Captain America: The First Avenger/WMG

The ARC Reactor Howard Stark builds in the 60s is the result of studying the Cosmic Cube

Perhaps the Cube is a perfected Vibranium ARC Reactor. Tony's father spends 2-3 decades studying it before building the massive prototype.

• I've been thinking about it, and this is what I've collected, the element Tony was trying to create in Iron Man 2 was probably more or less the same as the one in the cube. Think about it, his father studies the cube, makes the model and keeps it in a video for Tony to find. Howard could've done it himself, but as he said in the video, his time didn't have the technology for it yet.
  • The novelization makes the claim that the materiel is vibranium which doesn't fly too well with caps shield. Unless thats what it was before Tony hit it with his homemade particle accelerator (because Cern can suck it apparently) and Tony converted it into a cosmic cube, vibranium hybrid element.
• According to the post-credits scene in Thor, SHIELD hasn't exactly figured out what does the Tesseract do even with Tony Stark's help, and is still looking out for ways to utilize it, unwittingly playing into the hands of Loki who likely knows the true purpose and capabilities of the device.
• However, other aspects of HYDRA technology could've been developed further. HYDRA Elite Mooks seem to use powered exoskeletons. Iron Man establishes that a miniaturized portable power source is perhaps the most important component to a successful suit of Powered Armor, so Stark could've had a more direct inspiration from their designs once he invented the arc reactor. Building a suit in a cave, with a box of scraps, requires that he is at least partially familiar with previous attempts to implement the technology.

The Red Skull cut off his own face in a fit of madness when he first injected himself

The side-effect of the early super-soldier serum wasn't physical deformity, but a temporary bout of agony, hallucinations and madness, similar to the DTs. Red Skull mutilated himself while he was undergoing a "bugs under the skin" sensation common to substance-abusers. Since the serum might have given him something like a healing factor, the redness was the result of him clawing the skin off repeatedly and it growing back as bright red scar-like tissue. Something like this happened to Ultimate Red Skull.

The Skull wasn't disintegrated, but rather transported to Asgard

Where he met up with a certain God of Trickery and gave him the genesis of a verrrry bad idea, which plays out in The Avengers.

• Once he got to Asgard, he was put on ice and will be thawed, either as a prisoner or as a possibly useful pawn by Loki.
  • I posit one step further. All of the energy weapons used to disintegrate people were in fact transported to Asgard. All those soldiers and Hydra men were actually transported to Asgard thousands of years ago, and became the ancestors of the Norse gods. It would explain a lot about the similarities between Asgardians and humans, and why they have advanced technology (Hydra was the Nazi's science division).
  • Well, his "disintegration" does look a lot like the Bifrost being used. And he did refer to the Cube as "the jewel of Odin's throne room" — given the interconnectivity of these movies, that's a very strong suggestion that the Cube is a piece of Asgard tech that was left behind after they were done fighting the Frost Giants all those centuries ago.
• Possibly confirmed!
• They might have to explain why he hasn't aged though. Transporting him to Jotunheim would make more sense to this troper and would also further the Red Skulls position as a dark mirror to Steve. (Frozen in ice after an accident then discovered and revived 70 years later.)

Cap is actualy the third to last Avenger

He is called the first beacuse he was born first but this makes him the oldest.

• Wasn't Thor born centuries earlIer than Cap?
• He was one of "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" before any other Avenger.

SHIELD was backronymed to honor Captain America

That's why they bend over backwards to come up with something decent for that acronym--they're paying homage to the weapon of the man who started it all.

• Jossed by the first Iron Man movie which had the full name already exist while the acronym isn't thought up until the end of the movie.
  • No one can think of an acronym, its just right there! Coulson was likely using the long form because SHIELD likes to remain obscure.

Steve will yet have that last dance with Peggy.

Let's do the numbers. Suppose Peggy Carter was, say, 28 in 1943. That means she'd be 97 in 2012. Hence, not necessarily dead.

