Headscratchers / Captain America: The Winter Soldier

New entries on the bottom. Warning, unmarked Spoilers!

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

• This is an awesome moment taken almost verbatim, visually and verbally, from the comics, but what reason would Bucky have to ask this question when Steve says his name? From everything we ever see about The Winter Soldier, he's a single-minded weapon with one goal— complete mission and get out. He has no thoughts beyond doing what he was assigned to do, and is designed by Hydra specifically to not be an independent thinker. He should not care that his target appears to recognize him and calls him this (from his perspective) random and unfamiliar name. Things like curiosity, inquisitiveness, etc., should for all intents and purposes be completely absent unless they relate directly to completing the mission, no?
  • The fact that he had enough clarity to ask the question in the first place is our first hint that HYDRA’s control over him isn’t absolute. He recognized Steve. Bucky’s memories and identity were jumpstarted by his proximity to Steve, in addition to Steve calling him by his actual name. Through the movie, Steve takes a hammer to the restraint HYDRA put on Bucky’s mind, and he eventually succeeds.

Shield and falling

• If Steve were to fall off a building but managed to land on his shield, would that keep him from splattering on the pavement below? (There seems to be an awful lot of shots of him leaping out of windows/airplanes and plummeting to his apparent doom in the trailers.)
  • In the comics, yes. In the film, the shot of him leaping out the Quinjet to the ocean ends with him diving into it, not trying to land on his shield. Plus, in The Avengers he lands on a car with his shield, and is in a great deal of pain. And that was a relatively small height. Landing on his shield would just mean he's splatting on a worse surface, one that's even harder and has no give at all.
  • Actually, in the film he does both. He jumps out of the Quinjet at the start of the movie, but he also jumps off of the Triskelion at the end of the first act. Not clear how high it was, but it was definitely way more than enough to kill any normal person (the Triskelion has more than forty floors, probably about fifty; Cap looked like he jumped out of one of the twenties), and likely would have killed Cap without the shield. So the answer is "yes, it would, and it does."
  • Captain America: The First Avenger explicitly states that Cap's shield has the exact same properties that it does in the comics in that it absorbs all impact. There's even a deliberate shot of bullets dropping to his feet rather than ricocheting when Peggy Carter opens fire on his shield as a 'test'. Thus, in theory, he could land on his shield from any height and take no damage. It makes sense, when you think about it. The full-armed swing of Mjolnir he blocks in Avengers certainly has a greater impact than hitting the ground at terminal velocity would. The shot where he hits the car in Avengers also has him landing flat on his back with his shield in front of him, having just used it to block an exploding grenade. Of course, the 'absorb all impact' ability has always been inconsistently portrayed even in the comics, so you can find examples there that both prove and disprove the point anyway.
    • During the fight around/under the overpass, Cap uses his shield to reflect bullets shot at him and kill other bad guys so I guess that argument is in the toilet.
  • Case in point: as mentioned above, Peggy feels free to shoot at the shield in a room full of people because she knows the bullets won't ricochet. But in this film, Cap's blown off his feet and through a bus when fired at with a grenade launcher, even though the grenade couldn't possibly have had any more oomph than the Tesseract-powered HYDRA tank shells from the first film.
  • Being launched after being hit with the grenade launcher does make sense even with the "absorbs all kinetic energy" aspect of the shield, it simply isn't big enough to completely cover him so some of the shockwave hit him. Also shown in Avengers when he curls up behind the shield to avoid being killed by the Chitauri grenade.
  • IIRC, Steve was never directly hit by one of the Tesseract-powered HYDRA tank shells in the first film. The closest he ever came to that was the confrontation in the train with the giant mook, whose shots notably did knock him down (and when Bucky had the shield immediately thereafter, knocked Bucky out the side of the train). It could also be argued that the HYDRA disintegrator weaponry isn't strictly kinetic energy. Moreover, it's seen that the shield stops impact but not pressure — that's why Steve is able to move the shield with his arm, it's why the overpressure from the exploding grenade knocks Steve off the bridge, and it's why the Winter Soldier is able to "push back" on the shield when he punches it with his metal arm.
  • Basically, the shield absorbs kinetic energy... unless Cap doesn't want it to do that. Maybe he can alter the energy-absorbing properties based on how he holds it, or something? It's never been consistent.
  • In the comics he is "peak human", but in the movies he is clearly superhuman, if less so than guys like Hulk or Thor. He doesn't splat because he's not a normal person.
  • The shield would probably absorb the impact with the ground, but it's Not the Fall That Kills You….
    • Right, it's the impact with the ground that kills you, unless you have a shield that negates impact.
  • This is exactly what happens in one sequence of the movie. After leaping out of a window and landing on his shield, Steve is slow to get up and obviously in pain but he definitely didn't splatter.
  • It also helps that the glass ceiling he fell through would have slowed his fall somewhat.
  • Judging by the pain Steve is in afterward, it doesn't look like something any ordinary human with his shield could do.
  • He winces a lot for about 5 seconds and then a few seconds after that he's totally fine and unimpaired. The most logical thing from the movie - based on how he also used the shield to protect others while flying through the air into hard impacts on the highway scene - is that the shield really does have some property to absorb and disperse momentum.

Cap's security level

• Captain America is according to Agents of Shield, level 6 or lower (he doesn't know Coulson didn't die which is a Level 7 or need to know secret). Black Widow, however is level 8. How can he be put in command of her in this film if she outranks him?
  • I've always pegged Cap as a contractor of sorts - he doesn't get all the information, but he's brought in to lead missions because he's just that good. Alternatively..
  • Black Widow isn't actually on Level 8, but is given information on that level on a case by case basis. She can't access all Level 7 and/or 8 information that she hasn't been specifically given access to.
  • Assuming the S.H.I.E.L.D. level system is similar to real security clearance levels, there is still some compartmentalization. Black Widow is given high level information because of her job as a spy, but that doesn't mean she has access to all information at her level and below. The S.H.I.E.L.D. wiki suggests this and the above comment are how it works.
  • Also, in the Lemurian Star mission, Cap assumes Widow is under his command, but she's an attachment, not a subordinate. She has her own mission (namely, backing up the intel and data on the Lemurian Star), with assisting Cap being something of a bonus.
  • Plus, it's shown when Fury takes Steve to show him the Insight project that the latter is actually a Level 8 (FYI, Fury himself is Level 10). Coulson being alive is probably one of those secrets he doesn't have access to (Phil himself had trouble accessing information he should have access to as a Level 8 because Fury wanted to keep him out of the loop.)
  • In the movie Alexander Pierce explicitly says that both Cap and Widow are Level 6 operatives when he assigns Bucky to shoot them both. They are actually treated as equals for most of the movie, just with different jobs and skill sets (soldier and spy, respectively), though she lets Cap act as leader in team missions.
  • I took that to mean that was their relative threat level, not their position within S.H.I.E.L.D. hierarchy.
  • Level 6 is the threat level, not the security clearance. Similar to Fury classifying Loki as a Level 7 in "The Avengers."
  • Because clearance level doesn't automatically equate to rank.
  • Yup. This is actually explicitly part of what's bothering Cap about S.H.I.E.L.D. at the beginning of the movie - he didn't know what Widow's real mission was because he didn't have clearance for it, even though he was ostensibly in charge of the operation.
    Steve Rogers: Soldiers trust each other. That's what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns.
    Nick Fury: Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye. Look, I didn't want you doing anything you weren't comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything.
    Steve Rogers: I can't lead a mission when the people I'm leading have missions of their own.
    Nick Fury: It's called compartmentalization. Nobody spills the secrets, because nobody knows them all.
    Steve Rogers: Except you.
  • Also, in real world security clearance, just because you have the clearance to know a particular secret doesn't mean you do. Remember, classified information is distributed on a strictly need-to-know basis.
  • Also, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson specifically states in "The Bridge" that S.H.I.E.L.D. was hiding the fact that he was still alive from all of the Avengers. It's also repeatedly shown that particularly sensitive data of a personal nature can be withheld from agents on a case-by-case basis, such as Coulson and the details of his own death. So even if Cap would have technically been cleared to know that Coulson was alive, he would not have been given that information unless he needed to know that in the first place.

Cap's kisses

• Cap maintains that he's kissed a girl since 1945, aside from Black Widow. Who might that be? He was frozen and brought out just before the events in Avengers and seems to have been pretty busy since that time. Peggy?
  • Well, they did share a kiss just before Steve went to stop the Red Skull back in 1945. And then there was that time an SSR secretary decided to show her appreciation for Cap's heroics by kiss.
  • I think she asked if he kissed anyone since he was thawed and the answer is probably no, we can see that Cap is very isolated and doesn't really do much social stuff. He probably said that because he was embarrassed.
  • It would be very out of character for Cap to lie about that. It's very likely that he has given the aged, bed-ridden Peggy a smooch.
  • Considering the circumstances, what would be so wrong if he kissed Peggy, even if now she's so old? In defiance of all odds, the two lovers are united again (and, by this point, Peggy could have very well been already dead, as the "But I had a date" ending of the 1º movie would suggest). Do you think that someone in that position would say "sorry, honey, I won't kiss you, you are very old now"? Where's your romanticism?
  • Peggy has dementia. Kissing an older woman is one thing. Kissing a woman who literally forgets you are in the room after a minute or two is something else. It is possible he gave her a smooch since being unfrozen but a full-on make out session like what Black Widow was alluding to is probably out of the question.
  • There's kissing, and there's kissing. I'm certain he's kissed Peggy at least once during those visits. But Black Widow was going for something graphic enough to make trained observers look away in embarrassment, which means she wanted as sexualized a kiss as one can get away with in a PG-13 film. And that's just not the sort of kiss you give to a person who can't remember from one moment to the next whether she's given consent.
    • When did Black Widow get that specific? I don't remember her using the words "sexualized" or "graphic" or "full-on make out session".
  • He seems to have been busy? Who's to say that he hasn't taken some time off, here and there? He'd probably want to spend some more time learning about modern culture. Maybe he met a girl and they had a brief relationship. And maybe he feels kind of embarrassed about how that all turned out, so he doesn't talk about it much.
  • It's possible in between The Avengers and Winter Soldier he got in touch with the waitress he met and managed to at least go on one date. Or maybe someone just planted one on him like Natalie Dormer's character did in The First Avenger.
  • Consider how casually Nat does the Shipper on Deck routine, and how casually Steve jokes back. They've probably been setting Steve up on speed dates for awhile now.
  • After the Battle of New York Steve is a national hero, living more or less in the open. Commercial apartment, jogs around the National Mall, etcetera. He probably has women throw themselves at him all the time. That might also explain his reluctance to date; he never knows if a woman wants to be with him or "Captain America."
  • He could have meant it literally; we don't know if he actually went down in 1945, his defeat of the red skull might not have been the war's actual conclusion and they took another year to mop up, which means he could be literally saying it's not his first kiss since "1945", but even earlier than that!
  • I took the joke to mean it was his first kiss (like that) ever. His relationship with Peggy might well have not progressed to that stage, and I wouldn't count sexual assault by that blonde girl as a real kiss.
  • Zola said he was captured in 1945, and the Red Skull's defeat wasn't long after that. It was apparently just a little before VE Day in May '45.
  • The line is "It was not my first kiss since 1945." We know that he kissed Peggy right before getting on the Valkyrie, in '45. Thus, he has kissed someone else since waking up in the future; it would be very out of character for him to flatly lie—and Natasha would be able to tell if he tried! But that says nothing about the quality of the kiss, nor who it was with. He may have kissed old!Peggy, or maybe he went on a few dates that didn't go well and scared him off more, or there was another Private Lorraine incident.
  • Or maybe he helped a lost five-year-old girl locate her mother at a supermarket and gave the child a fatherly good-bye peck on the forehead. Steve's very reluctant to lie to his friends, but he can certainly exploit Exact Words to deflect an embarrassing question.

The Missile

• Why did Pierce fire a ballistic missile on Zola's bunker and then regret losing him despite having Cap and Natasha trapped in there with all the time in the world to subdue them or simply starve them out?
  • Well for several reasons. 1 - Cap and Widow were in the bunker with Zola and time was of an issue. Zola himself admits that he was just keeping them busy with the speech and he himself couldn't do anything to stop them seeing as he is just an AI inside a boatload of tapes. All Cap and Widow would have to do is go haywire on the tapes and hack the bunker open and get out. OR 2 - Cap being the One-Man Army that he is could just fight off the STRIKE force that they would send after him. Though 1 is more likely.
  • Because nuking the site from orbit is the only way to be sure. This is Captain fucking America we're dealing with. Absolute overkill should be standard procedure when dealing with him.
    • Did the missile work? No. It was apparently NOT, in fact overkill.
  • Also, who's to say that Zola wasn't able to transmit his mind out of the bunker (a la The Lawnmower Man)? Distributed processing could have been in play now that he isn't limited to 1970's tech. (Though Pierce's line about "already cost me Zola" seems to militate against this.)
    • This being a comic-book-based universe, Zola is about 90% certain to have survived. Very simple to explain, particularly since he was under no particular obligation to tell the truth.

Shield at the end

• What happened to Cap's shield? Last we saw it, he'd dropped it in the Potomac, and we don't see it after that scene.
  • Someone probably found it, though we don't know for sure seeing as it isn't seen after it falls into the water.
  • It's shown propped against his hospital bed.

