In the second episode of Noclip's documentary series on MachineGames, some of its senior developers revealed a surprising tidbit left on the cutting room floor of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. The devs considered giving us a gander at the tallywhacker of Adolf Hitler. Spoilers for New Colossus to follow.
In one of the game's standout scenes, BJ Blazkowicz finds himself infiltrating a Nazi base on Venus by auditioning for the role of himself in a propaganda movie. It's revealed during the audition that the Fuhrer is executive producing, and a tense, Tarantinoesque standoff ensues.
The clearly addled, declining Adolf lurches around the room, muttering about conspiracies and personally executing the actors that fail to impress him. He even urinates right on the floor—more on that in a second.
"We're starting from, 'What would be the coolest locations to play in?'" said MachineGames co-founder Jens Matthies. "We want to do Area 52 and we want to do Venus. Okay, but how the fuck are we going from there to there?" From there, he came up with the idea of the casting call and its surprise producer.
Studio head Jerk Gustafsson cited the scene as an example of how the studio uses dark humor to balance out the horrors on display in its games, and then dropped the bombshell: "We actually wanted to add another element," Gustafsson said. "We wanted to actually show Hitler's penis as well, when he was peeing. But that was something that was a little bit too much, so we decided to skip that one."
Noclip turned to Matthies for the full story, with the developer explaining that they wanted to really shock players with the portrayal. "The thinking was, okay, he's gonna be extremely physical. He's eating, oh shit, he has to take a piss," said Matthies. "He's puking at one point. It's a very physical entity.
"So I had this idea that, well, maybe we just see it!"
Matthies credits a conversation with a Bethesda executive for pouring cold water on the idea. "Do you think there would be a problem if we see Hitler's penis?" Matthies recalled asking. "He was like, 'Yeah, I don't advise doing that.' I was like, yeah, you're probably right. Maybe that's too much."
Both devs seem to think it was the right call. Matthies, in particular, mused that "it's important to find the line. We all need to be saved from ourselves sometimes." I can't help but appreciate the sheer, transgressive audacity of the idea, but the scene is already so tense and surprising, I don't know if it would have improved it.
In this alternate timeline, you also gotta wonder if the Disney corporation would entrust "The Hitler's Penis Guys" with the Indiana Jones license. And all of this makes me wonder how MachineGames might up its own game in the third Wolfenstein it clearly wants to make—there was a clear escalation from The New Order's Moon base to The New Colossus' Venus aerostat. Where to go next?