• Please oh please let this happen.
• Or she may have been killed during the war. There's no telling what might have happened.
  • I will be very disappointed if she does not turn out to be a founding member of SHIELD
    • To that effect, this troper would absolutely love to see an old photo hanging on the wall at SHIELD headquarters that features Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, General Chester Phillips, and Nick Fury sitting around a table together with a small gold plaque underneath naming them as the "Founding Members of SHIELD."
    • It seems more than likely that Peggy is deceased by the time Cap wakes up, given the rate at which WWII veterans (and people of that age) are dying; however, it might not be all bad. The first time Steve walks into those hallowed halls, a portrait of Miss Carter hangs in a place of honor... wearing a locket with a newspaper photo of Steve Rogers.
• Or he has a dance with her niece Sharon Carter.
  • Better yet, Steve will get a chance to have a relationship with Sharon, but the sequel will end with Steve telling her that he has "one more thing left to do", as we then see her visiting an aged Peggy (preferably played by the same actress from The First Avenger, but using Benjamin Button-esque SFX to age her), and getting that last dance in.
• One novelization of the The Avengers movie seems to confirm that Peggy is indeed alive in well and living in London, so maybe something for the sequel?

The montage of hunting down HYDRA bases involved large amounts of fighting regular Nazis

Just for Rule of Cool and opportunity for exposition and characterization in later films and fanfiction.

Zola is still alive, and a cyborg.

Well in the comics he's a geneticist, and put his brain in a body with a camera for a head, and his face on a big screen on his chest. Sorta makes more sense if that body is the resualt of cybernetic modification. Zola would have been highly desirable by any number of nations for his research after the war, like many German scientists in real life.

HYDRA had/has Mind Control technology

Although it was limited. It involves big expensive machines where someone is strapped in and indoctrinated, and while they do render the poor saps involved into HYDRA fanatics, it generally compromises creativity to a severe degree. Said system is too expensive to use on Labourers and to destructive to use on agents or administrators (who are for the most part fanatically loyal) but is useful for producing soldiers.

• Maybe that's what Dr. Zola was experimenting with when he had Bucky captive? Trying to use get him to become a Brainwashed and Crazy servant of HYDRA? In that case, it's fortunate that Steve found him before any further experimentation could happen.

HYDRA will be the/a villian in The Avengers

Not that bad, Loki needs Mooks, after all.

Cap was left in the ice for seventy years on purpose

If Skull returned from wherever the hell the Cube sent him anytime prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Government wouldn't have given (insert offensive language here) over his war crimes - only his knowledge of HYDRA technology. He (like the other ratliners like von Braun and Strughold) would get a pardon and a new identity faster than you can say "Herr Doktor". And given that both "died" fighting each other, the government would probably decide it best to leave Cap where he is, having enough of Erskine's notes to realize that Cap would stay a Human Popsicle as long as necessary. Skull will pop up again in the second Avengers movie, running the American mutant death camps.