S.H.I.E.L.D. double agents

• I have a hard time with this when it comes down to the plot. As much as I have a very elastic Willing Suspension of Disbelief (as I do love the Marvel Cinematic Universe's approach when it comes down to their movies and stuffs) this situation has caused my suspension of disbelief to fail. I mean, after so many years of work in the intelligence field, wouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have security measures in place to double check every agent within their organization, to determine whether they were double agents or not? I mean, come on! Show some credibility!
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. probably has considerable measures to check for double agents. However, seeing as S.H.I.E.L.D. was a front for the continued existence of HYDRA, I highly doubt they'd be checking for their own operatives.
  • This. Where, exactly, do you begin finding moles and double agents when the corruption and rot runs all the way to the top? Zola was probably the most obvious candidate for reviving HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D., and you can bet everyone had their eye on him. Less people would have their eye on Pierce, who has the same level of clearance and influence as Fury.
  • But even so, some group within that organization would be smart, so G-S enough to keep such an organization good. I mean, seriously? Nobody or a group of people within that organization even made a slightest move to even check things up with such precautionary measures? With a generous amounts of realizing what is actually going on inside the organization just to make sure that this organization remains an organization of good?
  • But again, where do you start when you have someone like Pierce leading the rot within S.H.I.E.L.D. who was clearly able to explain the Insight project in a manner that was at least acceptable as an extension of American security? Fury, Hill and Natasha are all very smart, but when Fury thinks he can at least trust Pierce - citing that he's a man who once turned down the Nobel Peace Prize - and Natasha cites she thought she was doing the right thing in joining S.H.I.E.L.D., where do you start? Certainly, S.H.I.E.L.D. got complacent when it came to HYDRA, but again - how and where do you start to discover the rot when the people pulling the wool over your eyes are your friends and allies?
  • Where exactly was it said that "Nobody or a group of people within that organization even made a slightest move to even check things up with such precautionary measures?" S.H.I.E.L.D. almost certainly had extremely extensive vetting procedures to select agents and personnel. And said procedures were being controlled by HYDRA from the beginning, making them absolutely worthless.
  • Oh come on! That would be a big catastrophe! Which by the film happened so gruesomely. Point here is, S.H.I.E.L.D. should have a higher council that has nothing to do with HYDRA other than being an anti-HYDRA group. This group should monitor all of that organization as they go on to make sure that none of the terrible things happen. I am aware of Agent Alexander being a traitor all along for working with the enemy group as things are going on but shouldn't there be at least a small group of credible S.H.I.E.L.D. agents outside the small group of heroes that saved the world in the movie and those of Coulson's to keep track of things under control. Another thing is that why the hell did they even not double check Zola there in the beginning or at least they should hit the floor with investigating everybody at the start? I mean, not that we should prevent Cap from unleashing his badassery in the movie but what the heck? You know what I mean.
  • Again, I ask WHERE do you start? The only real trace of HYDRA in S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been Zola who, I imagine, would have been under heavy scrutiny until someone like Pierce came along to perhaps help spirit him away and take him underground. But again - where do you even begin? S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nature IS an anti-HYDRA program, but how do you know that there are HYDRA operatives within the group until it's too late? You can't establish countermeasures to something you don't know is there, given everyone thought HYDRA was dead with Schmidt's death and Zola's 'defection', and the war over. Again, how could you establish a trustworthy group of agents without knowing about the internal threat? And given they're all spies, how do you manage to filter out those that are double agents? This is classic spy stuff, and I imagine that whatever happens with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the future of the MCU actively will have countermeasures to stop this happening again.
  • Point taken at heart but shouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D. at that point even have a scrutiny by scrutiny group that does the filtering? Like a backdoor group of good guys doing what they have to do just to keep it clean? Like who promoted Alexander to that position right away? Shouldn't that person, with his power or people of that position have their own elite group that does what it does that by my previous statements RAISE the flag to the higher ups when they themselves FIND OUT what Alex is actually doing behind? Like come on! Where is the integrity? Don't tell me that they themselves just randomly promote people WITHOUT PROFILE FILTERING? Oh come on!
  • Again, how do you begin filtering people or attempting to find out their connections? Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. even have that group of backdoor good guys when they don't feel they have any need to? Why would Pierce require filtering or observation when he's the guy who turned down the Nobel Peace Prize - who Nick Fury thought he could trust, who came up in S.H.I.E.L.D. alongside him? Again, you don't fight something you don't know is there. By contrast, the nature of operating as a double agent means you don't do anything at all explicit to expose yourself. Again, how do you get the 'scrutiny' group together and make sure HYDRA isn't involved in that? Cap seemed to trust Rumlow prior to the elevator incident, after all. Again, where do you begin when you're complacent, when you think you have nothing to worry about? You can keep telling me 'oh come on' all you like, but again, this is CLASSIC spy stuff. Any HYDRA agents within S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been suitably trained to cover every aspect of their existence as HYDRA agents. Simple as that.
  • I am savvy when it comes down with classic Spy stuffs but why would I make an organization that does not even have an internal police to begin with? Shouldn't I myself make a very secure organization with these people around monitoring the stuffs that my agents are doing? Shouldn't this be self explanatory to begin with? I mean, sure you need to expand your people so as to keep it going for a long long time as a good peace-keeping authority but inside of it, shouldn't something be made to make it clean through and through? I might consider that I would still keep my W.S.o.D. on at this point because it is just entertainment.
  • There was an internal police: it was Hydra. Strucker made it clear in The Stinger; HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D were one and the same. All of these internal affairs groups are focused on external groups trying to compromise you, but when the rot is coming from the very core of the agency there's not a lot you can do. HYDRA agents weren't having secret meetings in rooms of men in HYDRA uniforms and HYDRA logos, they were all S.H.I.E.L.D agents meeting other SHIELD agents. And the kicker is that most of what HYDRA's operations were doing were also what S.H.I.E.L.D would have done, the only difference is the long-term goals.
  • This is a super-sized case of Reality Is Unrealistic. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were two of the most senior double agents that the KGB ever planted into the US government. Both of them were in counter-intelligence (i.e., 'internal police') — Ames for the CIA, and Hanssen for the FBI. The KGB also did similar things with counter-intelligence officials in Great Britain and Western Europe, if not quite on this kind of scale. The short version is, your opposition's 'internal police' is the first place you try and compromise, for the obvious reason that once you've got that then getting the rest is easier. (Adding up the damage that Ames and Hanssen did during their careers gets you a quite staggering, as well as alarming, total.)
    • And not only was Hanssen a double agent working counterintelligence for the FBI, but when the FBI realized there was a mole (Hanssen), Hanssen was put on the team to find this person, and he ended up getting several more years to cover his tracks or stay ahead of the search.
    • You see a lesser variant of this in some of the other MCU works. Daredevil season 1 had Wilson Fisk buying out cops in the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau to thwart investigations into dirty cops on the streets, and season 3 saw him manipulating an Internal Affairs investigation by the FBI as part of his plans to turn Dex into a hitman.
  • The point here is how could this even slip when S.H.I.E.L.D. is such a highly organized counter-terrorist organization that has such credibility around that ended up like this?
  • Because it was compromised from the very beginning.
  • It simply comes down to HYDRA just being that damn good when it comes to hiding themselves. One can presume that all these HYDRA agents were put through profile filtering (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. actually proves this, with one episode showing that all agents are given extremely in-depth psych evaluations, which includes even their favorite places to eat) and they passed them anyway because they were trained to (or, for all we know, HYDRA made sure they were the ones running the evals in the first place, particularly since this would be good for finding new recruits.) Also, the impression I get is that Alexander Pierce is not a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. He is the Secretary of Defense (or Secretary of "something" at least, given he is referred to as "Mr Secretary" more than once). He is the boss of S.H.I.E.L.D. In short, there is a scrutiny group, but HYDRA runs them as well.
  • The problem is we're talking about 70+ years of perfect deception on the world's stage. No one leaked the info out onto the internet? No one had a change of heart or a deathbed confession? It's a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" situation, and any conspiracy story is going to lean heavily on this, but it's still a hell of a stretch.
  • But it's not 70 years. HYDRA was only brought back when Zola was uploaded and able to find sympathetic agents within S.H.I.E.L.D. to join his cause. That took place in the 70s, not 70 plus years ago. So really, he managed to get the timing right. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been around long enough at that point to be an established entity for good and anyone familiar with HYDRA first hand (like Peggy) was probably no longer in field work. Once Zola turns one S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, telling them they're working towards the same goal in different ways, the heads begin to multiply. As for background checks, he is a computer. He could hide certain information with ease.
  • As far as anyone knows, HYDRA is dead and gone. There are no connections to known HYDRA agents to check because there are no known HYDRA agents, because HYDRA has not existed for decades. For example, An internal investigation would find that Agent Sitwell has connections to this agent and that agent, all of whom are prestigious S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and no one would know they're secret HYDRA agents because HYDRA doesn't exist, so there's nothing to check for. You keep saying that they should be able to figure out that these people are connected to HYDRA, but what would they even look for in the first place when HYDRA is a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, and everything they do is a sanctioned S.H.I.E.L.D. operation?
  • Exactly! It's the same argument you could make with the fall of the Jedi order in the Star Wars prequels. How could so many Jedi fail to detect the Sith influence and the dark side gaining prominence? The answer is that the leaders of the order thought the Sith were dead and gone and thus the few clues that did leak out were explained away as something else because they didn't want to believe it was possible that the Sith survived and actually thrived. In the case of S.H.I.E.L.D., they assumed Hydra was dead and any few leaks that might have revealed them were brushed off/covered up as something else. No one had any reason to suspect Hydra.
  • Not only that, but Hydra's MO has totally changed. As Zola said, the "take the world by brute force" option failed because they were seen as oppressors. Instead they manipulated politics to try to convince the world that they needed to submit for their protection. Nobody noticed Hydra because they'd been expecting Hydra to run around in Nazi regalia blowing shit up like Red Skull was. After 70 years of that not happening they let down their guard. Especially when they had very real threats like Loki, aliens, robot suits and Dark Elves running around and blowing shit up. And because Hydra was so patient all the guys that had fought Hydra all grew old and died or became senile, replaced with people for who Hydra was an old myth and not a threat compared to the real threats.
  • It seems likely that Zola started out small, getting a small group of hardliners and malcontents from among S.H.I.E.L.D.'s recruits, and then sat back and waited patiently until they rose through the ranks and attained power before they started recruiting more heavily and pursuing the HYDRA agenda. From the looks of it, HYDRA still doesn't have a large presence in S.H.I.E.L.D.; their agents are placed in positions of power, but the rank-and-file seem largely loyal to the S.H.I.E.L.D. cause.
  • Plus, considering HYDRA's motto, they might have sacrificed anyone who attracted attention, so that uncompromised agents could take the credit for "spotting the mole."
  • And really, if you STILL think this is ridiculous, look up Operation Snow White, where Church of Scientology members literally infiltrated almost every level of the US Government.
  • Infiltrating and controlling and commanding the entire thing are quite different.
  • Just to reiterate some of the above: HYDRA was able to penetrate S.H.I.E.L.D. because HYDRA is just that damn good. Also, HYDRA was there pretty much from the beginning of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s existence, which makes things a lot simpler for them. Just because HYDRA double-agents are afoot doesn't mean that S.H.I.E.L.D. has zero countermeasures in place. S.H.I.E.L.D. probably has lots of countermeasures for detecting double agents within its ranks. It's just that HYDRA is aware of those countermeasures and they've established counter-countermeasures to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. off the scent (Just because this isn't explicitly detailed onscreen doesn't mean it didn't happen; in fact, HYDRA guys may have even created these countermeasures themselves.) It's like the police ambush: HYDRA has a zillion ways of killing him (first there was their attempt to shoot up the car, then use the battering ram to break into the car; this got thwarted so the car chase happened; and when the attempts to finish him off in the car chase failed, Bucky put his car out of commission), and Fury has a zillion ways of defending himself. In that case, Fury eventually comes out on top. But in the backstory, it was HYDRA that won the spy game arms race (so to speak), allowing them to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. did have oversight measures installed against infiltration. However - S.H.I.E.L.D. was a HYDRA front from the very beginning, and those oversight measures were used to protect HYDRA, not conceal it. Even Nick Fury was sympathetic to and onboard with Project Insight until he gained information exceeding his security clearance through Black Widow's operation and learned the truth (Which S.H.I.E.L.D. Internal Affairs were trying to prevent). S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't have any protections against HYDRA because it was designed to protect and propagate HYDRA. Its protections and oversight forces were about protecting HYDRA from being discovered by the Avengers, U.S. Government, and rest of the world - NOT protecting the world and U.S. Government from HYDRA.
  • It is perhaps worth pointing out that there are a lot of obvious problems in how S.H.I.E.L.D. operates that would prevent oversight, like the fact Nick Fury appears to have at least three secret bases on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and on top of that that show runs across a old S.H.I.E.L.D. base (The Lighthouse) that Fury didn't know about. Likewise, Fury has a secret system access with his bad eye. There is something in the design of S.H.I.E.L.D. that appears to make any sort of actual oversight impossible, which we can tell because the frickin good guys don't seem to have any actual oversight either.

Project Insight and Fury

• I scratch my head at the whole Insight program as a part of Fury's operations. Its main objective is to strike at potential threats before they become actual threats, but why do you need three massive aerial bases to pull that off? Shouldn't the main focus of the project be gathering on-the-street intelligence (which is the way cops do normal criminal investigations) rather than having lots and lots of firepower?
  • The idea is that it basically scares people into submission, though. You can take those three bases anywhere in the world and they can massacre three cities on three continents at once. Zola explains that the nature of Insight is basically the extension of HYDRA's original goal - to control a human race that they see as needing it; take out two million people and removing some of the key pieces of American politics would be a fine way to scare people into submission. The threat of killing more as necessary would keep people in line. You also have to bear in mind that they're basically insane would-be Nazis with a different name - branding it as 'peacekeeper' and 'stopping potential threats' is basically just a more politely flavored version of ruling the world with an iron fist.
  • Also, in terms of your edited question — we can see that the new helicarriers are directly linked to satellites, meaning that they presumably have a lot of intelligence-gathering capabilities in addition to the weaponry; I also have to imagine that part of Nick's intent is intimidation. It's one thing to have S.H.I.E.L.D. operating out of the massive Triskelion complex, but it's quite another to have a Star Destroyer-esque wedge of a ship that you can dispatch with the threat of wiping anything out]].
  • Plus Nick explicitly states that the Insight program was started after New York. If those three helicarriers had been present at the Battle of New York, the Avengers would have been unnecessary because those massive guns and the fleet of jets would have torn the Chitauri to pieces. HYDRA may want to rule humanity, but even they are probably still worried about extraterrestrials invading Earth, just as Fury was. It's not just about Earth based terrorism.
  • Precisely. They witnessed an actual alien invasion, which pretty much looked like a Zerg Rush. Hence, being able to knock down thousands of targets a minute becomes incredibly important. It was probably luck, with a nudge in the right direction, that made it a perfect moment for HYDRA to go all in.
  • You also have to consider all the subterfuge. Nick has no idea that the first thing the ships will do is assassinate millions of people. He gave us the story of his grandfather; Nick sees this as showing all the evil people in the world that he's got a fully loaded gun if they were thinking of trying something.
  • Exactly. As far as Fury and (presumably) Tony Stark know at that point, Project Insight is just the latest in a long line of invocations of Peace Through Superior Firepower, not part of a secret Nazi plan to conquer humanity.

Winter Soldier star

• So, why does Bucky still have the red star emblazoned on his shoulder? The film basically removes the Soviet aspect from the proceedings by making him a secret HYDRA project deployed as necessary by the likes of Alexander Pierce, and directly worked on by Zola. So why the Soviet star, and why would the Russians have an in-depth file on him including close up pictures of him in deep freeze?
  • Most likely for cover/distraction. The very fact that legends have built around The Winter Soldier as a Soviet operative precisely helps to keep the very reality you referred to (he's really an operative for HYDRA) under wraps.
  • It could also suggest that HYDRA had also infiltrated the Soviet Union, and throughout the Cold War had been pulling the strings of both sides. The Stinger and the plans for future movies both show that HYDRA's influence extended far beyond S.H.I.E.L.D., so this is entirely possible.
  • Black Widow mentioned Soviet ammo as the MO for the Winter Soldier's kills at least twice in the movie...
  • If you pay attention carefully in Bucky's flashback, you see that his body was recovered by Soviet soldiers.
  • In any case it's probably still got a narrative role to fill - after all, in the comics eventually this◊ happened.
  • It seems very likely that the Russians, or at least a Russian cell of Modern HYDRA, or even HYDRA's Russian equivalent LEVIATHAN (from the comics), had something to do with the Winter Soldier. Perhaps with regard to his training and brainwashing upon being thawed. The Star isn't the only Russian thing about him. One of his few spoken lines is in Russian, and a friend of mine stated that all his armaments and even hand-to-hand style were "almost offensively" Russian. He may be a HYDRA creation here, but the Russians do seem to have a so-far unrevealed role in things.
  • Bucky doesn't exclusively use Soviet-bloc weapons; on several occasions he's seen using an M4A1, and he carries two American compact pistols in addition to a Swiss SIG-Sauer P220. The sole Soviet-bloc weapon he has is the Czech Skorpion machine pistol.
  • Captain America: Civil War establishes that a Soviet/Russian cell of HYDRA was involved in the Winter Soldier program — the primary facility was in Siberia. Given that at least some of the HYDRA agents involved seemed to be Soviet officials or at least masquerading as Soviet officials, it makes perfect sense that there would be aspects of the Winter Soldier program made to look superficially Soviet.

Sharon's name

• How exactly do we know Agent 13 is Sharon, I mean, All we knew of Sharon was her from Natasha, so how is Agent 13 Sharon, lest "Kate" was an alias?
  • Doesn't she actually get called 'Sharon', at some point? I distinctly remember her being called 'Sharon', but then was surprised that they didn't lay down her surname - although this was presumably to avoid confusion with Peggy. Also, why wouldn't 'Kate' be an alias?.
  • I think she does, somewhere by the end.
  • Black Widow calls her "Sharon" in the last pre-credits scene. Also, in the comics Agent 13 is her codename, and its confirmed by Word of God that that's who she is. So, yeah, she's Sharon Carter.
  • One way of looking at it, is that her full name is either Sharon Katherine Carter or Katherine Sharon Carter and "Kate" is simply a nickname she used when undercover as a nurse.
  • Black Widow tells Cap that her name is Sharon and then warns him to be careful pulling on that thread.
  • The "careful pulling on that thread" was in reference to Bucky as the Winter Soldier, not Sharon.

Who is the Schoolgirl from Idaho?

• Who's "the schoolgirl from Idaho" Sitwell refers to in the rooftop scene? When he names the people who are danger to HYDRA, he gives recognizable names: Agent Hill, Bruce Banner (Hulk), Stephen Strange (Dr Strange) and... this "schoolgirl from Idaho". Marvel Database state the only female character to come from Idaho is Songbird - could she be important later in MCU?
  • Wasn't it that it was someone who rejected Sitwell in high school ? It wasn't someone "important", it was a personal grudge.
  • It's not someone from his high school. It's Zola who picked the targets, for one thing.
  • Sitwell's exact words are "a high school valedictorian", which could suggest Amadeus Cho. The term he uses is gender-neutral.
  • I took it as HYDRA being so evil and paranoid, they would even target really smart high school kids, lest they grow up to be threats later. It's not uncommon for these sort of groups to go after highly educated people.
  • I saw it more as Fridge Brilliance: "There's obvious targets and the seemingly unknown ones too". Remember that the guy who took down the original HYDRA started out his life as some relatively unknown wimp from Brooklyn who even the Army mid-WW2 didn't want around? HYDRA clearly learned their lesson.
  • It's also a subtle nod to the idea that the greatest threat to any totalitarian regime is education
  • I thought that the high school valedictorian was Peter Parker. He can't be officially name dropped and isn't part of the Marvel Cinema canon yet. He's just some random High School valedictorian as far as hydra is concerned.
  • I distinctly recall he says the valedictorian is from "Iowa City", not Idaho. (I live in Iowa, so the location name didn't slip by.) This may be a reference to Jack Munroe, aka Nomad, who is from (Clutier) Iowa, and was closely associated with Captain America. However, I'm more inclined to agree Sitwell's meaning was essentially "John Doe", i.e. anyone and everyone obscure who might be considered a threat.
  • Some have suggested it is a nod to Isabel Kane (aka Smasher and later Messenger) from Jonathan Hickman's current Avengers run since she came from Iowa.

Peggy's picture

• Why would Natasha not recognize a picture of Peggy in the bunker? Surely the information of one of the original founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be common knowledge to all of its agents?
  • Natasha is only in her late 20s/early 30s. Odds are, the pictures of Peggy she saw were of her as a veteran agent and older woman. Conversely, Howard Stark is dead, so it's more likely the young him is seen. Plus, he looks like his son.
  • I think its just that Natasha isn't really a history buff and didn't bother reading too much about Rogers' past. She knows who he is, of course, but she isn't interested in his life story or anything (or at least not in digging through it behind his back), and she never felt inclined to look into his file. She didn't know who Dr. Arnim Zola was either, so its not a stretch. The fact that she's Russian could push this into Fridge Brilliance, since she never grew up knowing much about him in the first place. Also, maybe his files doesn't say how he felt about Peggy anyway, or how important she was to him or his operations.
  • To put it in another way, do you really think a lot of people in the CIA or the NSA or any other monolithic federal agency would really know who the exact founders were?
  • Counter-point, the Smithsonian had a public interview with her on video from 1953 when she was still young.
  • Which Natasha could well have never seen. She wasn't with him when Steve went.
  • On the other hand, this is the Black Widow we're talking about - it's equally likely that she knew full well who Peggy was, but was curious to see what Steve would have to say about her, and so she asked 'who's that?' just to see how he'd respond. She is making it something of a side quest to sort out his love life in this movie, after all.
  • Which actually fits Natasha's interrogation style.

