Kill Hitler
Kill Hitler
[Black Hat and Cueball stand in front of a double door, which bears the label 'TIME door'. Black Hat has his hands on his hips.] Black Hat: I finished my time machine, but it's one-use-only. Cueball: You gotta kill Hitler.
[Close-up of Black Hat, one hand palm upward.] Black Hat: Why are you so obsessed with this Hitler guy? We have all of time we could explore!
[Close-up of Cueball with both hands palm upward.] Cueball: He's evil incarnate! He murdered millions and sparked global war! Everyone agrees—if you get a time machine, you kill Hitler.
[Black Hat enters the now open Time door as the other man looks on..] Black Hat: Fine, fine, I get it! Calm down. BRB, killing Hitler.
[Black Hat returns, shutting the door with one hand. Cueball has outstretched arms.] Black Hat: There. Done. Are you happy? Cueball: Thank you. Black Hat: He was in some kind of bunker. 1945 was loud! Cueball: NO!

After Black Hat announces his completion of a time machine which will only ever work once, Cueball gives a common suggestion for what to do when you have a time machine: killing Adolf Hitler , the Austrian-born dictator who famously led the Nazi Party to a hostile takeover of the German government, which eventually led to World War II where the Nazis conducted a military invasion of several other European countries and a genocidal campaign known as the Holocaust . Even though Black Hat has other (and probably better) ideas about how to use his time machine, he relents to Cueball's pleas and goes off to kill Hitler, comically using the casual phrase "BRB" which is an abbreviation for "be right back". He soon returns, commenting that he found Hitler in a very noisy bunker in the year 1945.
In the real world, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in Hitler's personal office in the Führerbunker . Berlin was the last major stronghold of Nazi Germany at that point, and was under heavy military assault by the Soviet Union, making it fairly obvious to the Nazis that they wouldn't control the city for much longer. Germany surrendered to the Allied forces almost immediately after Hitler's death, bringing an end to the European side of the War (the Pacific side, mostly fought between the United States and the Nazi-allied Empire of Japan, would linger on for a few more months until Japan was driven to surrender by two nuclear attacks ). The fact that Black Hat killed Hitler in the Führerbunker in 1945 means that the War and the Holocaust had already resulted in the deaths of millions, and history would not be significantly changed by murdering Hitler at that point. Also, Black Hat's comment that "1945 was loud!" suggests that Berlin was already under attack when he emerged in the Führerbunker, implying that the killing took place around the time Hitler would have taken his own life anyway, possibly just a few moments before.
Cueball's intent was clearly for Black Hat to travel back to a time before Hitler's rise to power, in the hopes that killing him back then would prevent both the War and the Holocaust; he's therefore horrified by the realization that Black Hat had used his sole opportunity for time travel and probably made little difference at all. This is typical Black Hat behavior, going out of his way just to troll people like Cueball and cause horrible things to happen, in this case deliberately not changing any history or avoiding any of the atrocities carried out by Nazi Germany. That might be for the best, however, since killing Hitler early might cause more problems than it would solve .
Sure enough, there are some conspiracy theories claiming that Hitler had no intention of taking his own life and was actually shot dead by someone else, most of them relying on some kind of "evidence" that Hitler and Braun weren't alone in the room when they died. If this comic was meant to be taken as a serious theory on Hitler's death, it would suggest that Black Hat was directly responsible, but because he used a time machine to reach Hitler's office, historians would have no knowledge that he was ever there and therefore could only conclude that Hitler and Braun killed themselves instead. Also, if the Novikov self-consistency principle is true, it means that Hitler's suicide was interrupted by Black Hat in the first place, and Black Hat was merely going back in time to do the thing he already did.
The title text refers to the time travel theme from the Superman movie in which Jor-El states, "It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history." Here it is suggested that Black Hat needs to know some history before going back in time to interfere with it, perhaps so that he would do the right thing and kill Hitler before the Holocaust and World War II.
[Black Hat and Cueball stand in front of a double door, which bears the label 'TIME door'. Black Hat has his hands on his hips.] Black Hat: I finished my time machine, but it's one-use-only. Cueball: You gotta kill Hitler.
[Close-up of Black Hat, one hand palm upward.] Black Hat: Why are you so obsessed with this Hitler guy? We have all of time we could explore!
[Close-up of Cueball with both hands palm upward.] Cueball: He's evil incarnate! He murdered millions and sparked global war! Everyone agrees—if you get a time machine, you kill Hitler.
[Black Hat enters the now open Time door as the other man looks on..] Black Hat: Fine, fine, I get it! Calm down. BRB, killing Hitler.
[Black Hat returns, shutting the door with one hand. Cueball has outstretched arms.] Black Hat: There. Done. Are you happy? Cueball: Thank you. Black Hat: He was in some kind of bunker. 1945 was loud! Cueball: NO!
