Klaus (American Dad!)

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Klaus as a goldfish.

Klaus is the fictional Smith family's pet goldfish, formerly a human, on the television series American Dad!. He is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker.

[edit] Biography

Klaus used to be an East German Olympic ski-jumper, until his brainwaves were switched with that of a goldfish in the 1986 Winter Olympics by the CIA to prevent him from winning the gold medal (however, the Winter Olympics did not in fact take place in 1986). His original body might have drowned after the Olympics, (The brain might have told Klaus to breathe and drowned when the body landed in the lake), but as for Klaus himself, he took up residency with the Smith family, posing as their pet. He lusts after Stan's wife Francine, and has stereotypical German sadistic sexual tendencies.

Klaus is apparently able to breathe just fine as long as part of his body is submerged in water, which is often shown when he drags himself along the floor in a shallow water dish. He may actually have the ability to survive in any type of liquid, since he once hid in a thermos filled with coffee, was frozen in his fishbowl when Karl Rove passed by, and was put in a washing machine so Steve can surround him with Francine's underwear.

In the "Finances With Wolves" episode, Klaus switched his goldfish body for that of a black man's, and almost ran off with Francine, but the body was destroyed in the aftermath of an explosion at the mall and his brain was placed in another goldfish's body. This episode also gave an indication of his personality---while Stan dove to save Francine from the blast, Klaus was more concerned in saving his new human body.

His voice is modeled after Peter Lorre's.

Klaus has a strange obsession with Beauty and the Beast. His view is that without Mrs. Potts (whom Francine played in Stan of Arabia), the Beast would have killed himself years ago. This may also be interpreted as simply part of his obsession with Francine.

In "Of Ice and Men" he is shown in the year 2045, inexplicably as a human. He also has a grandson in this future; the majority of the episode consisted of a story Klaus told him about the past. (The grandson was apparently unaware Klaus had once been a fish.)

[edit] Trivia

In the German dubbed version of American Dad!, Klaus speaks in a Saxon dialect, which is seen as a stereotype for East Germans in general and is considered funny among German native speakers outside of Saxony. His behavior in the German version is similar to that of an ex-Stasi agent and he hints that he was attached to the Stasi agency.