Natasha's work for the KGB

• At some point Natasha mentions that she used to work for the KGB, but her birth year is also stated to be 1984. The KGB hasn't existed since 1991, so Natasha's way too young up to have worked for them. Did the writers simply screw up, thinking that the KGB is still the secret service of Russia? Or are they hinting that the birth year is false and that Natasha is actually decades older than what she looks like, just like she is in the comics?
  • Could be a pragmatic choice. The KGB is instantly recognizable to western ears because it was used in so much spy fiction during the Cold War. Russian intelligence organizations such as the FSB, MVD, and SVR haven't entered into the general public's pop culture lexicon in the same way.
  • Child Soldiers.
  • The KGB used to pick up Afghan orphans and train them to be assassins and spies against the Mujahedin leaders during their time in Afghanistan. I can't see why they'd be any squeamish about using Natasha as a child spy.
  • Afghan orphans are one thing, but based on his name and appearance, Natasha is Russian. Is there any evidence KGB did the same to Russian kids? Also, if Natasha was working for the KGB as a kid, this must've happened before she was even 7. (By 1991, the year she would've turned 7, the whole Soviet Union was in such a state that it seems very unlikely the KGB was doing any new recruiting programs, so she would've have to been recruited earlier.) Yeah, there are child soldiers and spies, but they tend to be at least 9 or 10. It seems very unlikely you could train a 5 or 6 year old to work as spy, or even to shoot a gun. Also, Natasha is inferred to have a guilty conscience for the things she did while working for the KGB (in this movie she says something like "I traded KGB for HYDRA", meaning that both were bad choices). Would she really feel such guilt if she was coerced into the KGB before she was even 7? No, it's clearly implied she was working for them as an adult, by her own choice.
  • Implied doesn't equal fact. Only thing known she has a very dark past, and that she has been doing her job for quite a while. In a World where child soldiers exist it's not too hard to picture training young child spies. And it doesn't matter if you have a choice or not, if you do enough bad things you still feel great guilt for them. Especially if you do them against innocent people.
  • 5 year old kids are barely capable of tying their shoes, how exactly do you train one to be a spy? The success rate of these kids actually managing to carry out any tasks would be incredibly low, it makes little sense that an organization like KGB would waste time and resources on something like that.
  • In a comic setting it wouldn't be too hard to see a ruthless organization locating child prodigies with physically and mental abilities and start training them from an early age. Just because she started training before the age of ten doesn't prelude that she did active missions in her early teens. Remember we are dealing with a medium where Cassandra Cain killed before hitting fifteen. Hell in real life China they start young athletes with potential as soon as possible, sometimes weather they want said training or not. Same thing, only with guns and knives.
  • She mentions to Banner in the Avengers that she began being a spy at a very young age. She probably did simple stuff (Similar to how the Indian girl lured Banner out in Avengers). And as she got older received more training and did more questionable things.
  • She could have either started her career in or transferred over to the Belarusian branch, which is still KGB to this day.
  • Similar to the above, perhaps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the KGB just lasted longer before dissolving.
  • This answer is made even more reasonable by the revelation that HYDRA has been manipulating the rise and fall of world organizations in order to encourage global chaos and instability. So there's actually a pretty plausible reason as to why the KGB might have lasted longer in the MCU.
  • There's a number of possibilities but it's entirely possible that Natasha was raised by renegade members of the KGB, perhaps the comic book Red Room. This would allow her to have "red in her book" without implicating the modern Russian government. It would also explain why she was doing what appeared to be terrorist activities.
  • I just assumed Zola was wrong about her birthdate. A spy like Natasha operates under six layers of secrecy and caution. Her fake IDs have fake IDs. Even when she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. she would have kept some secrets back, just in case things didn't work out.
  • I was thinking 1984 was the year her current identity as Natasha Romanoff was created.
  • That seems unlikely, considering Zola had access to seemingly the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. archive for his speech, and Nat confirms at the end that she "blew all [her] covers", meaning they were recorded in the S.H.I.E.L.D. archive she leaked.
  • This is, in fact, mentioned in The Avengers:
  Banner: And your actress buddy? Is she a spy too? They start that young?
  Natasha: I did.
  • Peggy Carter, in one episode of her tie-in show, actually investigates a Soviet training camp for child assassins/super-spies. The show features both a current resident of the school, who looks barely 10 and is far more lethal than any child her age ought to be, and an adult graduate, who is about what you'd expect from Natasha pre-Heel Face Turn. It's probably safe to assume Natasha could have come from a similar camp, if not the same one.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron we learn that Natasha did indeed come from a similar camp, and that she was an adult woman (late teens, at the very least) when she "graduated". So either she's significantly older than Scarlett Johansson and the birth year given by Zola is false (with Natasha having undergone Agent 99's plastic surgery), or the KGB lasted at least until the early 2000s in the Marvel Universe.
  • Or maybe she was brought up in the KGB training camp with the expectation that the Soviet Union would last until she "graduated", and when it didn't, the KGB-trained people who were running the camp kept right on indoctrinating the girls to be spies and assassins without telling them that they weren't being trained to serve the Soviet government anymore, but to be hired out to the highest-bidders among the Russian oligarchs who arose in the wake of the U.S.S.R.'s collapse.
  • To be clear Agent Carter made it plain that Natasha came from the exact same camp. The blonde who Peggy couldn't kill was just one of many Black Widows. Apparently Natasha is the last. They seem to have been trained basically from when their talent is recognized. Such training includes killing off their best friends.
  • Black Widow (2021) states she was younger than six when she joined, which would put it before 1991.

Natasha's middle name

• Kind of a tangent, but related to Natasha's history: Zola says that her middle name is "Alianova", which doesn't seem like a patronymic^note In Russian names, a version of the father's name is used as a the middle name for his children, and The Other Wiki confirms that patrynoms don't end with -nova or -ova. Does this mean that "Natasha Romanov" is just another of Black Widow's many aliases?
  • I always like referring to this Tumblr post for a good explanation on Nat's confusing name history (at least in comics). "Alianova" was an interesting choice when Claremont first used it but not because patronymics don't end in "-ova". It's actually very common, and The Other Wiki does not explicitly say female patronymics cannot have "-nova" or "-ova", which would be incorrect. My guess is that the movie just went with Alianova since that seems to be Marvel's default in their encyclopedias. Whether or not Natalia Alianova Romanova is an alias or not for MCU's Widow remains to be seen.
  • Didn't he say Alianovna? My first language is Russian and I heard it as Alianovna, making it a patronymic from the name Alian. It isn't common and would be an odd choice for a spy but frankly no odder than the freaking royal family surname.
    • The Other Wiki says her name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
  • Also, while we're being technical, she should be referred to as Natasha Romanova, not Romanoff, because Russian surnames change with gender, so it seems to me that's just one of those little research failure details that slipped through the cracks.

Creating the Winter Soldier

• When did Zola manage to turn Bucky Barnes into the Winter Soldier? Zola was captured literally minutes after Bucky fell off the train, so how could he have recovered Barnes and turned him into the Winter Soldier if he was in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody? S.H.I.E.L.D. may have recruited Zola eventually, but even then that was years later, so who found Barnes and brought him back?
  • The flashback shows that it was a Russian soldier (Stalin's forces that invaded Germany from the Eastern Front) that found him shortly after his fall judging from his fresh, bleeding wound. The logic follows that he was taken prisoner, where he'd receive medical treatment. Depending on how quickly after the war Zola was released or brought into S.H.I.E.L.D., it's feasible that he found Bucky before anyone else did, and continued his experimentation.
  • The Winter Soldier is not a one-step creation. Rogers states in the movie that he speculated that what Zola gave Bucky was what saved him from the fall. Remember that Bucky was not rescued from the cage with everyone else in the POW camp. He was found strapped to an operating table and drugged out of his mind in Zola's lab (while repeating his name like a broken record). It was highly likely that he was already a sort-of Super Soldier at that time. Bucky is later rescued by the Russians, maybe even a division of Leviathan, and very possibly trained by them as well. His actions in the movie (Russian bullet, speaks Russian etc.) suggest that he has at least some associations with Russia, if not by a Russian HYDRA chapter or Leviathan. From the hints, it is more likely the creation of the Winter Soldier is the unintentional combined work of several different factions: the American army trained Bucky into becoming a deadly sniper, Zola turned Bucky into a brainwashed super-soldier, and the Russian intelligence made Bucky a ghost assassin... (and then there is HYDRA/S.H.I.E.L.D. that put him in ice).
  • And since this is Soviet Russia we're talking about, it's plausible that they recovered Bucky but didn't bother informing the other Allies. How many chances would you have a Howling Commando as a prisoner?
  • The movie does appear to show Zola present during the procedure where Bucky's arm was replaced. However, this was only shown through Bucky's confused and fragmented flashbacks of events from 70 years (and probably many mind "wipes") ago. It's entirely plausible that Bucky's mind was mixing memories from his imprisonment in Zola's lab (during Captain America: The First Avenger and before his fall from the train) with post-fall memories when others were turning him into the Winter Soldier.
  • Soviet dignitaries freely arranged business and leisurely visits to the West for themselves. Now, a puppeteer evil organization Running Both Sides arranging secret meetings between its agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain? No problem here. People needed to be at places, work needed to be done.

Modeling

• Natasha shows her nasty scar on her belly to Cap and snarks about not being able to wear bikinis in public. Referring to her identity as Natalie Rushman in Iron Man 2, how did she get those gigs of being a supermodel, among other fashion-related things, with the scar?
  • It's modeling. It's highly likely any shots of her were photoshopped, probably beginning with the scar. On top of that, given her status as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, her career as a spy, and her need to cultivate cover identities, it's highly likely those modeling gigs were her idea in the first place.
  • Assuming "Natalie Rushman's" modeling gigs weren't simply a cover identity with no actual modeling ever having taken place, she could always cover up the scar(s) with makeup or spy gadgetry, like the mask she wears to impersonate that councilwoman.
  • Those photos could have all been taken before she got shot.
  • Its also entirely possible that, post bullet wound... she just didn't do any bikini/underwear modeling. There are other sorts of swimsuits, after all, not to mention the vast amount of modeling less revealing clothing that does exist.
  • She could have just been joking or using it as a figure of speech.
  • When you look like "Natalie Rushman," a scar (that's not on your face) has no bearing on whether you can become a model or not. A real-life example being supermodel Josie Maran, who has a large scar on her abdomen from an appendectomy.
  • Natasha is a spy and has been for what appears to be her entire adult life - those modeling photos were probably done on the fly for that specific assignment and airbrushed and Photoshopped to all hell, especially to cover up something as suspicious as a scar. Why would she say "bye-bye bikinis," though? This post offers a very reasonable explanation.
  • If you look closely when Tony brings up "Natalie"'s files in Iron Man 2, it says she did modeling from 2004-2007. Natasha stated her encounter with the Winter Soldier was 5 years before this film, so in 2009.

Origin of scar

• This overlaps with Avengers: Age of Ultron and with the previous question about Natasha's modeling, but are we certain that scar is really from a gunshot wound? Or is it the scar from Natasha's sterilization? I don't doubt Natasha got shot by Bucky/the Winter Soldier, but that's an odd shape unless the bullet tumbled (possible, since he uses a gun with no rifling). And Nat makes it clear in Age of Ultron that the forced sterilization had a profound impact on her. She might not be ready to tell Steve how she really got the scar, but taking advantage of the Winter Soldier discussion to show she has the scar.
  • Yes, because that would be a pointless and unnecessary complication to what is a clear example of straight exposition which is not meant to be anything else.

Project Insight Helicarriers

• Okay... so the Project Insight helicarriers are built without a main command bridge, instead having a massive automated targeting system with literally dozens of microchips all working off Zola's algorithm to find targets for HYDRA to kill, correct? Except, when Cap and Falcon swap out the targets with a single chip, the helicarriers all start blowing each other up. Why don't the pilots who are clearly shown in the helicarriers just use a manual override? I mean, if they can't override the main systems, then what are they doing in the helicarrier in the first place? And what kind of moron designs a ridiculously sophisticated (and no doubt expensive) piece of weaponry without building in some kind of safety against infiltration? You would think that HYDRA would know better than not to guard against that kind of thing, given their position in the story.
  • While I'm talking about the helicarrier design: if you're going to have your ship be automated and run by a massive set of databanks, why would you then proceed to put them in a huge glass orb on the underside of your ship? Ruleof Cool is great and all, but any ground-to-air missile could just take that out, and goodbye targeting system.
  • This one tie-in book for the film claims the underside "window" is actually some sort of giant camera lens used for imaging the land below, which gets repurposed for the ship's cloaking as seen from above. It might also be a holdover from the semi-aquatic Helicarrier design.
  • IIRC, it was mentioned that they were launching the helicarriers prematurely, before their design was fully completed. Not a great reason, but fictional super weapons seldom would be approved by real world engineers. (*cough cough* the Death Star)
  • As for the "why can't the human engineers override the guns" thing, I chalk it up to Death by Irony. The helicarriers were launched prematurely using the manual override. The fact that the helicarriers were able to shoot their guns at all was because the manual override was in place to disable all authorization and safety protocols. Thus, without any manual firing stations, the override is ultimately what killed the helicarriers.
  • At the start, the helicarriers were always intended to act autonomously and operate in orbit indefinitely. Plus, considering how little HYDRA valued human freedom, it's not out of the question that Zola specifically designed the program to lock out human interference. Also, on the issue of surface to air missiles, if the helicarrier has a gun that can assassinate a person from orbit, what stops it from being able to shoot down incoming missiles?
  • Since we're talking about the helicarriers . . . The trouble with evil super villains' schemes is that they always seem to throw too many elements in. They never stick to the simplest option. I can see NO REASON that the helicarriers should have been helicarriers to begin with! They should have been heligunships. Forget the expensive and heavy equipment needed to fly aircraft off the deck, say goodbye to the large quantities of fuel and munitions needed for the aircraft. Much cheaper, much lighter and fewer opportunities for inconvenient heroes to get on board. They should simply have been flying weapon systems, with the minimum crew needed to keep them functioning.
  • Because they're meant to be more than orbital weapons platforms: They're mobile S.H.I.E.L.D. bases, designed to be able to resupply or provide more reinforcements than just 'shoot the guys in the head'. It would have been the only way for Hydra to move their plans forward without being obvious, and at the end, it would have been worth it: Then they'd have three mobile bases, as opposed to three weapon platforms with way less utility.

Target Accuracy

• How can the Helicarriers hit anything really? They shot bullets/artillery right? You can aim at a target all you want, but they were targeting people. People tend to move around. Sure anyone within about a 3 mile radius would get hit, but any more than that would change getting shot with a round the size of your face into "Holy crap, what was that!?! I was standing there five seconds ago!" Also considering they were sub-orbital, the shots wouldn't make it very far anyway. At most 200 miles, which wouldn't even make it out to South Carolina, Tennessee, or New Hampshire.
  • Rail guns and guided projectiles. Also, you think that a computer program that can predict that Random Valedictorian will grow up to oppose Hydra can't compensate for things like leading the target? Regular human snipers can do that.
  • I never noticed any guided projectiles (that doesn't mean there weren't any however.) but even a railgun would be heavily affected by drag and the shot would be brought down to terminal velocity. When It comes to leading your target, you can do it to a certain extent, but what if someone stops to take a phone call? Or the batter hits the ball and runs to first base? Or the person next to you got obliterated by a seemingly random artillery shell and you decide to get the heck out of Dodge?
  • All people have to stop moving to sleep. That's the best time to off them.
  • There's a very simple solution to this: If you fire at your target, but then you miss because he takes a step to the left or something, then you just keep shooting at him. You'll hit the guy eventually, I'm sure. And if you're too far away to be accurate, just fly in his direction. The movie implied that every target would get hit at the same time, but that was only an implication. Realistically, the plan is to kill a bunch of people in the Washington area on the first volley, and then the 3 helicarriers split up and drift all over the globe for a few weeks, killing all the various people that they need to kill.

