming from the translation. that's also just typical bad guy shit, so like not something i'd personally put a lot of stock in beyond what it means for this fucker's psychology when ur writing him in fanfic. again: there is not this much intention in anything the RE devs do. you are giving them WAY too much credit, oh my god.
ultimately, i do think that, like i said, if the devs wanted him to be a Nazi they'd basically be beating us over the head with it. instead i think they've cut and pasted elements from different films they like and what you're seeing is that. the biggest thing i'd personally have a question for them about is 'why Karl Heisenberg?' except that, as we know from Resident Evil: Vendetta, they are Breaking Bad fans. they are absolutely referencing that and only incidentally referencing the real life person.
anyway, all this to say that i think the fixation OP has on the flashlight is based in some sort of paranoia & that if they really wanted to prove Heisenberg was a Nazi they honestly could have done a much better job. this shit is like when my students would try to cheat but they'd be REALLY BAD at it so i just ended up more insulted than anything.
re: this post and Heisenberg's purported Nazi paraphernalia
the main thing to note here if this person really wanted to push for this argument is that Sturm is lifted directly from the film Frankenstein's Army where he's a Nazi creation. and by lifted i mean that literally, Capcom just straight up plagiarized the film.
they do that a lot, actually. in fact Heisenberg's entire design is stolen from the short film Rakka.
there's also the big obvious Nazi connections the real life Karl Heisenberg had. like genuinely you can draw these connections without pretending to be fucking sherlock holmes (lol).
now, i haven't looked into the tank and weaponry you see around his factory, but i HAVE looked into the plane turbine that's attached to Sturm and it's an American sea plane, so like 100% not going to put any stock into even the barest scrap of anything from the environment being attributable to character building (in a RE game? hah!), but i saw other ppl replying to this person saying that there's a mixture of German and American weaponry in and around the factory, and i'm willing to take them at their word considering that Capcom's design philosophy when it comes to the RE games is "does this spark joy? does it rock? is it capital C Cool?"
like friend, it's really not that deep. if they wanted Heisenberg to be a Nazi he would OVERTLY be a Nazi. i think what's more likely is that they're picking up influences from things that do lean heavily in that direction (once again: Sturm) and just dumping them wholesale into the game bc that's just how the RE devs make these games. typically tho it's just B movie action schlock.
i'm about to get real mean now and definitely lose the Nice Award for this week tho so let's put the rest behind a cut.
it just irks me when i can argue something better than the person arguing it when i don't even agree with them. like put ur back into it bro, come on.
so, a few things: this person does correctly mention that it wasn't just Nazi Germany that used those style dog tags. Romania's dog tags in WW2 looked the same btw. where is the game set, hmm?
also, heads up: but Romania was originally allied with Germany in WW2. they switched allegiances when Antonescu was overthrown in 1944 but before that Germany supplied them with weapons in exchange for oil so there are very good reasons for German military equipment to be in Romania (i've actually got a whole academic article about this on my laptop if anyone wants to call me on it for whatever reason. this bitch actually does research).
do i think the devs looked into this? actually yes i think they very well might have, going off the fact that someone working on RE7 DID apparently research fungi/mold. i only know enough about the topic to know that they weren't just making shit up wholesale there; they were actually basing all the Eveline/mold nonsense on something. i think this is likely why we would see German tanks/weaponry in the game. we know that the RE devs fucking love visiting the locations their games are set in and photogrammetry-ing the HECK out of the place [remember when someone identified the specific village the devs used for the model based on the specific embroidery in the game?], so i can also believe they might try to look up enough to know what might be present at a factory, if for nothing else but to populate it with stuff.
why WW2 weaponry? the gracious answer is that they might be trying to keep the village feeling "dated." the more likely answer is that they're stealing from Frankenstein's Army again.
anyway, back to the dog tags: they're blank. those dog tags were never issued to anyone, so the idea of 'past military service' is pretty flimsy insofar as that's concerned. what's more likely, and what i've used for their origin in my own fic, is that they were being mass produced at the factory.
