I can give you my experience with the totenkopf as a clueless american: no doubt I saw it in war movies, WW2 photos, and such, but the first time my attention was brought to it was the "are we the baddies" sketch. And when I watched that sketch, I truly thought the skull on their hats was hyperbole, to make the sketch funnier. I truly had no idea that nazi hats actually had a skull on them until like 5 years ago. Ridiculous stuff, truly!!