Banner

• I had to laugh when Bruce Banner was listed as one of the targets of Insight. They had 3 helicarriers armed to the teeth, yes. But wouldn't it take at least a few minutes of sustained fire from all three to take down a giant green rage monster?
  • They said BANNER, not the Hulk. Since Banner's on good terms with S.H.I.E.L.D. now thanks to the events of Avengers, he wouldn't be on guard when a Helicarrier showed up, and the airstrike could kill him before he Hulked out.
  • Remember Banner's "I'm always angry" speech in the Avengers? He has time to Hulk out.
  • Hit Banner before he can Hulk Out is exactly the reason there are so many abandoned factories and wrecked industrial facilities in the 616-verse. There is always time to Hulk Out, all it takes is time for a single cell to manage it. Even if there isn't, the Hulk has been atomized before and came back from it (presumably the 199999-verse just hasn't learned that lesson yet).
  • Hydra doesn't know that. They haven't been trying "Kill the Hulk" plans for decades here like in the 616 verse.
  • Banner tried to kill himself by shooting himself, and the other guy spontaneously Hulked out enough to stop the bullet. HYDRA should know that.
  • But that doesn't necessarily mean that he will be able to Hulk out in response to every threat. In the above example, it was him trying to shoot himself. The reaction to an external threat may not be nearly as swift.
  • First, this isn't the comics. Not every character has every ability they have in 616, or the Ultimate-verse, which heavily inspires the MCU. If they did, Thor wouldn't need the Bifrost for inter-dimensional travel. Second, Hulk's not invincible. The Chitauri pinned him down during the Battle of New York with far less firepower than even one of those helicarriers could have brought to bear and he was completely unable to escape their barrage. Thirdly, Banner trying to kill himself happens offscreen. In these movies he Hulks out when his heart rate increases. There is no way he could work up the nerve to shoot himself before starting to transform (shown in a deleted scene from TIH) so he'd already have some durability to survive a bullet in the mouth. When Banner is sniped with a tranquilizer unawares in The Incredible Hulk he's out like a light. To be fair, that's after the Hulk suppression procedure, but that treatment clearly didn't suppress the Hulk as intended. There's no reason why HYDRA can't kill Banner/Hulk with those helicarriers.
  • Still, not a great plan. In addition to the suicidal nature of trying to kill Banner, attempting to intimidate the world into submission with giant warships of mass destruction by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people is guaranteed to bring unwanted attention on them in the form of Mr. "Privatized World Peace". You saw how much trouble a talented pilot with a set of mechanical wings gave the Insight Helicarriers; Iron Man would have torn right through them. If Captain America had failed to stop them, the inevitable outcome wouldn't have been HYDRA ruling the world, it would be Avengers 2: How HYDRA Got Curbstomped.
  • Which is exactly why Tony Stark and others like him were programmed as the primary targets of the first barrage. He doesn't wear the suit in his office or in bed, and without it a high-velocity long-distance round would deal with him just fine. In fact, this may very well be why HYDRA's initial targets were all superheroes or people that could rally the public against them, instead of the terrorists and people likely to become terrorists that Pierce claimed were supposed to be the main targets of Project Insight.
  • I'm not sure a missile strike would work on Tony Stark. As he found out in Iron Man 3, if you go on broadcast TV, tell someone your home address and say "bring it," people will come by your house in helicopters and lob missiles into your living room! A priority afterwards would likely be to upgrade any early warning tech against just such a thing as a missile strike. A few seconds or even minutes' warning from J.A.R.V.I.S. is all it would take for Tony to hop into a suit, and the Falcon gear demonstrates HYDRA's difficulty with their weapons tracking something as small and mobile as a human.
  • The missiles fired at Tony's house were just short range ones fired by helicopters. These missiles fired by the Helicarriers would be faster, more powerful, and possibly even cloaked just like the flagship.
  • Those wouldn't be missiles. The Helicarriers use high-accuracy rail guns. The first warning Tony would get that he is under attack would be when a railgun round tears him in half.
  • Note, however, that Natasha succeeds in publishing the S.H.I.E.L.D. files and notes they're trending on social media long before the system is actually activated. Given how paranoid Tony is in Iron Man 3 (and how he immediately starts digging into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets in The Avengers), he probably dove straight into it the moment it got published, giving him more than enough time to don the suit. Even if he did not, the helicarriers still need time to get into firing range of New York City, where he probably was at the moment, buying him even /more/ time to prepare.
  • Natasha dumping the files was really not part of HYDRA's plan. They expected Tony to just be going about his day when the attack happened.
  • Differences from the comics aside, Banner being successfully killed by the barrage is at best an unknown and should he survive the results for whoever launched said barrage will be devastating. Considering that HYDRA has access from the very top of S.H.I.E.L.D., they most certainly know about the cryo-cell that Blonsky is kept in, in Alaska. So the smart move would be to try and get Banner into one of those cells which will definitely hold him, rather than attacking him with a missile which may just unleash the Hulk on you.
  • That wouldn't happen because Banner would be dead before he even knew what hit him. Even if he was fully transformed, it was shown in the Avengers that he can be stunned by the likes of Thor, who wasn't even trying to kill him, and the Chitauri kept him pinned down and helpless and successfully drew blood. To quote from Predator "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Hulk is not invincible, neither is Banner, and HYDRA has massive firepower beyond what's been shown to injure the Hulk. There's nothing implausible about their plan to kill him or Stark with a massive sneak attack. Of course, if Hulk and/or Iron Man had been actively fighting the helicarriers along with Cap they would have trashed them, but that's completely irrelevant since their plan consisted of sniping two of their biggest threats, not taking them on in a straight up fight.
  • That's just not true, the Chitauri kept him "pinned down" through constant bombardment, they were simply preventing him from getting up. Chitauri weapons may not have an ammo limitation, the HYRDA guns certainly do. There is simply no way to know for sure if a surprise missile strike on Banner would succeed in killing him or simply cause him to Hulk out. Banner is not even the biggest problem though, Thor is on the planet, empowered and off the grid and they have nothing that can even bruise him. Let's assume that HYDRA succeeds in killing Banner and the 20 million other threats, all that is going to happen is that Thor will show up and singlehandedly take down all three helicarriers.
  • Just to note, what I said was true. We see the 20 or so Chitauri flyers start to bombard the Hulk, and he roars out in pain. Next time we see him, he's pulling himself out of the rubble of the building he was on, visibly bleeding and winded, and nobody is shooting him. It's clear that the Chitauri bombardment incapacitated the Hulk for several minutes.
  • There's also Dr. Strange. I'm assuming that the reason he's on HYDRA's threat dossier ain't because he's an arrogant surgeon. If the comics are any indication, coming at the Master of the Mystic Arts with something as Muggle-tastic as a missile strike will likely only pique his curiosity. Once he uses his crystal ball to divine that this was part of an attack that killed millions, HYDRA would now have the Sorcerer Supreme's undivided attention...
  • Dr. Strange has been KOed by a surprise attack in the comics before. Granted, it was usually when he was in a team-up and the writer was trying to keep him from wrapping up the story in two panels. But unless HYDRA's strike happened to coincide with a mystic duel, there's no reason to assume Strange would have all his defenses on max power. (Nasty waste of personal energy, if nothing else.)
  • Even though at this point Doctor Strange is still a civilian surgeon, Zola's algorithm could predict whether or not you'd be a threat by you SAT scores alone. They could very well be killing him for just being an arrogant doctor.
  • Also, Strange is a neurosurgeon and HYDRA has a deep and abiding interest in brainwashing people. Folks who might be able to undo that kind of thing are probably high on the priority list. His origin story is gonna be Plan ''B''.
  • Whether or not Thor is truly immortal is still a dangling question. He was deathly afraid of a 30,000 foot drop in The Avengers. It's a stupid risk for HYDRA to take, yes, but Thor's victory isn't quite foregone. (EDIT: Thor's immortality is Jossed outright in Thor: the Dark World; so those helicarriers could kill him, potentially).
  • HYDRA might not even be aware that Thor's around, and they might not be aware of how tough he actually is. As for Bruce, HYDRA probably doesn't know about the "Bruce Hulked out while trying to kill himself" thing so they might not be aware of how quickly he can transform when in danger. Also: they have giant super-targeting flying killing machines that could very easily find and target the friends and family of anybody that tried to attack them.
  • I like to think that the suicide attempt didn't work because Banner was aware of it, therefore his Hulk persona would also be aware and it subconsciously triggered before he could successfully kill himself. That won't necessarily work when you get blasted from an artillery cannon in orbit.
  • Remember, WE know that Banner shot himself in the head and survived. HYDRA doesn't know. Which means, yes, their plan was doomed from the get go. Why? Because they're Hydra and they suck.
  • HYDRA knows everything S.H.I.E.L.D. knows. It's likely they know about Banner's suicide attempt since Black Widow and IIRC Fury were in the room when he mentioned it.
  • Even though they were in the room, that doesn't necessarily mean they turned that information over to S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury has shown himself capable of acts of compassion with Banner ... remember "we've even kept some interested parties off your scent" and his courtesy on the helicarrier? And I suspect Natasha regards him more as an ally at this point, given how easily she forgave him for the Hulk trying to kill her. Given the sympathetic looks they gave him when he confessed to his attempt, they may have decided that was a more private and personal issue and kept that secret to themselves. Fury has been known to keep secrets from S.H.I.E.L.D. ... witness the number of safe houses he has and how few knew about Coulson's ultimate fate.
  • For anyone else on the planet, Fury might well do that. For Banner, no chance: given who/what he is and how his transformation is triggered, he's bound to be the single most heavily-psychoanalyzed person in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files, which probably detail everything from his favorite sports teams right down to the exact temperature he likes his orange juice in the morning. S.H.I.E.L.D. cannot afford to irritate the man if it can possibly avoid doing so, and would unquestionably need to know about something as extreme as a previous suicide attempt, the better to anticipate what's stressful for him and help him maintain his self-control.
  • Even if they know, it was probably worth the try to eliminate Banner. Even if he Hulks out, well, what's exactly the Hulk going to do? He is not going to be able to find HYDRA (I certainly don't see the Hulk pulling the investigative work the heroes do in the movie), and he can't reach the Helicarriers.
  • There's too much focus on the helicarriers, but there is a misconception there. Powerful as they may be, they wouldn't be the single weapons of Hydra. As you remember, they control Shield. Which means that they would have everything Shield has: Asgardian weapons, Chitauri weapons, Dark elf weapons, the Destroyer, the Berserker Staff, Loki's staff, the twins, the weapon that Coulson used against Loki, the many 084s, Donnie's weather machine, etc. They have plenty of option to dispose of the potential survivors of the first attack. All of them will fall as planned. Hail, Hydra!
  • Even if the helicarriers fail to kill Banner because he hulks out, there isn't exactly much he could do about it. They are intended to operate at sub-orbital heights after all, which would mean they're about 80 km/50 miles up in the air, a distance outside even the Hulk's reach. So, why not take a crack shot at him?
  • Looking at this from HYDRA's perspective - best case scenario, the aerial assassination works, and Target Banner is eliminated. Worst case scenario, Bruce Hulks out, smashes up a whole bunch of military and/or civilian targets that HYDRA doesn't give a flying frick about, and provides them with an excellent public front for their continued operations. Of course we need those S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers. Just look at the Hulk! He's smashing stuff up everywhere and it's all anyone can do to just try and fend him off! Maybe we need even more helicarriers and funding for S.H.I.E.L.D.! They may prefer him dead, but "random rampaging rage monster" is an acceptable outcome for them.

Smithsonian uniform

• The Captain America uniform in the Smithsonian: Is that supposed to be the one Steve was recovered wearing? It has a clear cosmetic difference (a middle red stripe, which the WWII one did not have), and unlike the WWII has no armored protection (Cap gets stabbed and shot multiple times, despite Howard Stark designing the suit to at least stop a knife). Was this a cheap replica that Cap wore?
  • My guess is that it was either (1) a cheap replica, and he wore it to be a symbol for the non-Hydra S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, to give them hope. Also, the addition of more red to his uniform would help him stand out, which, while bad when it comes to the bad guys attacking, might also be useful when it's basically just him and Falcon, (and Falcon needs to be able to identify him from a distance) or (2), an alternate suit that Howard had made, but Steve hadn't worn yet, one that was good for WWII and Hydra 1.0, but not good for modern-day bullets and Bucky's strength when it comes to stabbing people.
  • Howard designed the suit to be able to take a knife stab by an ordinary person, not a super soldier stabbing with a metal arm. The suit does appear to be the actual one for Cap to have survived those bullets. The differing stripe may have just been an inaccurate addition by the museum when restoring the suit.
  • Even if it wasn't the same one, Steve may have still wanted to wear it to jog Bucky's memory, since the suit Bucky knew was red, white and blue, not the newer blue, white and black one.
  • The Smithsonian doesn't go for inaccurate replicas. If it was a replica, then it would be of the two stripe design. It is likely that it is the genuine article, and an alternate or spare that Howard had made, but didn't get much wear presumably. I don't recall Steve getting stabbed, but there was nothing about the first suit that would stop bullets.
  • The suit is also around 70 years old. No matter how much preservation it's undergone, there's bound to be some deterioration from age.

Masterminding

• The idea that HYDRA masterminded everything from JFK's assassination to 9/11 to most of the cold war really only works in a standalone movie. What about the Ten Rings and the Mandarin in the Iron Man series? Aldrich Killian was a free agent, and so was Obadiah Stane.
  • While it's shown that HYDRA is responsible for a lot, that doesn't mean they're responsible for everything. They don't rule the world (yet), so there's still room for other organizations and free agents.
  • Also, it's not only possible that both Stane and Killian were somehow tied to HYDRA, it makes perfect sense. Both are pragmatic long-term schemers who don't mind killing a whole lot of people, and AIM is actually a HYDRA splinter group in the comics.
  • It would make perfect sense if they were presented as people who have any willingness whatsoever to share power. They don't.
  • Share power? No. But collude with anyone who will help them achieve their goals, including known terrorists? Yes.
  • Nor do you have to be working for or with someone to nod thoughtfully when they say, "Gee, it's too bad Howard's being such a stick in the mud about all this. Almost makes you wonder what could get accomplished if he had a nasty accident. Speaking of which, I know some guys who are good at arranging nasty accidents."
  • Villains can work together in the short run even if they both intend to backstab the other in the long run.
  • And what about real world crazy people? John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan because he thought it would impress Jodie Foster; there's no way HYDRA could manipulate something like that.
  • They didn't need to micromanage everything to keep the world in chaos.
  • More than likely, HYDRA would be most likely to have initiated attacks like the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (if Qaddafi was a HYDRA agent), or the London tube train bombings. I doubt that they would have orchestrated things like the Newtown elementary school attack or even the Colorado theater shootings.
  • I can believe Stane being a HYDRA mole given the circumstances.
  • All that's claimed within the movie is that (1) HYDRA successfully infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. to the point where the latter basically became a heroic front for the former's agenda, and (2) that HYDRA had created a world where people would be willing to sacrifice personal freedoms in exchange for security. The snippets of events that are shown to demonstrate the second point are all major world-changing events which fits perfectly into HYDRA's plan to destabilise people's sense of safety on a global scale. At this stage, HYDRA doesn't necessarily need to control everything, it just needs to control the things that will have the biggest impact - similarly to their infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D.: it seems the vast majority of staff were loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D, but HYDRA had people in the positions of highest importance within the organisation. Also, at some point, any smaller "one-off" attack will ultimately benefit HYDRA anyway, even if they personally didn't have a hand in orchestrating it.

Infiltration

• The idea that HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. from its inception simply doesn't hold water in the grand scheme of things. Why didn't they arrange for Elvis' court martial, conviction, and life sentence to a brig? Why didn't they whack or frame Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or before? Why didn't they put (more) operators into the National Guard during the Kent State Massacre? How was it that S.H.I.E.L.D. super science didn't knock North Vietnam out of that war? Why did they never try to overthrow Fidel Castro after the fall of the Soviet Union, or keep at least one Banana Republic going after the end of the Cold War? Why didn't they whack or frame Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, or for that matter, Mark Felt? Why didn't they blackmail the senators who voted for Bill Clinton's acquittal into voting for conviction? Why did they wait until 2008 to manipulate a presidential election after the 1972 one, or did the October Surprise happen on their watch? Most especially, how come the Militia/Posse Comitatus movement was cracked down on, rather than infiltrated and used as an ear to the ground? All of this simply jolted me out of the story until Cap and company left that bunker.
  • I'm to go with "because they can't control everything". Maybe they didn't happen to have an agent in charge on those cases. Maybe the agent was just incompetent. Maybe they weighed the risk of exposure with the risk of not acting and decided it wasn't worth it. No one ever said they had total control over everything S.H.I.E.L.D. did, nor that they were omniscient or infallible.
  • Presumably because not doing any of those things helped them build the world that they wanted.
  • What would HYDRA have against Elvis?
  • Adolf Hitler and several other high ranking Nazis were on record as absolutely despising Jazz. Rock and roll would have been seen by Johann Schmidt and his disciples as The Same, but More. I know, we have Ike Turner, Big John Hooker, Little Richard, Chubby Checker, and arguably James Brown as antecedents, and Buddy Holly actually wrote his own material, but Elvis was the poster child to the masses.
  • HYDRA weren't Nazis with the same hatreds as Hitler. There's no reason whatsoever to expect Schmidt would hate Elvis, especially with so much of the Nazi and HYDRA leadership killed.
  • Because they were rebuilding their strength and didn't want to be too open about their operations. They had been almost destroyed in WWII, and were building up stealthily. Until later on, they weren't in a position to do everything they might have wanted to do.
  • It also makes it possible for people in-universe to ... well, ask that exact question, providing assurance that the idea that Hydra survived the death of Red Skull and infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. is ridiculous.
  • And remember, there are still genuine S.H.I.E.L.D. agents present. If HYDRA let too much chaos go unchecked, they'd look incompetent and most likely disbanded. HYDRA specializes in planning for the long haul, so they need to pick and choose their battles carefully.
  • According to Zola, HYDRA's new aim (no, not A.I.M.)was to get people to voluntarily give up their freedom. One way to do that is by fomenting chaos. Yes, they could have killed MLK, Jr. much earlier- but that would have just stymied the civil rights movement. By waiting until he was a nationally known (and widely respected) leader, it caused a much bigger effect- people became more paranoid, questioning the government, other governments, the leadership and rank-and-file within the civil rights movement. Plus, why do you think HYDRA would want, say, Pres. Clinton to have been removed from office? Maybe he was working with them? The fact is, this is what's insidious about paranoid conspiracy theories- we don't know what "they" really want, and what "they" need to have happen.
  • It should be noted that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't controlled by Hydra but manipulated by it. It's basically like having a bunch of Right Wing terrorists in the CIA. Yes, these guys can do a lot of damage but they aren't going to be omnipotent. Doubly so since Zola doesn't become a computer genius until the 70s.
  • In addition to the above points, it's entirely possible that the modern history of the MCU is simply different from the real world. So HYDRA made the Cold War last longer, etc. etc..
  • If they killed Woodward, Pierce wouldn't be around.

Hawkeye and the other Avengers

• So where is Hawkeye during all this? Like, it's not like the writers had no means to keep him away from the story: He's on an international assignment and can't return in time, he's retired after Loki mind-controlled him (We saw what effect it had on Selvig's sanity in Thor 2). But he's outright not mentioned. You'd think that with Black Widow's shared history with him, and precious few allies when she and the Captain are on the run, Hawkeye would be really high on their list of allies? Or at least they might at least mention they purposely avoid going to him because S.H.I.E.L.D. would immediately suspect him. Why does the character go almost completely ignored.
  • I think he actually did get mentioned, in a throwaway dialogue right before Cap, Sam, and Hill storm the satellite control room; two flight controllers are discussing somebody who won't be back from Afghanistan for a while, and that he owes one of them twenty bucks. I'll need to re-watch the movie to confirm.
  • Again, Hawkeye is part of S.H.I.E.L.D. It would be incredibly easy for him to temporarily get Reassigned to Antarctica to keep him away from Cap and Natasha.
  • And that's assuming that he didn't quit or take a break from working for S.H.I.E.L.D. after The Avengers. He could have been on another mission in another country.
  • No one thought about the Trust Issue that's been talked about for the whole movie? If the Winter Soldier is discovered as working under S.H.I.E.L.D. this whole time, what bloody proof does Steve and Nat have that Hawkeye was not Winter Soldier version02? The answer is, they do NOT! And one wrong judgement call and they're dead. Filtering out the good guys from the bad guys are easy to do from the audiences' pov, not so in-universe. (And being an Avenger does not give him a pass, Steve doesn't trust Nat at first either.)
  • Thor: The Dark World shows that Erik Selvig was thoroughly messed up by "having a god in his head", to the point of having an entire bag full of medication and having an episode that caused him to be briefly institutionalized. Hawkeye was under Loki's control for about the same time, so it's entirely possible he was undergoing therapy/assessment as to whether he was fit to return to active duty. Natasha was probably aware of this, and also that someone who isn't necessarily in their right mind isn't the best person to call when you have to stay under the radar.
  • This interview reveals Hawkeye was going to be in the movie, but his scene was cut because Jeremy Renner's schedule didn't have room for filming it.