and the signal flashlight OP there sites with certainty as Nazi equipment was also used in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, just like the dog tags. it was also used for train signals. you can buy them on fucking etsy. (something else i know bc i spent several hours trying to identify it for a rando on twitter yonks ago.) also like the dog tags, the design of the flashlight lasted for years after WW2.
but to address a few things directly, OP says:
All awkward subtext aside, it’s safe to assume that in the year 2021, Heisenberg is not using this thing to signal long-lost time-displaced Nazis, so what’s it for? Do his Soldats respond to colour signals? Or is it maybe just a convenient case with some handy switches on the outside that he’s repurposed to house some new device entirely?
i guaran-fucking-TEE you the devs have not thought about any of this. it does not matter to them. RE devs run on vibes-only design. but sure, why shouldn't he have keyed the soldats to respond to color signals? maybe he found the damn thing in some equipment ported over by the Nazis in WW2 and has been using it as a regular flashlight (those things have a regular flashlight function btw. the 'signals' are just colored lenses you flip up over the bulb). like the existence of this thing is so minimal compared to the existence of Sturm (both in the tie to Frankenstein's Army and the, you know, human experimentation thing) and the weird line he has that's effectively 'might makes right.' like those are things i'd point to first and then use this and the dogtags as supplemental evidence bc they are so fucking unimportant OH MY GOD. you've got actual Nazis sneaking Nazi dog whistles into games that are infinitely more blatant than this come the fuck on bro.
but OP continues:
is it really so hard to not pick Nazi design elements for a character who’s supposed to be “completely unrelated to Nazis”? For all his (many and glaring) character flaws, nothing in Heisenberg’s character suggests Nazi sympathies (or any military background, for that matter), and it’s nice that the official answer on that is an emphatic 'no’. But it’d be nicer if we didn’t have to ask the question in the first place.
they stole him and his design from an unrelated short film. i'd say his character is actually closer to the whole Nazi thing than a goddamn flashlight (his namesake, Sturm, der Wille zur Macht, etc etc). it's actually weird to me that this person is so hung up on this bc like...what's their explanation for the scale he's got too? is it a Nazi scale? i guess i get the impulse to root out hidden Nazi shit in games bc fuckers are putting it into Life is Strange games even, so like, yes, i do in fact get it.
but like also Sturm is there?????????
anyway, no, based on what else i've seen from the RE devs i do not think this was in any way intentioned beyond them looking at Nosh's design in Rakka and needing some things to tack on and then going with what they think might have been in the environment, or, hell, for all i know there's another WW2 horror movie they're pulling those elements from.
i think that Heisenberg is clearly meant to be from around WW2, or at least that the factory is, and because RE8 is effectively just like a theme park of horror tropes/films they enjoy it makes sense to me that Heisenberg gets that sort of flavor but the devs can still (truthfully) maintain that he's not meant to be a Nazi.
also, bc i brought it up: i haven't read/heard the original Japanese so i don't know how much of what i read as the der Wille zur Macht shit is coming from the translation. that's also just typical bad guy shit, so like not something i'd personally put a lot of stock in beyond what it means for this fucker's psychology when ur writing him in fanfic. again: there is not this much intention in anything the RE devs do. you are giving them WAY too much credit, oh my god.
ultimately, i do think that, like i said, if the devs wanted him to be a Nazi they'd basically be beating us over the head with it. instead i think they've cut and pasted elements from different films they like and what you're seeing is that. the biggest thing i'd personally have a question for them about is 'why Karl Heisenberg?' except that, as we know from Resident Evil: Vendetta, they are Breaking Bad fans. they are absolutely referencing that and only incidentally referencing the real life person.
anyway, all this to say that i think the fixation OP has on the flashlight is based in some sort of paranoia & that if they really wanted to prove Heisenberg was a Nazi they honestly could have done a much better job. this shit is like when my students would try to cheat but they'd be REALLY BAD at it so i just ended up more insulted than anything.
