Hans and Franz

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Hans and Franz were characters in a recurring sketch called "Pumping Up with Hans & Franz" on the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. Hans and Franz themselves were played by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon, respectively.

In the sketch, Carvey and Nealon played a pair of muscle-bound Austrian jocks who mimicked/spoofed Arnold Schwarzenegger right down to the padding for fake muscles, drab gray sweatsuits, weight belts, and Austrian accents. The background of the set included several life-sized cutouts of Schwarzenegger during his competition years, and the sketch's introduction music featured mock Austrian "yodeling".

"Pumping Up" primarily consisted of Hans and Franz denigrating others for not being strong, and then striking bodybuilder poses to show of their "muscled" bodies, complete with strenuous facial expressions. The two finally received their comeuppance when Arnold Schwarzenegger himself made a guest appearance on the sketch (to much applause) and ridiculed "his cousins" for being girlie and weak.

This sketch was one of the most popular on SNL, and the characters and their catchphrases entered American pop culture. When Schwarzenegger entered politics, he referred to the sketches himself, using the phrases "girlie men" and "pump you up." He even used the "girlie men" term during the 1988 Presidential election. Accompanying then Vice President George H.W. Bush, he attacked Bush's Democrat opponents by saying to the crowd: “They all look like a bunch of girlie men, right?" He used the phrase again to attack California state legislators in speeches during his election campaign for governor of California.

The two Crawler-Transporter vehicles used by NASA are nicknamed "Hans" and "Franz" after the SNL characters.

A movie was in the works for a short time, entitled "Hans and Franz go to Hollywood," but was scrapped once producers saw poor box office performances from such SNL sketch-inspired movies as Stuart Saves His Family and It's Pat.

Nevertheless, a short sketch spoofing VH1's Behind the Music specials was filmed for the show's 1999 primetime 25th Anniversary Special, but time constraints prevented it from airing and it went on to appear in a later episode that season. In the sketch, Hans and Franz tell the story of how they were reunited in Hollywood when Franz unsuspectingly has his buttocks "read" by Hans.

Hanz and Franz also appeared in the Cranium Command attraction in the (now closed) Wonders of Life pavilion at Walt Disney World Resort's Epcot theme park.

  • "I am Hans." "And I am Franz."
  • "We are here to pump [handclap] you up!"
  • "Hear me now and believe me later..."
  • "Girlie men"
  • "Look at the girlie man, going into his girlie house!"
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