Other Avengers

• Never mind Hawkeye, what about Hulk and Thor and Iron Man? Why doesn't Cap call them for help? Okay, maybe Thor is out of reach in Asgard, and maybe Cap doesn't trust Banner enough, but Tony Stark at least is exactly the sort of guy you'd want by your side if you're trying to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hi-tech facilities.
  • I was wondering why they didn't go talk to Tony too, and the explanation I came up with is that it's because he's in the middle of New York City in a tower teeming with all sorts of technical stuff. If you're trying to avoid being found by an organization that can hack into every security camera in the world, you probably don't want to be in a place that has a lot of cameras; even if S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA couldn't hack into Tony's network, they could have caught them while they were still outside.
  • As a Fortune 500 company CEO and Iron Man, Tony is one of the most media-scrutinized figures in the world. Tony doesn't do subtle or covert (As far as Natasha and Cap are concerned). Going to Tony is inviting a cruise missile to follow them.
  • Performing some quick checks via Google Maps and Travel Math, drive time (on a good day) from DC to upper New Jersey is about 3 and a half hours (it's 4 hours plus change to NYC proper before you deal with traffic). Flight time from NYC is 25 minutes if you're at a steady cruse of about 500 mph. While the Iron Man suits can certainly fly faster (assuming Movie Travel Time), even if Tony dropped everything as soon as Cap/Natasha/Hill called him right before they started their infiltration, by the time he [i]got[/i] there everything would be over, one way or another. (Would've made for an interesting Stinger, though!)
  • Sure, but they could've called as him soon as they started planning the infiltration, not when the operation was already running. The planning stage must've taken some time, because they had to come up with those memory cards they planted inside the helicarriers. And Cap and Black Widow don't necessarily have to walk to Tony's offices themselves, they just need to contact him some way. Since Nick Fury and Maria Hill found a way for her to infiltrate among HYDRA troops without them noticing it (when she saves Cap and Natasha from them), surely they can think of some undercover way of contacting Tony too. For example, why not use one of those hi-tech masks Natasha uses during the finale? We see that they are enough to fool HYDRA's surveillance devices.
  • It could be due to Fury warning Cap not to trust 'anybody. Remember, Fury mentioned that Tony had a hand in building the helicarriers. Steve could have thought there was a real possibility Tony or any of the other Avengers might have HYDRA loyalties.
  • Not to mention, S.H.I.E.L.D. would definitely be monitoring communications. Any call to Tony would have raised immediate red flags.
  • Same reason as above for Hawkeye: the Trust Issue. 1) Tony had a hand in designing the helicarriers; 2) the Project Insight drive has a highly advanced AI that kept overwriting its own system, which Tony is one of the few on Earth capable of making. These two reasons is enough to land Tony a place on the possible-traitor list, and Steve and Nat have no proof that Tony is clean. Not to also mention in The Avengers, Tony promised Steve to dig out all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dirty secrets that in this movie proved he did not, it could only mean one of two thing: Failed a Spot Check or he is dirty as well. Remember, one wrong judgement call then HYDRA wins. Filtering out the good guys from the bad guys are easy to do from the audiences' pov, sadly not so in-universe.
  • And there's the fact that he blew up all of his suits. Even if he decided to help, could he really build a new suit of armor quick enough?
  • Yes, but he would have to be IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!
  • Yes, for real; it's done in both the first Iron Man movie as well as in Avengers. Tony's automated fabricators can build a full suit in a matter of hours, and there's a fabricator in Stark Tower, which, unlike his home, is still standing.
  • A throwaway comment from Pierce ("You have to get Iron Man to come to my nephew's birthday party") indicates that Stark is still running around in the Iron Man suit, which places this movie before Iron Man 3. Just something to keep in mind.
  • I'm not so sure about that. We know that this movie takes place during the latter part of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1, and the first episode has Mike Peterson dosed with Extremis, with Coulson mentioning that it's new. Granted Extremis was around for more than the few days of Iron Man 3, but it would have been easier for Centipede to get their hands on it if the group creating it, AIM, was already disbanded.
  • If this was after Iron Man 3, it's entirely possible that Tony was still recovering from cardiothoracic surgery. Open-chest heart surgery can't possibly be a thing one quickly recovers from. Just the first phase takes between six and eight weeks, and both endurance and general fitness would be significantly impacted afterwards.
  • It could be their protection, as well. Bruce has enough trouble with authorities, and Tony is in a much more stable life than the others, not to mention, he's presumably out of the game at this point, per Iron Man 3's ending.
  • Other works have confirmed that Tony is still Iron Man. But I would stick with the "protection" explanation. HYDRA is rather blatantly trying to kill Captain America in public whenever they get the chance, and only hold back once because it would have been them clearly executing a national icon while he's not resisting arrest. For all they know Hawkeye's neck-deep in HYDRA sleepers right now and calling him is signing his death warrant, Tony's already had people blow up his house once, Thor doesn't have a phone and Banner is not the sort of guy you'd need for the subtle, delicate jobs they're going through (plus when trying to hide, having someone who can turn into a giant green rage monster isn't very conductive).
  • It is more likely that Iron Man wasn't included because this was a covert mission. Calling Iron Man in from New York, with a trajectory towards DC when they are already looking for Cap and Black Widow would tip Hydra off that something was going to happen and cause them to initiate their plans sooner. Leaving Iron Man, or one of the other known associates, out of the plan allows Cap and his team achieve the element of surprise.
• Not every situation necessitates the Avengers. The Avengers are only called for extremely dire circumstances.
  • I dunno about you, but I'd think "resurrected HYDRA is about to kill half the world with giant Helicarriers" is pretty dire. Certainly more dire than "secret base in some third-world country might have Loki's staff."
  • Think of it this way. If Fury didn't believe that Steve and Natasha could do it themselves, he'd call the Avengers.
  • Or he was incapable of doing so in his cave. Putting it all on one guy? Cap didn't save the world the previous times all by himself. And Fury's trained S.H.I.E.L.D. himself; he'd know they're plenty more capable than the Chitauri or old HYDRA. Did Fury even know Nat was helping out?
  • Fury put Natasha on the case in the first place, so yes. And Nick lays it out himself — he came to Cap because he has no idea who he can or cannot trust, aside from Cap, Natasha, and Maria Hill.
  • Besides, if Steve and Natasha didn't think they could handle it, they would try to get Tony or Clint's help.

CIA's job?

• What exactly is the CIA's job in this film and the greater MCU in general? Before you go saying it doesn't exist, it clearly does, Sharon Carter (agent 13), joined it after S.H.I.E.L.D. dissolved. Yet S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to hold all of the real life CIA's jurisdiction and duties. So what does it do?
  • It always looked like the CIA's purpose was Gathering, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s was Execution. In other words, in the MCU, the establishment of sources and info to set up Operation Success was the responsibility of the CIA, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was the group to actually overthrow President Arbentz.
  • Also, S.H.I.E.L.D. is quite clearly portrayed as a multinational organization, or at least answers to a multinational Council. The CIA is a domestic agency and only answers to the US Government. The US would want to use the CIA for situations it doesn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. involved in.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. was more like the NSA and didn't "officially" exist per Iron Man. It's not until The Avengers that the organization "comes out of the closet." I wouldn't be surprised, in fact if the organization wasn't drastically increased in funding and power once Thor and aliens were proven to exist.
  • The CIA was mentioned to be in existence since Iron Man, where it is one of a number of agencies that debrief Tony Stark upon his return. Presumably, the CIA does everything they do in real life, albeit they might have some overlap with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s operations, but I imagine they serve American interests foremost.
  • I always saw S.H.I.E.L.D. as bridging the gap between the FBI and the CIA in some respects. I think their main directives are: 1) act as a Gendarmerie for the United States; 2) Enforce international law through an American lens; 3) Conduct intelligence on enemy weapons/technology capabilities, advances, and trafficking; 4) Act as DARPA specifically for the intelligence community. They differ quite heavily from the CIA, FBI, and Armed Forces in several areas.
    
    First of all, relating to the CIA, the CIA has no law enforcement capability either domestically or internationally. They gather intelligence for the President and his National Security Council, mainly relating to sociopolitical conditions in foreign countries. They attempt to influence the domestic and foreign policies of other nations and gather intelligence on threats to the United States. They run psychological evaluations and conduct threat assessments, duties which they share with other federal agencies. They conduct black operations and assassinations when need be to carry out their directives.
    
    The FBI occasionally runs foreign ops but largely sticks to domestic counterintelligence, bank robbery, organized crime syndicates (Wilson Fisk, Adrian Toomes, etc.), and counter-terrorism. They essentially act as a domestic CIA with law enforcement capabilities, except they are politically neutral and do not attempt to influence government(s). They attempt to prevent crime and terrorism and while they have access to military-grade equipment, their mandate is not to enforce martial law. In a situation where it is required they would merely act as first responders. While they have the same types of weaponry and vehicles as the Armed Forces, they’re intended to be used surgically and/or in a supporting role. They mainly investigate crimes and process intelligence, kind of like the NSA. It's well-known what the Armed Forces do, but due to the Posse Comitatus Act, the Armed Forces, with limited exceptions, cannot be deployed against citizens of the United States for the purposes of domestic law enforcement.
    
    This is where S.H.I.E.L.D. comes in: They essentially skirt around this Act by not technically being a part of the Armed Forces, while performing the same duties as them albeit domestically. They have aircraft carriers, fleets of fighter jets, a huge number of heavily armed and highly trained agents, both tactical and detective. They’re like the FBI on steroids at home, and the equivalent of the Gendarmeries (a military force tasked with domestic law enforcement) found in many European countries. That’s part of the reason they’re so clandestine up until the 2010s; there’s never really been a huge critical incident requiring the deployment of a military force domestically. S.H.I.E.L.D. is appealing as an agency because while it’s very difficult to deploy federal troops on American soil, S.H.I.E.L.D. essentially has a free pass. The CIA is more appealing for foreign missions for one reason: they don’t need permission every time they want to conduct an op. While S.H.I.E.L.D. has offices in foreign countries, they act more as consulates and must rely on foreign informants with no affiliation to S.H.I.E.L.D. for information. We know this because their foreign outposts are mentioned in the movies and TV show, but in the comics set in the MCU, we learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. needs special permission for EVERY foreign op they want to conduct. Their primary focus is domestic, plus having one agency monopolize everything tends to create massive problems. The CIA doesn’t have this restriction.
    
    Also, their foreign operations tend to have nothing to do with policy, unlike the CIA. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ops invariably have to do with WEAPONS and TECHNOLOGY. In Iron Man, they investigate both Tony Stark and Obadiah Stane for their new military-grade inventions. In Iron Man 2, they’re still monitoring Stark and also intervene when Vanko invents new weapons. In Thor, they investigate the god’s hammer Mjolnir, a weapon. In The Avengers, Natasha Romanoff is in Russia investigating illegal arms distribution (they’re also kinda like the ATF except foreign, when they get the green light). In Iron Man 3, they investigate the “Mandarin” bombings, which they suspected involved real bombs (an interesting side-note, they tend to treat people with powers as living weapons: from Captain America through the Extremis/Centipede super soldiers to the Inhumans). In the aftermath of both The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World, they are looking to recover alien weapons and technology left over from the battles.
    
    In the Ant-Man prelude, Hank Pym is sent to handle World War II-era HYDRA weaponry in the hands of extremists. The SSR (whose federal duties were given to S.H.I.E.L.D.)’s main enemies were HYDRA and Leviathan, who made weapons for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, respectively. Howard Stark, one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D., was a weapons developer. This makes them a lot more similar to the DIA than the CIA, because the DIA gathers intel on enemy military strength, while S.H.I.E.L.D. tends to handle weapons and technology specifically. This segways nicely into another aspect of what they do: Weapons development. DARPA develops for the military, while S.H.I.E.L.D. develops for the IC. They have their own academy for Sci-Tech. They have dozens of their own unique inventions, such as the helicarriers, photostatic veil, Phase 2 Weapons of Mass Destruction (plus their entire Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. paradigm), various drones and aircraft, and others. Hopefully this cleared up the differences between S.H.I.E.L.D. and other federal agencies, because there are a LOT.
  • Parts of the above are incorrect, specifically SHIELD's foreign operations. As fleshed out on Agents, SHIELD is a fully recognized and authorized international entity, but only in countries that they have a treaty with. The World Security Council is multinational, which is why SHIELD and the US military have such friction, including in real life, where the military withdrew their cooperation in the films due to the ambiguous position of the US Military vs SHIELD which is the organization of primacy in the MCU. For countries that are not within the Council's prevue, or that have not signed on SHIELD has vastly more difficulty operating and basically has to negotiate with their government for each individual operation. It is highly inaccurate to refer to them as a specifically American organization. They are much closer to a UN force than an American force. It would also explain their funding as it would be easier for an organization with SHIELD's tech and resources to be supplied by multiple nations instead of just the USA. Considering their one word directive, "Protect" the easiest way to describe SHIELD would be as a multinational crisis response force. Part of their rationale for dealing with crises is knowing about them, hence they are also an intelligence organization.
  • The USA has not one (the CIA), not two (the FBI), but sixteen Intelligence agencies in the Intelligence Community. They each have very different objectives to their work, hence the need for separate agencies, but there is a lot of overlap. That's why there was such a great effort after 9/11 to integrate them and share information between them. But given the fact that the US has so many agencies, the existence of yet another one in SHIELD, with a focus on supernatural, extraterrestrial, and super powered matters, is not unreasonable at all.

"Hail Hydra."

• Why are high-profile political figures just walking around, whispering "hail HYDRA" to each other? Isn't that a pretty massive security risk — with no real benefit in exchange? Every time they say it, all they do is risk being overheard or recorded, especially considering the level of espionage technology seen in the rest of the movie. Seems like the more reasonable thing to do would be to bury all ties to the old Hydra brand altogether — the name, the logo, the salute, everything — and simply accept S.H.I.E.L.D. as its new face.
  • HYDRA is not just a secret organization, though. In Captain America: The First Avenger, Colonel Phillips said they were more like a cult, with many of their members being fanatically devoted to their cause and even seeing the Red Skull as some kind of god. They whisper "Hail HYDRA" almost as an affirmation of their faith, so they're not going to drop that practice, despite the risks (though since they control a lot of the surveillance, they probably don't worry too much about being watched.)
  • They probably don't say "Hail Hydra" to each other all the time. They're probably just saying it now, because their master plan is so close to success. Heck, they think that they killed Nick Fury! So I imagine that some of them are starting to feel cocky, and they're taking almost suicidal risks like saying "Hail Hydra" to each other.
  • Also, it's kind of like saying "Sieg Heil" before the events of the movies. It's TASTELESS but it's not something that people would get up in arms about. As for the whole business with still maintaining their old name, logo, and so on—I suspect the Red Skull has some power as an icon to right-wing ideologues.
  • Even right-wing ideologues would have trouble using such an infamous mass-murderer as a rallying symbol. Remember that HYDRA didn’t just invade a foreign nation; they tried to nuke a dozen major American cities. Using Red Skull as an Icon would be like building a shrine to Osama-bin-laden in a public thoroughfare.
  • If a high-profile senator was found to be whispering "Sieg Heil" to people and keeping a picture of Hitler in his home, that would certainly spell career suicide, but it probably would not lead people to believe the Nazis had infiltrated every level of government. Until Nick Fury and Rogers blew the lid off their conspiracy, there was no reason to even suspect HYDRA even still existed, much less controlled a lot of the government. One of their operatives being overheard would likely ruin that operative's life, but not actually pose a risk to the organization as a whole. At least until people started to realize HYDRA was still around.
  • For identification. There are a lot of HYDRA members in various positions in the world governments. You can't expect each member to know each other member. For what we know, Senator Stern may not have been aware that Jasper Sitwell was a member of HYDRA until that moment.
  • That's a terrible method. What if Jasper hadn't been HYDRA?

Crew

• Ships that big usually have crews in the thousands. So if Hydra managed to sneak (say) 100 loyal agents on board, they'd be outnumbered 10:1, and even if they could hold key points like the bridge and engineering for a short period of time, they'd never be able to do that and protect the actual guns and engines from sabotage.
  • They had the ships as automated as possible, and put all their own men on them. While Cap was making his speech, some HYDRA agents walked up to the normal S.H.I.E.L.D. guys guarding the entrance ramps and gunned them down—presumably, the agents already onboard were cleaning house at the same time.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. was under the command of Pierce by that point. It's very possible he completely loaded the helicarriers with Hydra personnel and yes, they could have numbered in the thousands.
  • They most likely did. In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tie-in, Victoria Hand says that very few people have been passing her test to root out loyal agents. If they weren't members before, they'd join when their lives were threatened.
  • They probably also had a disproportionate number of agents at the bases, prepared to take them over as Project Insight went forward. It would have been child's play to shuffle the loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents around a bit, have them cut off or out on missions or whatever as much as possible.

Counterattack

• The helicarriers are painfully vulnerable to conventional weapons. We know the USAF exists due to the Iron Man movie. Even if Hydra controls the ships completely, they'll last maybe a day or two before being crushed under shear weight of numbers and/or the avengers showing up.
  • Which is why the helicarriers will kill off all the generals, admirals, and other military leaders who are likely to rise up. By the time they're done, anyone left will be HYDRA or too scared to fight back.
  • The Insight satellites can track thousands of targets at once and can target and destroy thousands of targets in seconds at hundreds of miles thanks to Zola's program. They would, quite literally, be able to swat anything that comes after them out of the sky short of saturation bombing with nuclear weapons.
  • Don't forget that it is specifically mentioned that thanks to Stark's repulsors doing the lift, the Helicarriers normally would be operating on sub-orbital altitudes, way beyond the reach of most militaries. And that's not even counting that they are very stealthy machines for their size.

Surviving exposure

• With the death of even a few thousand, let along 20 million, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been torn to pieces, and while HYDRA could have tried to ride that mob, that much attention only risks their direct exposure.
  • This was their coming out party. They would be exposed, yes, but everyone who would raise a hand against them would be dead.
  • I'm not sure "the plan wouldn't have worked in the long run" is a huge plot hole. If a terrorist organization is going to kill 20 million people, including world leaders, it doesn't really matter all that much whether this actually leads to them achieving their broader goal from the point of view of those tasked with stopping the initial massacre. Or from the 20 million people in question, for that matter.

Dead Zola

• Hey, why did Pierce assume that Zola was done for? Given that he's now an AI, couldn't Zola have created a virtual back-up of himself?
  • Zola's computer system took up a whole room, so he may have assumed he couldn't back himself up so easily. That doesn't mean he didn't do it, but his survival was in no way ensured.
  • A whole room of computers from the 1970's. That much processing power is now about as much as your average cell phone. As a comparison standard, the Cray-1 supercomputer, the most powerful room full of processors known to Earth in the 70s in real life, ran at about 80 megaflops worth of processing power and several hundred megabytes worth of data storage. An iPhone 5 has in excess of 300 megaflops and up to 64 gigabytes of data storage.
  • Yes but the point is that Pierce would probably not expect Zola to be able to back himself up. He would not be likely to know if Zola's '70s super tech was even compatible with modern technology; the USB ports imply that it was in some way, but Pierce probably didn't know that.
  • Zola probably could have made a backup for himself, but what was he going to store said backup on? I didn't see any servos in the bunker that could have slotted a drive into that port, meaning he would have to get a human down there to "move" him. I'll bet a hot-fudge sundae that Pierce kept very close control over physical access to the bunker. As to why Pierce didn't tell Zola to make a backup and send an agent in to collect it ... it would have been a reasonable precaution, all I can guess is that either Pierce or Zola couldn't believe it would ever be needed.
  • Our heroes carried about a high-capacity USB stick, folks, connecting it into the computer system that was Zola. It could easily hold the equivalent data that comprised Zola, based on what we saw. Since someone went through the trouble of installing one USB hub into that ancient device, why couldn't there be a second?
  • There's nothing even saying for sure if Zola was actually on the computers in that room. Our heroes hardly had time to examine the entire place to make sure that there weren't any outgoing network connections, after all. One external landline and shazam, Zola could have uploaded himself last month and just be showing a remote image on a screen and on the speakers (while simultaneously turning all the lights and computers on to make it appear that he's still there). After all, right now you are reading this message on a monitor screen that is likely thousands of miles away from where it was originally entered in...
  • Hydra has worked out that you can't take people freedom by force because they will fight you, so they have created a world so chaotic that people are willing to surrender their freedom. But their plan is just another power grab. And a government agency murdering 20 million people would pretty much end any thoughts of surrendering freedom. Why blow all that effort on the same old mistakes?
  • HYDRA's "coming out party", so to speak, starts by targeting those who would fight back against rebellion. The rest left would be too scared to fight back because the very second they do risk a high-velocity round sniping them through the skull from who knows where. Some of those left will rebel, but it's sure to scare off the rest when they see every rebellion ends the minute it starts.