• Epically unlikely, given the tone of every single MCU movie yet.
• Then the MCU has some MAJOR differences from Real Life given what happened to brilliant Nazi scientists post-WWII. And you have to discount The Incredible Hulk, as the core of it is General Ripper wanting to create human WMDS with his "Bio-Force Experiments". The Hulk is almost the polar opposite of Cap - an indestructible monster as opposed to a paragon of humanity. Take That.
  • Missing the point and offensive. There is a *huge* leap from "one guy going to unethical extremes to make a superhuman weapon" and "deliberately leaving Captain America on ice, oh, and also, death camps."
• There is also a distinction between "Real smart, but possibly complicit in violations of the Geneva Convention" and "Raving Megalomaniac who would happily Burn The World". Zola, I can see (and even then the Death Camp thing would never get off the ground). Schmidt? Not a chance.
  • Then what part will the mutants play in the MCU? They're basically the Civil Rights Movement's Fictional Counterpart. Cap would be on their side simply by nature of what he is - "Not a perfect soldier, but a good man", while Fury has compromised with monsters on numerous occasions simply because they have authority over him.
    • Firstly, assuming facts not in evidence; given the OOC licensing issues, there probably won't *be* any mutants or mutant issue in the MCU. Secondly, assuming facts not in evidence, as far as movie Fury making outright monstrous compromises. Put bluntly, until the movies actually put the slightest whiff of flagrant evil on that scale on the part of the US government, its laughable to just assume it exists. Again, "dubious experiments and hunting down one person who probably should be pursued anyway" *does not equal* "mutant death camps and intentionally leaving for dead a war hero."
• Could you reference "the OOC licensing issues"? "The Mutant Problem" is a key component of the Marvel universe, and it's not going to be referenced in any way, shape or form for the MCU? Kinda odd. It'd be like having a DC universe without Superman.
  • The X-Men film rights are held by 20th Century Fox; the Captain America film rights (along with Iron Man and Thor) belong to Paramount. Maybe that's it? (Note that the Hulk rights, last I checked, belonged to Universal Pictures... but it seems like Ed Norton won't be playing the Hulk in Avengers anyway, so they'll probably reboot along with recast him.) Besides which, adding 'the mutant problem' to the series would be overburdening an 'arc' already dedicated to founding and following the Avengers, which is why the above movies are tied together; anything more than a passing reference would be saddling the Avengers films with something that should be (and is) already found in the X-movies. Also, Civil War sucked.
    • Marvel Studios specifically got back the rights to Hulk, and did before TIH even finished filming. Maybe before it started filming, reports have been conflicting. As for mutant rights being integral to the Marvel U, honestly, they are a giant Plot Tumor that has weighted down the setting for years. I am entirely glad to see the overly iron age cruft stripped away from the cinematic setting.
  • Fox(the firefly slayers - may they all die of gonorrhea and rot in hell) also owns the rights to Fantastic Four - and the movie they made of that was kinda lame. And Columbia owns Spider-Man. That eliminates the other three big Marvel titles - so what's left for the MCU after The Avengers?
    • More Avengers, obviously. Plus sequels and threequels to the current successful single-hero franchises: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, maybe even rebooted Hulk. And of course the X-movies roll on, after First Class succeeded in regenerating interest in the mutants and such.
      • Also Luke Cage!

Bucky Barnes survives his fall off the train.

Firstly, they Never Found the Body. Secondly, when Cap rescues Bucky in the HYDRA base, he's strapped to an operating table, possibly having been experimented on with the imperfect Super Soldier Serum, enough to make him durable enough to survive the fall.

• Though possibly not without losing an arm in the process ...
• Actually mentioned on the commentary of the DVD....imperfect serum from Zola and all.
• Yes we all know what is going to happen with Bucky. If you don't just search him on google and have the plot of a Captain America sequel spoiled.

The Cosmic Cube is an Asgard artifact

Not Asgardian, Asgard.

Jim Morita was a member of the 442nd Infantry Regiment before he was captured by Hydra.

Because it makes him a badass.

• This seems likely, as at the time units were still segregated and there wouldn't have been a lot of options for a Japanese-American. The fact that he says he's from Fresno is sobering, since it's likely that he spent time in an internment camp prior to signing up (California being a big supporter of the 'exclusion zone' idea) and his family and friends may still be there.

The movie takes place in the Fallout universe.

Following the 'death' of the Red Skull, the 'defection' of Zola, and the acquisition of the HYDRA bases, the US military claims the technology developed during the war, particularly the laser-based weapons and body-armor. Reverse-engineering creates a more portable, more replicable, not quite as powerful power-source, allowing for mass production until the entire military is outfitted. In the face of an America with unprecedented military and technological might, the rest of the world stays silent when China begins its rise in hopes that the two countries will check each other; unfortunately the conflict turns hot, eventually plunging the globe into thermonuclear devastation. Remnants of HYDRA were assimilated into the US government for their expertise, but many retained their loyalty to their deceased leader and indoctrinated their descendents: The Third World War provided the pseudo-HYDRA agents with the opportunity to take control. They rename their new organization the Enclave, abandoning mysticism altogether in favor of extreme science (note all the 'subjects' in Raven Rock). More-or-less inspired by the fact that the suited-up HYDRA soldiers, with their glowing-blue weapons, reminded This Troper of the Enclave's laser/plasma weapons and sparking Tesla Armor... plus the Enclave evoking Nazis.

