Bernd das Brot on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO on Sept. 22, 2025

Old Kika clips showed Bernd the Bread always being in a bad mood – which in turn created a cheerful mood for the host and his audience.

"Bernd the Bread is a fatalistic, antisocial, and chronically depressed bread. He has hands but no arms, the dark circles under his eyes of a newborn's mother, and he looks a bit like he knew about 9/11 in advance but never told anyone," said John Oliver about Bernd the Bread, who has been on the German airwaves since 2000. Since then, Kika has aired many shows featuring the bad-tempered bread. John Oliver repeatedly showed old clips from these shows on his show – and several times the host pointed out, somewhat incredulously, that these formats were aimed at children.

The late-night show also featured a short excerpt from a YouTube video with "Bernd das Brot" co-creator Tommy Krappweis, in which he briefly recounted how the bad-tempered bread came to be – and what was previously planned instead. At the end of "Last Week Tonight," Krappweis, along with co-creator Norman Cöster and puppeteer Jörg Teichgräber, was honored with a "Special Thanks" award.

In the final minutes of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver," the host even met Bernd das Brot. In front of a white backdrop, which had been used extensively, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, he spoke to the loaf of bread, and suddenly the familiar face from back then ("The Void") appeared, making derogatory comments about John Oliver. When "The Void" wanted to know who Oliver's new friend was, Bernd das Brot replied: "We're not friends." And now the audience of "Last Week Tonight" also knows the bad-tempered German loaf of bread.