How does Hydra inspire so much loyalty?

• HYDRA's agenda is already controversial enough to alienate most people immediately, and that's before all their atrocities are taken into consideration. For example, most of the HYDRA agents in this movie are American, even though HYDRA came within seconds of annihilating a dozen major American cities in the previous movie. Heck, many of the HYDRA agents we saw were probably directly threatened by the attack back in WWII, yet they were able to recruit thousands of highly competent, zealous supporters from the same population they nearly wiped out.
  • Zola's algorithm was designed to identify people who could be a potential threat to HYDRA. It could very easily be purposed to also identify those who would be easily recruitable to HYDRA. From there, he just has to run the program and HYDRA would have no trouble recruiting the few hundred people who are both competent and willing to join to make up the numbers of HYDRA agents seen in the movie.
  • As far as their fanatical loyalty, that's Truth in Television right there. History is full of examples of batshit crazy groups that somehow acquired a legion of followers willing to die for their cause. Think The Third Reich, Al Qaeda, Charles Manson, etc...
  • As point out on the Fridge page, Hydra's goals of total control is exactly what would appeal to some of the control freaks that would be interested in joining S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place. Even guys like Fury and Coulson seemed to believe that the world couldn't be trusted to look after itself without S.H.I.E.L.D. pulling strings and watching from the shadows. Hydra's just taking it to the next step.
  • Zola could play up the "control" aspect of HYDRA and downplay the "founded by Nazis" part of it. If he and Pierce can convince people that HYDRA's reformed as a "good" organization who just wants to keep everybody safe, they'd be more likely to join them. If people get hold of something they are emotionally invested in they tend to overlook or dismiss the bad parts of it.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows exactly how HYDRA recruited its members, Ward being the prime example.
  • More specifically, their recruitment methods basically boil down to "everything that works." We know that, at the very least, they use methods that include: direct recruitment of potentially-skilled but emotionally-troubled and vulnerable youths (Ward); abduction of dependents and loved ones to "incentivize" loyalty in employees (Mike Peterson, and most of the Cybertek employees, though this one mostly appears to be relegated to their logistics and non-combatant support elements; surgical implanting of observation devices and kill switches in the retinas of agents (Akela Amador, most of the Centipede soldiers), which really makes one wonder just how many HYDRA troops were really fighting of their free will; outright kidnapping and brainwashing Agent 33; and straight-up flipping of agents with already-questionable loyalty through money and power, like what they did with Garret. This is not including more mundane recruitment methods, as one HYDRA had infiltrated enough of S.H.I.E.L.D. they could just start quietly phasing out agents that they knew were loyal and replacing them in critical positions with their own personnel. We know from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that Sitwell was responsible for a lot of recruitment and the rosters of Strike teams and tactical squads, and there's a good chance that a lot of the tactical squads experienced abrupt fratricide when HYDRA started to move and the HYDRA agents got the order to wipe out the loyal agents. I'd be willing to bet that for every HYDRA soldier or agent we see in the movie, there's a couple of loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or soldiers that were killed without warning, which makes it seem like they have a lot more manpower.
  • How do real-world horrible ideologies find so many devoted followers? In any sufficiently large population, you're going to find a finite amount of total shits.
  • Former Nazis were employed in secret by the FBI, CIA, and S.H.I.E.L.D., as Natasha mentions. It's possible Zola's means of reforming HYDRA was to recruit old ex-Nazi friends of his who shared HYDRA's ideals.

Shouldn't they have filtered the information?

• Okay, so putting all of the information online is the best way to take down HYDRA, even if it means sacrificing S.H.I.E.L.D. But why not filter it a little? We know that Natasha, Fury, Steve, Hill, and the majority of Coulson's team in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. honestly believed that they were working towards the goals that S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be working toward — protecting people. Shouldn't they have at least filtered out the deep cover agents who were currently working and any agents in hiding from people they had gone after? Those people would probably be sitting ducks who would be completely unaware of anything going down with HYDRA, and Natasha, Fury, Steve, and Hill are just setting them up to be found and murdered. That seems very strange, especially when Natasha's exact goal is to wipe the red from her ledger. How many innocent agents are going to be murdered as a direct result of their actions?
  • If we assume they didn't act like complete morons when releasing the S.H.I.E.L.D. data, cover identities and other things that could get S.H.I.E.L.D. agents killed would have been filtered.
  • If nothing else, it could have been done in stages. First comes all the outdated info, with a warning to active agents that the rest is coming in a few hours or days and to get out of there.
  • Also, HOW do you think they could filtered such massive information in such a short time? Thinking it from the audiences' pov is easy, but in-universe? NO! If Alexander Pierce and Jasper Sitwell can be dirty, then freaking Hawkeye can be the Winter Soldier version02 and Iron Man can be responsible for writing the Insight AI.
  • They could have just not released the sections on undercover operations and then they could have gone to hunt down the different people who are undercover and find out whether they were loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. or to HYDRA.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. at that point was too far gone to save. The only way to completely root out HYDRA influence was to expose everything.
  • So any and all loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who get shot because of this are just acceptable losses? Personally, I hope Natasha gets this thrown back in her face in a future movie. Preferably by someone on her side.
  • Not necessarily. I've seen this suggested before, but here's something people keep forgetting: Standard protocol for deep undercover assets (as in long-term ones, not ones going undercover for a quick mission) tends to include erasing their identities prior, including deleting all files on them, just in case their files get leaked and in the hands of those they're going undercover of. Everything about the agents undercover would no longer be on record, and the only people who'll know of their existence would be their handler, and all record of their mission would be kept in the form of a journal rather than a data file. While they leaked everything that was on file, all the undercover assets would still have their identities.
  • On the issue of Coulson's team, this is addressed in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. when Coulson erases his team's identities from the S.H.I.E.L.D. database.
  • In Civil War, Zemo mentions that while Natasha dumped all the files onto the internet, only a skilled operative like himself could decrypt the files.

The world is stabilizing, not falling apart.

• The lynchpin of HYDRA's plan was to make the world so chaotic that people would be willing to accept their extreme agenda. The problem with this is that human history was far more hectic in the time before Hydra existed. The disasters encountered in the modern age are minor annoyances when compared to the fall of Rome, the dark ages, the great crusades, or the Black Death. In spite of all the controversy and hardships we face today, mankind is more tolerant, safe, and lacking in paranoia than ever before. The world is becoming MORE stable, not less.
  • You're thinking of the real world... Not the Marvel Universe, which has already had to deal with at least two separate alien invasions, multiple giant mutated monsters, terrorists with futuristic technology, shady businessmen with robot armies, vengeful gods, and all sorts of other bizarre threats in the past few years alone. HYDRA should have no problem feeding off and adding to the paranoia created by these insane, and often unexplainable events.
  • ....and? HYDRA's destabilization plot became active post-World War II, when the world was at its most unstable point politically.
  • This was literally the entire point. HYDRA stated with this, as pointed out, right after WW2. The world is more stable because their plan is working. They are getting the control, the slow surrendering of freedoms, etc. Insight was the culmination of that.
  • This explanation is what was presented in the movie. HYDRA creates a disturbance (chaos) and then offer a solution (order) that comes at a price (freedom). So, while the world may be as ordered as it has been in a long time, that order was manufactured by HYDRA
  • Just to elaborate on this a little, people get very comfortable with things and get antsy when things try to change. While the present day world doesn't have the all-encompassing conflicts and major (human-made) disasters that were seemingly prevalent in the mid-twentieth century, there are a lot more creature comforts in the First World than there were before. Think of Steve's words at the beginning of the movie: "Food's better. We used to boil everything. And the Internet!" And we're all used to that. Imagine if it was taken away, or even just threatened. Hydra has been subtly manipulating things so that, while overall stability is increasing, regional instability is actually more threatening to the average way of life, rather than less threatening, and the rapid/instant transmission of data and news around the world only serves to increase anxiety. It used to be that things that happened in Europe were interesting but did not really impact US citizens personally, and if they did hear about them, it was days later. Now, we hear about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine every day, and how that could erupt into global catastrophe. It's not hard at all to play on that angle.

S.H.I.E.L.D. being disbanded

• The World Security Council has decided that S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to go. But it was the world's first and foremost defense against aliens of outer-space who are now aware of earth. Who is going to take over that job now? NATO?
  • Remember, the Widow made public everything about S.H.I.E.L.D. Every dirty secret, every case where they may have gone too far, every exotic WMD, and even the real identities of their agents. It's less about letting S.H.I.E.L.D. go, and more of a black ops agency that depends of secrecy, being impossible to be kept running after such a move.
  • They've got other national agencies to pick up the slack. As for alien threats, they've got the Avengers, as well as all the other emerging heroes to help on that front. Plus S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't totally gone. Some are still operating under the radar like Fury, Coulson's team and a few other facilities that managed to resist being taken by Hydra.
  • They'll just rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. from the ground up. If HYDRA rose from the ashes, so can S.H.I.E.L.D.
  • If you've seen the finale for Season 1 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., you'll know that this this is pretty much what Coulson and his team have been tasked with, now with Phil as the head of the remains of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Natasha vs. Pierce

• Why didn't Natasha just shrug off the coat with the death-pin on it? It seems pretty obvious that she can kill a man in under four seconds; removing a coat doesn't seem more difficult.
  • The coat was buttoned, and Pierce's finger was hovering over the button. She ran the numbers and didn't like her chances of being faster than him on the draw... but electricity is always faster than a human finger. So she shocked herself and the pin.
  • Now, why did he start with detonating the pins on the two non-threat ambassadors? He completely had the drop on Natasha, and she was the only one in the room that was both an immediate threat and wearing a pin. Start with her, kill the other two at leisure—or at the very least, set off all the pins at once. But no...
  • Seriously? Did you forget that Fury was armed and the only thing keeping him from shooting Pierce was the fact that he had the pin ready to detonate?
  • Because Fury cared enough about Natasha that she was useful as a hostage—uncertain for the other two—and killing them made a good demonstration of what would happen to Nat if Fury didn't do what Pierce said.

Missing the Pin

• Follow-up question when did Natasha become so ignorant that she didn't realize the pin was a death-trap? I personally would have yanked the pin off my coat the instant I dropped my disguise.
  • This is one of those "hindsight is 20/20" cases.

"I want Iron Man at my niece's birthday party."

• Wait, what? Tony blew up all his suits and moved on. Iron Man isn't really a thing anymore. In fact, considering the fact that Cap 2 takes place a whopping two years after the Battle of New York, Iron Man hasn't been a thing for at least...what, a year and a half now? Shouldn't Pierce know about that? I mean, Tony Stark still exists, and the movie shows that he's still doing work for S.H.I.E.L.D., but somehow, I don't get the feeling a bunch of kids would be that interested in a fairly ordinary human inventor. Or if this is supposed to be an indication that Tony's actually taken up being a hero again, why reveal that in a throwaway line in a completely separate movie?
  • From what I gather Tony moved on from a few things, but he didn't move on from being Iron Man. He removed the arc reactor from his chest and blew up his fancy armors, he says something to the effect of "I will always be Iron Man.". My understanding is that he'll stop relying on the armors and spending his entire existence consumed by the burden of Iron Man (like he was in the second and third movies), but will still wear the suit to fight.
  • Between this and the few hints in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that Iron Man is still around, and it seems they're just throwing in nods that he hasn't totally quit. Tony just doesn't build Armors 24/7 now while being an emotional wreck. In fact if you look closely you see in this very film that Tony's not only at Stark Tower during the finale, but it's been changed to Avengers Tower with the Avengers stylized "A" on it now. And we know he'll be Avengers 2 and 3. So yeah, Iron Man's still around in some capacity.
  • If by "fairly normal human inventor" you mean "the man who invented iron Man, is the CEO of one of the most powerful advanced technology corporations int he world and is also the savior of New York City who nuked an entire invading alien army" then yeah, you'd be pretty accurate on that assessment. Even without the Iron Man armor Tony Stark is kind of a big deal.
  • Tell all that to a little girl expecting to see a human-sized action figure. She will cry "BOOOORING!!!!"
  • For what it's worth, we're only assuming 77 year old Pierce's niece is a little girl. She may well be 40 and interested in meeting Tony Stark, possibly aware of his escapades with women such as with Christine Everhart.
  • That fits nicely with Pierce's line "and not just a flyby, [Iron Man]'s gotta mingle".
  • Tony can go back to being Ironman whenever he wants, him blowing up the armors at the end of IM3 was purely symbolic and is not by any means a definitive thing. Remember, it took for the automated process in the first film just scant hours to put up a new armor, and Tony most likely has streamlined it a lot more since then.
  • Agreed. We saw the suits get destroyed - NOT the blueprints or the manufacturing facilities.
  • Also, remember what JARVIS called destroying all the suits? The Clean Slate protocol. As in start from scratch, not end the program.
  • This is also assuming that Pierce even has a niece, and all that he said wasn't just part of a grand deception to his close friend about his life. It's not really unprecedented, Ward's real personality in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is not even close to the persona he had put on as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, so Pierce probably lied to Fury for years and likely doesn't even have a niece. He also wouldn't care whether or not Tony Stark is still Iron Man, because HYDRA plans on killing him and 20 million others in a few days anyway.
  • Age of Ultron confirms that yes, Iron Man is definitely still a thing.

Combat

• Shouldn't Black Widow's garrote have torn Winter Soldier's flesh fingers off? The mono-wire metal garrote she's using is designed for cutting the jugular vein rather than strangling.
  • Armor on his hands? Or the garrote is not used to cut the jugular considering it's depiction in past movies (Iron Man 2 for instance, where she basically suspends a guy from the roof, or the fight where there's no bloodshed).
  • Even if it was designed to cut rather than to strangle, the Winter Soldier is a super soldier with blatantly superhuman strength and toughness on par with Cap. Widow is ostensibly, a normal human being, though certainly one more competent than real world humans. Winter Soldier and Cap are nowhere even close to normal human beings in terms of stats. There's only so much leverage can do against vastly superior strength and toughness when skill levels are so similar.

How deep is Zola's bunker?

• Zola's underground chamber seems to go at least five stories deep into the ground. Yet when the missile blows the place up, the resulting crater doesn't appear to be more than a dozen or so feet deep.
  • The United States military has developed "BLU-118/B" thermobaric missiles that can kill targets buried as deep as 1,100 feet.
  • That's nice and all, but what I'm trying to point out is that there seems to be an inconsistency in terms of how deep the bunker is. The elevator that Cap and Natasha take into the bunker appears to go at least five stories deep. Yet after bunker is blown up and Rumlow goes into the crater to investigate, it doesn't look more than twenty feet deep.
  • We also don't see how LARGE the CRATER is... We only see bits of the wreckage, there's likely a LOT more, and we're just seeing the area of that sub-basement room. We don't get any wide shots there, just mid-range ones.

HYDRA's plan after the massacre

• A government, no matter how powerful, needs the will of the people to rule. The technical term for this is Legitimacy, but it boils down to the fact that all governments and armies, (especially high-tech armies,) requiring civilian support to continue functioning. Even a tyranny will collapse if the citizens who produce food decide to stop feeding the soldiers. My point is, even if Hydra’s plan had worked, and the high-profile targets were eliminated, Hydra would then be stuck trying to control a massive population that hates their guts. (You couldn’t kill everybody; you would either be left with nothing to control, or eventually run out of ammo.)
  • The population would obey out of fear of HYDRA, and because the plan would create a peaceful world where people would be safer. It's basically Nazi Germany writ large, except instead of genocide along racial lines, it's carefully planned genocide based on who is too dangerous to let live. Also note that the helicarriers weren't going to fire once and be done with it; they were going to keep running that algorithm and keep finding and killing anyone who would be a threat until there were no threats left.
  • The brutal destruction of current threats has a tendency to just create new threats that didn't exist before. All their targets probably had friends and family willing to avenge them, and even complete strangers would be outraged at the murder of so many people. Hydra may have destroyed the potential ringleaders, but they would have had resistance from virtually the entire population.
  • Also, even if you managed subdued the population, how would you get them to enact your mandate? Laws need to be enforced, and as powerful as three helicarriers are, they can't be everywhere at once, and have finite ammunition. With so much hatred directed at HYDRA, and with such a massive population to oversee, HYDRA would have had a tough time keeping whatever control they gained.
  • It doesn't matter if they can't be everywhere and have limited ammunition. They only need to have enough ammunition and be able to get to whatever place in a timely manner to do their jobs. Remember, these things can track by DNA and are pinpoint accurate. I think you're underestimating just how much of a threat they are. The vast majority of people are going to be cowed by orbiting death vessels which could pick them off at a moment's notice, and HYDRA only needs to maintain the barest of supply lines to keep those things running pretty much forever. It's very likely most major governments would immediately acquiesce to spare their populations, and whatever resistance that popped up would not be beyond their ability to eliminate.
  • Of course that HYDRA can create a stable dictatorship. Big Brother did so with just mass surveillance, "thought police" and other simple tricks; The Party never had a giant orbital machine gun in the sky ready to kill all thought criminals.
  • HYDRA thinks it's working for the good of mankind; they probably think that everyone else will soon see what a good job they're doing keeping order and accept them as their leaders. It's possible someone could organize an effective resistance without HYDRA noticing or even considering that one would exist, they are pretty full of themselves.
  • That's the purpose of Zola's algorithm. Anyone with the political office (the president), the popularity (Tony Stark), the resources (Nick Fury) or the skills (a random student) to be a potential leader or threat is killed in advance. The dark version of Fury's "We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen."
  • Hey, wait a second. Who would know about the origin of the attack? They simply have to kill all the non-aligned people aware of the project. Then, it could be easy for HYDRA/S.H.I.E.L.D. to blame some random straw alien terrorist threat for the attack, and show that the new "Project Insight" will be able to deal with it and avenge all those people who have been murdered. And so, the survivors would gladly support them, and willingly give up their freedom for their protection. It sounds diabolical, but it would work. A similar idea worked in Watchmen and in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
  • If you think it's impossible to rule a large number of people via fear, then answer me this: How exactly did Hitler and the Nazis manage to control Germany? HYDRA works a lot like that, just on a larger scale. (I'm not saying it would necessarily work IRL, but I understand the idea of it.)
  • I think HYDRA's mission could work in the short term, but the brutal murder of 20 million people would likely provoke the population to rise up against HYDRA. Not immediately mind you, Project Insight likely would cow the masses for a time, and even the inevitable revolts against HYDRA would likely end with the helicarriers destroying them as well. However since HYDRA would likely be focusing so much on such a massive internal threat, they would likely be caught off guard by another alien invasion. They might be able to win, they might not, but in the end it doesn't really matter what Hydra's plan is for the aftermath. Whether or not HYDRA works in the long run is irrelevant, Fury and Cap want to ensure that the massacre doesn't happen, they aren't thinking "why bother, Hydra's plan is going to fail regardless," they want to ensure that it will won't happen at all.
  • Or maybe HYDRA's plan was never actually intended to succeed, because even Pierce was being played for a sucker by the Zola-AI, all along. Remember that Zola'd been a self-serving sociopathic little toady in his Nazi days, who'd colluded to nuke dozens of cities including Germany's own: he didn't have a nanogram of genuine loyalty in his body. And the Zola-computer received its sentience via Brain Uploading when he was a bitter, dying old man. Who says the AI didn't intentionally design the algorithm knowing that the survivors of the first attack wouldn't stand for being dominated, thus forcing the helicarriers to wipe out million after million after million, ad infinitum? Probably including HYDRA's own assets, in keeping with the nuke-targeting of Berlin? Zola may have set up Pierce and all his wannabe-jackboot minions to engineer the complete annihilation of all humanity, figuring if he had to die himself, he may as well take the whole world down with him.
  • Guys, why would anyone have a problem with Hydra after the attack? Those aren't Hydra's helicarriers, they are S.H.I.E.L.D.'s, who has clearly gone utterly insane and is murdering large sections of the population. Luckily, it turns out an old enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D. is here to save us...
• Couldn't the U.S, France, U.K, China, and Russia be able to nuke the helicarriers out of the sky after the attack?