Cap's shield only absorbs frontal attacks.

If the shield truly absorbed all energy, it would be useless as a weapon. Its impact against an enemy would be absorbed, so the enemy wouldn't be hurt and the shield wouldn't bounce back. Also, there's the question of what happens to the absorbed energy? It can't just keep absorbing energy forever, can it, until it has like fifty tonnes of TNT worth of energy sitting inside it, perfectly neutral? The answer: the shield is designed so that any blow from front-on gets absorbed, but any blow to the edge causes a certain amount of the absorbed energy to be released — so that an enemy hit with the flying shield will actually be impacted with a great deal of kinetic energy, and the shield will (given the right trajectory) rebound all the way back to where it started.

Agents of the SSR founded SHIELD

IRL, the OSS was WWII-era spy organization that was decommissioned after the war, but several of its agent went on to found the CIA. Something similar happened in the MCU with the Strategic Scientific Reserve and SHIELD. Both have Strategic in their titles (as did the OSS) and have a spread-winged eagle against an oval as their logo, also like the OSS/CIA. Possible SHIELD founders are Dum-Dum Dugan, Gabriel Jones, Peggy Carter and Howard Stark.

• And their first director is probably Chester Philips. I would be shocked if this doesn't turn out to be 100% canon
• Howard Stark was already confirmed to be a founder in Iron Man 2, so this theory looks likely.

Steve wasn't the only Captain America

After Erskine was killed, the Super-Soldier program was continued by Dr. Joseph Reinstein, who in the MCU is a completely separate entity from Dr. Erskine, and reverse engineered the serum in Steve's blood to create his own version. The serum he created eliminates the need for vita-rays and creates a more powerful super-soldier, but also drives subjects insane after a while. Someone volunteered for the experiment and Howard Stark created a shield for him made out of powerful plastic. //The shield is the one seen in Tony Stark's workshop. And the serum is the one given to Blonsky.

Cap's posse came together due to sympathy magic from Thor's posse forming in Asgard at the same time, or vice versa

Both posses include:

• A Lady of War: Sif, Peggy.
• A husky gentleman of the ginger persuasion with impressive facial hair: Volstagg, Dugan.
• A classy, dashing chap: Fandrall, Falsworth.
• ....Guys who are/look Asian? Hogun, Morita.
  • If you believe Bucky will be back as the Winter Soldier, then guys who started out as the hero's bros and turned evil: Loki/Bucky.

Bucky killed Howard Stark.

After he felt off the train, Bucky was rescued by a Soviet unit and turned over the years into the Winter Soldier. As revenge, some Renegade Russians sent him after Stark, one of the top men at SHIELD, which had played a hand in the end of the Soviet union, to kill him back make his death look like an accident.

Dugan receives the Infinity Formula.

In the 616 comics (mainstream universe), it's stated that the Infinity Formula keeps Nick Fury from aging and it's been implied that Dugan received it, too. So it's possible that he could still work for SHIELD in the MCU if they state this outright, since Fury is no longer a Howling Commando in this 'verse.

• Also, is it possible that the Infinity Formula could have been derived from whatever HYDRA was testing on Bucky?

The english city names written on the flying bombs were just for propaganda purposes, filmed or photographed before flight.

Seemingly obvious enough conclusion to draw, though some reviewers seemed to take issue with that bit. Huh.

Arnim Zola helped found SHIELD

After the war, the Government offered him the full Von Beaun deal.

• Considering the advanced tech that SHIELD has at their disposal, I could easily see Zola being at least an advisor to the group in its early days. His portrayal in the movie (not including the Super-Soldier game) doesn't seem to make him as gleefully villainous as his comic counterpart. It's implied he's only working for HYDRA due to his love for science, so this WMG is a possibility.
• Kinda-sorta confirmed in The Avengers — SHIELD has a whole stockpile of old HYDRA gear and at least one of