Reinhard rust was first introduced in the earth shield event, according to the event’s description it takes place in at least 1945 or after:
confirmation of date here
So when we last see him it is at least 1945 and this is his physique:
Pretty impressive as you can see he’s busting out of his shirt. He also has a base vitality stat of 27 points which is VERY impressive for a soilder. He’s described as a athlete and being able to keep up with his comrades and then some:
All of this alone would be pretty impressive, but then it was revealed he is a WW1 vet:
And by the looks of his portrait he looks quite mature, if I had to guess I’d was he was 25 in 1918 (keep in mind people looked older in the past because of many factors like diet, living conditions, etc).
So if Reinhard rust was realistically around 25 in 1918 then in 1945 he’d be… about 52 during the earth shield event
For context here are some ww2 military leaders and their age in 1945:
No offence to any of these gentlemen but none of them were in as good a shape as Mr. Rust in 1945, not to mention none of them were fighting at the front like Reinhard was.
Talking of fighting on the front line… At the outbreak of ww2 the age range of recruitment for German soilders was around 18-45 years old (pretty sure exceptions were made for officers because many of the top brass were ww1 vets as well). But Reinhard (assuming he was 25 in 1918) would be 46 in 1939 at the outbreak of war so he’d just miss the age range, but let’s say he was slightly younger instead (even then he’d be middle aged by 1940s standards so he wouldn’t be expected to fight at the front.)
But we know he fought in Enlisted’s version of ww2 because you can play as him in every German ww2 campaign. So apparently a exception was made just for him.
•Reinhard rust fought in ww1
•He was middle aged by ww2
•He is still VERY athletic in 1945 and beyond
•Is a “master of all weapons”
•Has the skillset of a engineer
•He fought in “operation earth shield” in 1945.
•He canonically survived earth shield because he is later seen in “operation gates of destiny”
•He has a massive base vitality stat of 27 which is higher than all standard soilders
•Personally I wouldn’t count operation lead storm towards his accolades but if you did then that’d mean he’d somehow survived a free for all against some really absurd characters as well.
I think we can CLEARLY say that Reinhard Rust is in fact a Aryan Ubermensch superhuman. Not to mention he is hands down the best written character in ALL of fiction.
speculation for the next event he'll appear in
Personally I can’t wait for the next event he appears in so we can see his journey continue, perhaps he’ll strap himself to a rocket and fly to mars to fight zombies again. Or maybe he’ll time travel to the future to fight more zombies. The mind boggles at the possibilities.