Untraceable bullets

• "Soviet slug, no rifling, completely untraceable". Shouldn't that be a very big clue in and of itself? The production values required to produce such a slug, or the machinery required, would, for anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D. down through a local police force, narrow down the list of candidates to a dozen or so, if that. Sure, HYDRA will probably sabotage the search, but they didn't even try?
  • Traceable, in this case, is narrowing down the bullet to a specific weapon being fired. Presumably, the first few assassinations were truly untraceable, before it became apparent that this was the Winter Soldier's MO.
  • The rifling on the bullet comes from being forced through the rifled barrel of a gun, not from the bullet manufacturing process, so a slug with "no rifling" presumably came from a smoothbore gun. Even if that information was enough to track down the manufacturer of the gun, it won't necessarily lead to the person who is currently in possession of the weapon. However, the "no rifling" feature does lead to another headscratcher—rifling in the barrel of a gun serves to stabilize the bullet (by giving it a controlled spin) and improve accuracy. If the goal is simply to avoid the bullet being traced back to the Winter Soldier and his handlers, wouldn't it be more productive to either keep the Winter Soldier's gun hidden along with the Winter Soldier himself or to destroy and replace each gun after it's used, rather than sacrificing accuracy by using a smoothbore gun?
  • Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about^note I know how the scratches on the bullet come from the gun and not the machine press, but thanks anyway. The ability to create a smoothbore weapon of such superb quality should be able to narrow down your search considerably. The fact that the slugs would be necessarily be tailor-made for that exact amazing weapon should just be sending up more red flags; this isn't some factory-produced cartridge, these are basically hand-crafted by a billionaire, like an Iron Man suit.
  • It would be simpler, and much more untraceable, to just use regular bullets and replace the rifled barrel after each kill.
  • Obviously the point of the Winter Soldier isn't just to be untraceable, but also to be larger than life. The bullet is a calling card and at the same time untraceable. There are better ways to make it untraceable, of course, but then it's just some random guy and not a ghost.
  • To top it all off, if these bullets are supposedly untraceable, how does anyone know they're Soviet in origin?
  • Your typical forensics lab of the kind that most police forces uses does so by analyzing the metal content — different lots of ammunition have slightly different metallic compositions, to the point where you can identify not only individual manufacturers but (with sufficient precision) individual production runs. The 'untraceable' part is that its impossible to trace the bullet back to which specific weapon it was fired from, not that its impossible to know it was a bullet.
  • Natasha is a former Soviet assassin. If anyone on S.H.I.E.L.D. were to know those bullets were Soviet-made, it'd be her. She may have even used them herself before she reformed.

What happened to the first Helicarrier from "The Avengers"?

• Where was it when all this was going on? Did it get decommissioned after the events of "The Avengers" or something?
  • The function of the original Helicarrier seems to be analogous to that of the National Emergency Airborne Command Post — its intended to function as a backup command center during time of war, one that can conceal itself and move around so it is less vulnerable to enemy attack. Ergo, the one place it will never be is in the same location as S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters — i.e., in and around where the movie was taking place.
  • That doesn't explain why Shield's coolest vehicle wasn't even mentioned in the movie. Hell, the Insight helicarriers were a pretty big part of the film, and they drug to mind the original. Wouldn't the original be able to fight the Insight carriers? Or provide some sort of tactical support? Or even get mentioned?!?
  • Seeing as the original had old HYDRA WWII tech stored onboard, it's plausible that it had HYDRA folk within its crew.
  • Age of Ultron has since answered this: it was decommissioned, either before or after S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded. Fury later manages to get it flying again, with Coulson's help.

The Councilwoman's current status.

• Is it safe to assume that the Councilwoman who the Black Widow disguises herself as is still alive at the end of the movie?
  • I think the director or someone said she is.
  • It was confirmed in a tie-in comic, Black Widow Prelude, that she is alive.

Sharon and the CIA

• Sharon is a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent. S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated and compromised by HYDRA. According to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., S.H.I.E.L.D. has been branded a terrorist organization, with its members being hunted down, questioned, and at times, detained. Maria Hill just manages to stay a free woman by informing for the government, and even then she is mistrusted and has an FBI detail watching her at all times. So how does Sharon manage not only to avoid all that but get a job with the CIA as well?
  • It stands to reason that not every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is going to be arrested and detained. They're going after the team in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because, despite S.H.I.E.L.D. being disbanded, they are still actively proclaiming to be S.H.I.E.L.D. I.e., they're actively being members of an organization branded as terrorist. People like Sharon—low on the totem pole, and who willingly left S.H.I.E.L.D. and are no longer professing to be part of it—are going to be valuable for other intelligence and enforcement agencies.
  • Hill has renounced S.H.I.E.L.D., and was instrumental in its downfall as well. Yet she remains under suspicion. That Sharon was lower in the pecking order doesn't explain why she'd be more reliable, as HYDRA had sleepers on all levels.
  • Two points. One, Maria remains 'under suspicion' from Tony Stark, who was already suspecting everything connected with S.H.I.E.L.D. several movies ago. Two, the unofficial motto of the CIA's counterintelligence division is "In God We Trust - All Others We Polygraph", so her being given a job interview on a lie detector machine is not incompatible with her being hirable by the CIA if she'd chosen to apply.
  • Hill remains under suspicion from the FBI. It is they are who are tailing her. Stark is actually employing her, and providing her with a veritable army of the top defense lawyers.
  • Maybe the CIA just feels really confident about its ability to spot double agents. The thinking might be "S.H.I.E.L.D. was massively infiltrated by HYDRA, but we've never had that sort of problem. We're better at this than they are (and we've double checked and know that we definitely do not have any HYDRA double-agents working for us)." So they'd be willing to accept former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, so long as they passed the vetting process. (And don't forget, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are the sorts of people who have lots of skills that the CIA cares about.)
  • Or maybe Sharon was on the Insight kill list that the Black Widow publicly dumped on the Internet as part of the massive transparency thing, and the CIA went 'Well, HYDRA probably didn't list themselves on the kill list.'
  • Again, Maria definitely was on the kill list.
  • This would also explain why Hill trusted Tony Stark, when any big name associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. would be suspect; his name was on the kill list too.
  • Erm, the obvious answer here is that Maria Hill was literally second in command and thus the highest ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. member (known to be) alive, so obviously would be watched for a bit. Whereas Sharon Carter is a random agent. (Ignoring her ancestory, but if anything, that should make her less suspicious.)

Nick Fury & Star Wars

• Steve has Star Wars on his list. Samuel L. Jackson is in Star Wars. What is the Captain going to think when he sees his boss play Mace Windu in the movies?
  • It's a Celebrity Paradox. Oh, and he'd be commenting about how Thor's mortal girlfriend Jane looks a lot like Padme Amidala...
  • The very reason why Samuel L. Jackson is playing Nick Fury is because he saw a comic where Ultimate Nick Fury says in a movie he would want to be played by SMJ. That means SMJ and Nick Fury exist in the Ultimate universe and look identical. Therefore it's a plausible guess that the same holds true for the MCU.
  • This is beside the point, but for the record, that's not precisely true. They got the rights to Jackson's image when they were first designing Ultimate Fury in exchange for giving Jackson first dibs on playing him if they ever made a movie. That's why that whole conversation about who would play who in a movie exists — it's a nod at the fourth wall acknowledging the real-life circumstances behind Ultimate Fury's creation. Jackson didn't just happen to see that comic and roll with it.
  • Not according to Wikipedia.
    "When the character resurfaced in 2002 in The Ultimates, he had been redesigned to look like actor Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson did not originally give his consent for Marvel Comics to use his likeness in their redesign of the Fury character for The Ultimates, and first appeared with this revised look in The Ultimates #1, as drawn by Bryan Hitch. The similarity is even noted within the comic itself, in a scene in which the Ultimates discuss who they think should play each of them in a hypothetical movie about the team. Fury's answer for himself is "Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, of course, no discussion." It was only after seeing the redesigned Nick Fury in the first issue of The Ultimates that Samuel L. Jackson learned of the use of his likeness and contacted Marvel in order to secure the role of Nick Fury in any future movies which will feature the character."
  • ...or the movies in this universe could have slightly different casts? ...or TOTALLY different casts? It's a different universe, people.
  • In the MCU, he's played by Laurence Fishburne.
    • Who, we now know, looks strangely like Bill Foster...
  • It actually appears he may be vacillating between Star Wars or Star Trek, based on the light strikethrough he's drawn through the former. Soon, he'll have to reconcile why the villainous Khan looks just like the man claiming to be the Sorcerer Supreme.
  • Samuel L Jackson only appears in the prequel trilogy. Maybe, in the MCU, the only Star Wars movies that exist are the originals. Similarly with Star Trek.

Smithsonian exhibit

• After all the AvengersMania after the Battle for Manhattan, how does the Smithsonian not know Steve is alive? And the kid who recognizes Steve is acting as if he's seeing his hero, not as if he's seeing someone back from the dead. I'm sure that Cap's banner lists his dates as 1918-1945, just as Bucky's banner gives his dates as 1917-1944? Is this some of the footage that was filmed for Avengers and not used there? And if so, couldn't they have done a CGI correction?
  • Do they know that Steve is alive? They know that a man sporting the Captain America uniform (which includes a mask) took part in the battle of New York, alongside other super heroes. Captain America was the result of a military experiment. Rather than think that Steve is back from the dead, it may be more realistic for the public to believe that the experiment was finally successfully replicated, and that the modern Captain America is some Legacy Character of the original one.
  • They know Steve's alive. Part of the exhibit discusses him coming back, and there's a quote on the wall from President Ellis proclaiming "Welcome back, Captain."
  • One of the voiceovers also mentions that Bucky was the only one of the Howling Commandos to give his life in service to his country.
  • The simplest and most likely answer is that the Smithsonian have had an exhibit to Captain America and the Howling Commandos since the 50s, which stood largely unchanged in basic information for the last 60 years and just hasn't been brought fully up to date since the attack in Manhattan revealed that Rogers was alive.
  • An even simpler answer is that Sam, a retired Airman who probably doesn't have that kind of security clearance, easily recognizes Steve as Captain America, even knowing the name "Steve Rogers", so it would appear the public knows.
  • The banner at the museum wasn't giving the dates of Rogers' birth and presumed death, it was giving the dates of the era of his life that their displays addressed. His more-recent exploits are probably still too new and/or classified to feature in a museum, but his history up to 1945 is documented fact, and of great interest to the public in the wake of The Avengers.
  • The real question is, why is Cap's exhibit in the Air and Space Museum when the Commandoes largely did ground operations?
  • The Doylist reason is because the Smithsonian was going through some refitting at the time and thus the Air and Space museum was the spot most available for filming at the time. The Fridge page has some ideas, such this entry:
  First, the National Air & Space Museum does cover everything aeronautical and astronautical — but a decent portion of its exhibit space is devoted to World War I and II aeronautics, both the European and Pacific theater (the former of which Cap and the Commandos served in, and presumably would have been mentioned in them). Second, there are usually at least one or two empty galleries in the Air and Space Museum that are used for rotating exhibits (it has a very open floor plan and central corridor, and routinely handles the largest crowds on the Mall). And third (and most important), the National Museum of American History was in the middle of a full-building renovation, having started in 2002, with its second phase starting in 2012, way before filming started for Winter Soldier. In the MCU, one assumes they're refitting the space to accommodate a new Captain America/Howling Commandos gallery, and the one in Air and Space is the temporary exhibit.
  • Cap's original career ended when he crashed an experimental Stupid Jetpack Hitler "flying wing" bomber into the Arctic sea. If that's not enough of an aeronautical-history reference to shoehorn him into the museum's purview, what would be?

Targets of Project Insight

• Project Insight uses Zola's algorithms to determine whether anyone is a potential threat and thus liable for extermination based on their online data. However, how would the weapon determine targets if they don't use technology? For example, the Amish don't use technology in their day-to-day lives unless absolutely necessary. Would they still get information accurate to determine their threat level? Additionally, Insight is willing to go so far as eliminate a student with high test scores on the possibility that he will once day become a credible threat. However, wouldn't it be more fruitful if they just took this potential threat and indoctrinated him into the Hydra philosophy and have him become part of the organization where he can apply his skills where they want him. Even if he doesn't have the personality for that kind of thing, can't they just covertly deny him access to anything that would make him a threat in the first place, like diverting internet access, controlling street lights so he doesn't get to work on time, or sent in operatives in disguise to divert him from rebel groups? Or heck just throw him in prison! Something more practical than EXTERMINATE!
  • For ones without a large enough digital footprint (like the Amish), the plan is probably to supplement the algorithm with boots on the ground. The Amish aren't exactly known for organizing rebellions anyway, so that's more an imperceptible blip than a problem. As for the latter, you need to remember that "[kill] the high-school valedictorian" was a flippant remark from a mid-level operative. The algorithm doesn't just see "Oh, this kid is smart, they need to be killed." It collates the data, their Facebook posts, e-mails, and internet history, and decides if this individual is A: Likely to work against HYDRA even after the slaughter and B: Likely to be a threat (either as a leader, a scientist, or a superhero). Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows us that HYDRA is in fact willing to forcibly recruit scientists who could be useful; it's only the ones who are more trouble than they're worth, like Stark and Strange, who are on the initial kill list.

How'd they know so fast?

• Within literally minutes of Sitwell blabbing about HYDRA, Bucky is dispatched and somehow finds them in the middle of the highway to eliminate him. How could they possibly have known he'd sold HYDRA out and dispatched WS so quickly? I know Bucky's good, but unless he had been following Cap from the start and spied on their conversation to know Sitwell had blabbed, he couldn't have known, in which case why didn't he just snipe them all like he did Fury?
  • Coincidence. Bucky was already on the way to shoot Rogers and Natasha, and when he saw Sitwell cozying up with the enemy, made the tactical decision to eliminate him. It's not likely that Sitwell was anybody of actual importance, so Bucky could have eliminated him with little protest from his superiors.
  • Sitwell was important though. Aside from being a very high level S.H.I.E.L.D. officer, he was one of the highest ranking HYDRA plants in Shield, aside from Pierce. A Level 8, of which we only know him, Coulson, Rogers, Hand, and Blake and only he was HYDRA out of that group. He was in charge of the Lumarian Star, initially leading the hunt for Rogers and Natasha, knew the entire Insight plan, and seemed to take orders directly from Pierce. In fact he had direct access to the Insight Carriers. So yeah he should really be someone that Bucky would need to check to kill, which shouldn't have processed that fast.
  • It may not have mattered. HYDRA is the kind of organization that had and might still have a policy of "die before giving up information," so Bucky may have just been making sure he didn't spill any info. Or any more, in this case. Remember that the guy who stole the serum in First Avenger bit a cyanide capsule when Rogers caught him. Same thing applies here.
  • If Bucky heard Sitwell giving up information on HYDRA, he might well default to standing orders: 'execute all traitors before they can talk'.
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, Bucky might actually have had no idea that Sitwell was HYDRA at all (information on top level moles is generally kept compartmentalized), and so he killed Sitwell because he thought he was Rogers and Natasha's ally and so thought it would be tactically advantageous to turn three-on-one odds into two-on-one odds with his first surprise attack. And of course, out of those three Sitwell is the only one who can be casually killed in one move; throwing Rogers out of a speeding car will just piss him off, and while Natasha is more vulnerable she also has a nonzero chance of being able to grapple something and roll to a reasonably intact landing, at which point she'll just carjack the next vehicle to pass her and come back to ram it into you a minute later.
  • I always assumed they had a tracker/microphone in his pin, the one Stern notices, either so they could listen in on Stern, implied to be a relatively new member, or because Sitwell has a history of being a little to talkative.
  • The Winter Soldier probably had standing orders to eliminate any HYDRA asset who'd been exposed as such, before they even had the chance to reveal information. He saw that Cap and Nat were roughing the guy up and drew the logical conclusion that Sitwell's cover was blown, so would've taken him out even if the man had kept his mouth shut. Indeed, Sitwell himself said "He'll kill me" as soon as he realized he'd been pegged as a HYDRA mole.
  • As well, Sitwell asked the men with him to get his car ready, then didn't get in. HYDRA already knows that Steve and Natasha are onto them, so an important agent going missing in the city would raise red flags, and there is a good chance they'd have killed him even if he didn't talk, just to be certain.

Suddenly he's a coward?

