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Information
Gender: Cisgender male
Race/Ethnicity/Nationality: Caucasian; Germanic descent; German
Profession: Nazi officer, possible spy
Brief Profile
He was most likely a Doberman pinscher with cropped/upright ears, though I'm not completely sure.
Nightstalker, AKA Stalker (no relation to or inspiration taken from serial killer Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker), was a character from an early version of the Trench Rats storyline, dating roughly to the late 1980s/early 1990s. He never appeared in any written works, but aspects of his sidekick, Deserta, were loosely based on a junior high science teacher of mine, so Nightstalker was still considered canon circa 1989-91. He was never given an official name, only his codename, which was occasionally shortened to "Stalker."
(EDIT: It turns out I was wrong! Nightstalker and Deserta make a VERY brief appearance in the oldest extant written version of the story, where they are both explicitly referred to as "Nazis" and "soldiers." As the scene features a parody character based on Hitler, I can't post it on Toyhou.se in its entirety, though these two pretty much have only two lines before they depart. This story will eventually be posted on my NeoCities site under the "Childhood Writing" section, so keep checking back. I'll simply include the line Gold Rat uses to describe them: "That doof Hitler keeps sendin' out his 'two best soldiers' who never catch a thing!")
At the time of Nightstalker's creation, I knew very little about Nazi Germany, and the series had a rather more slapstick/comedic tone; I had likely heard of the Holocaust yet was largely ignorant of the details (it was not taught about in early school, I remember watching a TV movie about it only later, in a high school history class), and so this did not play a role in the earliest versions of the series. Nightstalker began to be relegated to the background shortly after when the series began to take a more serious tone, and had disappeared completely by the time of the 2002 reboot. By then he no longer fit into the storyline, so I now consider him a "retired" character.
Given my near-complete ignorance of Nazi Party organization--and my then-conflation of them, likely due to the Indiana Jones franchise, with the German military--Nightstalker's exact rank and/or title was unknown. His particular job was uncertain as well; I know he was a Nazi and some sort of officer, likely involved in spying and covert operations, and he dressed in a dark uniform and peaked cap. For this reason I've depicted him as an SS officer, perhaps a lieutenant. He worked for Inspector Dobermann (as the character was called then), and given Dobermann's iffy status at the time (he was both Nazi official and civilian, held the title of Inspector yet seemed unaffiliated with any branch of service), may have even reported to him directly. Deserta was his dimwitted yet loyal sidekick and henchman, while Nightstalker himself was intelligent, shrewd, yet short tempered and prone to outbursts. Despite his obvious talents (especially compared to Deserta), he was never skilled enough to thwart the Trench Rats, and he and Deserta were frequently taken to task by Dobermann and/or Woofwoof Hitler.
It's only recently that it occurred to me that Nightstalker and Deserta could be considered an early prototype of current characters Gunter Hesse and Theodor Schulte, with the primary difference being that Schulte is a Great Dane whereas Deserta was almost certainly a German shepherd. There's the more intelligent, competent officer, paired with the rather dim, goofy yet physically strong henchman. This was not intentional, but was possibly an unconscious decision. This would mean that these two characters have technically been "recycled," yet there are enough differences between them that I consider Nightstalker and Deserta "retired."
When I pictured Nightstalker at the time, he was most likely a Doberman pinscher with cropped ears, as I seem to recall he resembled Dobermann. This is not 100% certain though, he could have perhaps been a similar dog breed. Back then, Dobermann was black and tan and wore a peaked cap of his own; I think also that Nightstalker was black and tan. My characters back then didn't have hair. I had never heard of the SS, so I wouldn't have known the details of his uniform; I do know it was dark and he wasn't a "common soldier" like Deserta seemed to be. He never seemed to be involved in combat of any sort, so my best guess with the knowledge I have today was that he would have been a member of the Allgemeine-SS, possibly the Sicherheitsdienst, like Hesse. His personality was much more short tempered than Hesse's, however, and although generally competent and much smarter than Deserta, he was nowhere near as skilled at his job as Hesse is. He and Deserta were talented as Nazis, but bungling/bumbling at pretty much everything else; they were primarily considered to be comic relief.
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