• When did Sitwell become such a wimp? This is guy that's previously shown to practically have nerves of steel and always be composed. And while its likely this was a rewrite because they needed someone to be the big Hydra mole, this doesn't explain why earlier in this same movie Sitwell was as composed as he usually was when he was the only one of the hostages to look more bored or annoyed than worried, and snarked as his captors as they were attacked. Yet once outed as a HYDRA man he's screaming like a little girl and begging on the ground. It's even implied that he's following Hydra out of fear of them winning rather than being a true believer because he caves and starts blabbing to save himself, where as many Hydra loyalists are perfectly willing to die for the cause. His characterization isn't consistent, even in this very film.
  • The fact that he isn't acting the coward until he's rooted out actually makes more sense than if he'd remained stoic. He hadn't been exposed by any old loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he was found out by Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff. Not only are they both smarter and tougher than him, Sitwell probably knew that Nat was loyal to Fury above all else, and if anybody had a reason to harbor a grudge against HYDRA, it would be Steve. If I was in his shoes, they'd have been filled with piss.
  • Further, he wasn't acting cowardly until after Cap had roughed him up and hauled him to the top of a skyscraper; he had gotten a very good picture of just how screwed he was.
  • Even then, he was keeping up the tough guy act. It wasn't until Natasha actually kicked him off the roof that he was pissing himself. Afterwards, in the car, he was afraid for his life because he knew Pierce was going to have him killed, and of course, Bucky then grabs him and throws him into the path of an oncoming truck.
  • ^Exactly; right until Sitwell is kicked off the top of a very high building, he's still fairly calm no matter what... and like many near-death experiences, adrenaline and sheer relief that you're alive can really shake you up. And then of course, the worry that since he'd given up secrets, he was next on the kill list; even the most calm people can crack under such situations.
  • His composure on the ship at the beginning of the movie can also be explained that he knew that Steve and company were going to show up so it's easy to put on an air of confidence if you're pretty sure you know how it was going to play out.

"You need us."

• Precisely who is the 'us' that Natasha refers to at her hearing? Can't be S.H.I.E.L.D., because it is gone, and there's nothing to tell us that Natasha is aware Coulson is rebuilding the organization, or that Coulson has even gotten started.
  • That "us" is superheroes in general.
  • Why would superheroes be threatened with jail time?
  • Remember what happened to the Abomination? Think of it not as "superheroes", think of it as "potential threats". Natasha said all of them were considered as such by S.H.I.E.L.D. anyways, just in terms of contingency planning.
  • There are countless possible reasons that may lead to that, but you can read Civil War for some basic ideas.
  • Most likely she was referring to specifically herself, Steve, Sam, and Maria (and likely the thousands of good S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who helped stop Insight). Going by what she said, she's saying how her and the others took down the corrupted S.H.I.E.L.D. that, while corrupt, did serve the purpose of keeping the world safe. With it gone, partially thanks to her, there's going to be some issues that she and the others will need to take care of. But, she's saying that they will need her and Steve and co in order to take care of those issues.

"It's trending."

• By my understanding of bandwidth, latency, and the speed at which the human eyes and brain process information, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s archive of their own dirty secrets hadn't actually reached Twitter yet when Black Widow claimed it had started trending.
  • There was a lot of information. The first bits of it could have had time to go viral while the tail end was still uploading.
  • Simpler answer: Nat was being a smartass.
  • At this point, over the course of about two days, there have been several highly visible shootouts in DC in broad daylight (one of which involved Captain America), an assassination of a national security figure, a cruise missile attack on US soil, and suddenly helicarriers rising out of the Potomac - and probably people inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. building calling or tweeting or telling the world about HYDRA. It was probably trending even before the full leak.

Asgard and Insight

• So, the whole plan was to eliminate any potential threats, correct? That definitely includes Jane Foster, and may or may not include Thor if they are aware he is on Midgard. Now, disregarding if it would kill him or not, it would certainly kill Jane, and even if Thor was still in Asgard all it would take would be Thor asking Heimdall to check up on the woman he loves for him to realize something has gone terribly wrong. And even if it did kill him, he is still prince of Asgard. Him dying would kind of be an act of war, and he could almost certainly convince Odin and the rest to declare war should Jane have died. In short, if the plan had succeeded the threat immediately after would not have been rebellions, but an invasion by Asgard. Who, need I remind you, seem to have tech that make all but the highest tier Tesseract and Chitauri stuff look like firecrackers. I'm beginning to think that Asgard wasn't even considered during the planning stages, because if it had been it would have been blindingly obvious how doomed the plan was from the start.
  • Actually, the Asgardians being a potential problem and how to deal with it is the plot of The Avengers. Nick Fury, who is not part of Hydra, realized it, so it's not hard to think that Hydra may have thought about it as well. As for what to actually do, Asgardians may be "gods", but they are not living deus ex machinas. Humans Are Warriors, and can defeat anyone if they go Crazy-Prepared for the conflict. There would be two main differences between earth just before the Chitauri invasion, and Earth after an Hydra victory and just before an Asgardian invasion. One, the new helicarriers. They were made to counter a new alien invasion, and had a secret plot to be used to kill political dissidents; but that doesn't mean that the original purpose was not addressed. You may say that Asgardians are tough and won't be killed so easily, but there comes the second difference: that history teacher who was actually an Asgardian, and the Berserker Staff (and the Clairvoyant's pet had met the first one, and retrieved the second). We have seen that a mere human being wearing the Staff can inflict a mortal wound to an Asgardian, and the Autopsy can surely give more details on their biology and how to kill them more easily. Besides, not being an Infinity Gem but just a mere weapon, it shouldn't be that hard to reverse-engineer it, produce it on industrial levels, and create their own Berserker Army. So, let the Asgardians come, Earth is ready to kill them all as well. HAIL, HYDRA!!
  • Said teacher was an unarmed pacifist who'd been out of practice for a millennium or so. Besides, he showed that Asgardians can heal from mortal wounds pretty easily. Not sure what autopsy you're referring to, as there aren't any dead Asgardians on Earth that we know of. What's more, killing a civilian Asgardian is not at all the same thing as killing an Asgardian warrior, as Lady Sif showed. Agent Ward's plan to kill her involved 'trap her in an indestructible cage and then drop her a couple miles out of a plane.' As for the Berserker staff, it's debatable whether humans can reverse engineer it with current MCU tech. S.H.I.E.L.D. had 70 years to study the Tesseract and got nowhere. They had over a year to study the Destroyer and all they got was a prototype that was nowhere near as effective as the original. Besides, even if HYDRA developed and mass produced the tech to kill Asgardians, the space gods still have several huge advantages. Asgard still has the Bifrost, which means they could dictate when and where battles happen. They've also got Heimdall, who is like the ultimate reconnaissance satellite. And the worst part is that S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA doesn't know much about Asgard. At this point in the MCU, Earth vs Asgard ends poorly for Earth, disregarding the fact that HYDRA would be eliminating a lot of their best hopes against Asgard with Project Insight (Stark, for instance.) As such, it seems likely that they weren't preparing for war with Asgard.
  • That professor may be unarmed and untrained, but he's still an alien. Killing him and making the alien autopsy will give great insight on the alien biology of the Asgardians, and for that purpose a civilian and a warrior are the same (they have the same blood, the same internal organs, etc.) With that valuable info, HYDRA will find out their weaknesses and learn how to kill those aliens more easily. But, before killing this alien, it will be time for an old-fashioned interrogation, to find out about the military strengths and weaknesses of the Asgardians (which includes the Bifrost, Heimdall, etc.) As for weapons, the Tesseract is an Infinity Gem, of course that it can not be reverse-engineered. But the Staff is not, it's just alien technology, and any technology can be studied to its basic principles and then rebuilt. And so, taking advantage of this lone alien that those sentimental fools of Coulson and company left on his own, HYDRA will stand against the alien threat and kill them as well. HAIL, HYDRA!!
  • It is entirely possible HYDRA sent people after Randolph. Randolph, who, while he is a mason, was also a warrior. Any agents HYDRA sent after him likely had their spines mailed back to headquarters with a nice note attached.
  • As the tie-in comic for Thor The Dark World shows, the Asgardians have a massive advantage over HYDRA in one rather important way: They know how to use the Tesseract effectively as they used it to rebuild the Bifrost. They have an Infinity stone, HYDRA does not, plus HYDRA is basically killing anyone who could stand up to the Asgardians, so really, if Asgard decided to invade Earth, HYDRA would be annihilated.
  • Judging by his interrogation scene in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., he's not going to give anything up. Anyways, he was a common mason who became a foot soldier, then left Asgard for good a thousand years ago. Any information he's got isn't going to be very extensive and will be a thousand years out of date. Also, if he has any warning or suspicion at all they're coming for him, say in the event of an actual invasion, he's going to disappear again, create a new life for himself, the same way he's been doing for the last thousand years.
  • Hel, here's a thought: HYDRA is an offshoot of the Third Reich, which tentatively associated with Norse paganism. Back in First Avenger, Johann Schmidt seems to have studied Norse mythology in some depth, going by his knowledge of the Tesseract when he finds it in the church. And people, in general, who haven't personally met Thor (which is mostly everyone, including the majority of S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA) have no idea what motivates him or what his opinions are, or what's the Asgardians' collective "deal". HYDRA might consider the Norse gods to be their allies, not a threat.

Recognizing Bucky

• This one is a bit more nitpicky, but would Cap really recognize Bucky as immediately as he did, with the long hair and beard? At least, as a person who saw First Avenger multiple times, I wouldn't have recognized it as Bucky the moment I saw him.
  • He would. Cap knew Bucky for several years, and he's got perfect photographic memory, which was even a point in the first movie.
  • Also, Bucky didn't have the beard until The Stinger: he was clean-shaven throughout the movie.
  • No, Bucky did have a beard when first unmasked◊. Also, recognizing him could have been easier than it seems. Look at these pictures of Bucky from The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier respectively. The resemblance isn't obvious, but imagine someone you've known your whole life in Bucky's place. It's probably a lot easier for Cap to recognize him than it is for us.
  • That's not a beard, that's three days without shaving.
  • Rogers might recognize Bucky from certain facial characteristics, like his eye color or the shape of his eyebrows.
  • Rogers and Bucky went on numerous missions together, some of which probably involved long periods behind enemy lines without access to niceties like personal grooming supplies. He's surely seen Bucky unshaven before.
  • Maybe you didn't recognize him; he's not your childhood friend, you didn't spend a good year in an active combat zone with him, you didn't lose him traumatically, and you don't have a photographic memory...
  • Come to that, it's a little unbelievable that it took Steve that long to recognize Bucky. We can cut him some slack for the Fury shooting; Bucky was wearing the mask and heavy eye makeup, and Steve saw him from ~50 feet away at best in lighting that was "really" rather worse than it looked to the audience. But the fact that he didn't work it out before the mask came off in the street fight—broad daylight, no eye makeup, and from basically kissing distance at least twice—probably has to be chalked up to the sheer unbelievability of "Holy moly, the Winter Soldier is my dead best friend."
  • Not really — when Cap recognizes Bucky, it's the first time he's actually seen his face clearly. When Bucky shoots Fury, he's wearing the full face mask and goggles. He only loses the goggles during the chase that leads up to the fight, and he only loses the face mask at the end of the fight. So Cap recognizes him the first instant he gets an actual look at his face. Nothing unbelievable about that.
    • It's possible he was thinking "is that... no, couldn't be" the first time around. His reaction to Bucky the next time they meet sort of feels like he already had the idea in his head to me, though the movie keeps that ambiguous.
  • Steve's been seeing nothing but strangers' faces ever since he woke up from the ice. Even people whom he did know in the '40s who are still alive have aged so much, they look more like strangers than his friends. Actually encountering a face from that era which hasn't aged probably lit up his recognition-starved visual cortex like a bolt of lightning.

Color changing Cap shield!

• Captain's shield keeps changing color in the movie. On the ship it's red with dark blue circles. Later when Fury's shot, it regains its white circle. The patterns also change, from two blue circles and one red circle, to two red and one white. So does the Captain just randomly re-paint his shield between missions? Or does he have multiple of them now?
  • Stands to reason he has multiple shields (they must have found more vibranium while Cap was frozen). The first mission involves stealth, so his shield has a muted color scheme (gray, grayish blue, and reddish brown) so that it doesn't stand out in the dark. When he's operating overtly he uses one with brighter colors (the classic red, white, and blue), reflecting his status as an American icon. It actually fits with the film's arc: Rogers uses a muted color palate when working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and getting involved in its intrigue, but when he starts fighting for the virtues he believes in, he starts using the brighter and shield and wears his old WWII uniform with its stars and stripes design.
  • Or they just give it a quick repaint when the mission calls for stealth so that the bright colors don't make him easy to spot. If there were multiple shields, they would have used it at some point against Cap.
  • So it appears the blue-ish shield actually has its own model◊. Interesting...
  • Apparently it was supposed to have the new paint color the entire film but they must have edited it to have the traditional colors in post production, (it had the new colors in sneak footage taken from filming when in the actual film those scenes had the shield colors changed). Only the tanker scene used the new colors. That being said, the shield's paint job gets notably worn in almost all his fights only for it to look fresh later, so obviously Cap repaints it and otherwise maintains the shield.
  • Or: Shield Skins, the stick-on paint job for your tattered shield when you don't have time for repainting between battles.
  • Or: S.H.I.E.L.D. put some kind of coating (like a varnish or something) on the shield to dull its colors and reduce its reflectivity, to make it more suitable for missions that involve an element of stealth. They probably would have preferred to paint it matte black but Rogers would have insisted on the red, white, and blue remaining at least somewhat visible. Over the course of the film, the coating gets worn off and the true colors of Captain America's shield start shining through. So the shield has the same arc as Captain America himself.

S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Tesseract

• Since this movie reveals that Zola joined S.H.I.E.L.D. shortly after its formation, how did it take S.H.I.E.L.D. so long to build Tesseract powered weapons (if The Avengers was any indication, no weapons had even made it past the drawing board at that point) when they had both the Tesseract and the guy who already knew how to make such weapons from the beginning.
  • A line by The Other at the beginning of The Avengers, "The Tesseract has awakened", suggests it was dormant during that period and wasn't reactivated until Loki started using it to arrive at Earth. It might have made more sense, though, if the Tesseract hadn't been found until Cap was discovered frozen, both in the Valkyrie wreck.
  • Except that the Cube burned a hole in the bottom of the Valkyrie and fell into the ocean before it crashed, and Howard was shown recovering it at the end of First Avenger.
  • Which is why I specified. "it might have made more sense IF"...
  • No weapons made past the drawing board? S.H.I.E.L.D. already had a bunch of weapons stashed, which Cap found. And Coulson did fire one on Loki, which makes it pretty clear they were fully functioning.
  • No, those were HYDRA weapons, as indicated by the fact that there was a HYDRA helmet in the crate alongside the weapon, and that the weapon had the HYDRA emblem on it, and they clearly weren't functional otherwise S.H.I.E.L.D. would be using them. The weapon Coulson used was made from the salvaged remnants of the Destroyer.
  • IMHO, it seems that the folks of the 40's were a bit more moral than Fury. Hey, it was a simpler time. When they recovered Zola, no way were they going to let him anywhere near the Tesseract, even if it was dormant. They would likely have thought twice about building any weapons without a reliable power source, particularly for mass production. The founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. were Stark and Carter, they seemed pretty responsible. Heck, I bet the only reason they let Zola slide was because he turned on the Skull so quickly (and seemed to be aware of how batsh*t crazy and dangerous he was), otherwise they would have tossed him in a hole. There were no huge threats on the horizon that required more exotic weaponry. Even Fury said he didn't dust off the old Tesseract weapons until after Thor appeared. He was forming the Avengers for more terrestrial threats, even Iron Man and the Hulk were products of "conventional" technology. Thor was wrong; his appearance was a sign to the Earth that it needed to prepare itself for a higher form of war. So let's look into that tesseract thingy again, and Coulson, get weapons R&D to start working on something that can punch a god through a wall. BTW, nothing to indicate they built that from remains of the Destroyer, Phil's statement was they started work on it after Loki sent the Destroyer.
  • Debatable on that last bit, the weapon is shown firing a beam that is similar in appearance to the one from the Destroyer. In addition to that, it seems S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't get the Tesseract to power weapons at the time so I doubt the gun was built using its power. In addition, Coulson's dialogue to Loki seems to indicate that Coulson plans on using the weapon as payback and karma for Loki's usage of the Destroyer against Earth, which likely means the weapon was reverse-engineered from the Destroyer. So, while it is possible that the gun Coulson uses is made using the Tesseract, the dialogue about it and it's capabilities seem to indicate that it was built from the Destroyer's remains.

Lets go hide at Sam Wilson's!

• So after the bunker explodes, Cap and Black Widow go to Sam Wilson's house to hide... Why? Why not one of Tony Stark's places? Sam's in DC, they are in Jersey, Stark's new tower is in New York. So going there is a longer ride (And never mind Nat is injured at the time). And Stark's not a fan of S.H.I.E.L.D. so its not like he can't be at least willing to hear them out, and they just heard from Zola that Hydra has Stark's father killed, if they need more motivation. While Sam is the more "covert" option since no one at Shield knows him, the fact that he's got the flight suit they can later use is unknown to them at the time - meaning they have no next step in their plans once they get there. Tony at least offer them the resources of Tony Frikkin Stark.
  • There is a 99.9% chance that HYDRA would be watching every single one of Stark's assets like a satellite-supported hawk with access to the world's most sophisticated intelligence apparatus.
  • There's also the fact that Tony lives in New York City, AKA one of the most populated places in the world, and one with a LOT of security. You know how many surveillance cameras they have in Manhattan alone (to the point that Jessica Jones made a point of Jessica using them to find out who Kilgrave had spying on her, and Daredevil showed Wilson Fisk using it to spy on people)? Its very likely that they'd get spotted a mile away if they went inside, and considering how high-profile Tony is, its likely that they'd be seen if they got close to him, and as seen in the scene with Sitwell briefing S.H.I.E.L.D., they're literally checking people's tweets. Given they must have found a secure route to get there, its very likely they'd have a route to get back. On top of that, as noted, Sam is literally a nobody to HYDRA/S.H.I.E.L.D. There's no way for them to know who he is or that he even knows Steve, and given Steve hasn't interacted with anyone outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers, he's probably the only person they could go to who they wouldn't get seen going to.
  • Also, it was mentioned elsewhere on the page that Tony had a hand in designing the Insight helicarriers. For all that Steve and Natasha know, he's with HYDRA.
  • This. Remember Steve just found out that his entire team except for Widow, guys that have had a million chances to kill him and not only not did it, but actively rescued him (Rumlow even goes above and beyond the call of duty to help Cap out of a jam in a tie in comic) are all Hydra spies that want him dead. You can't know who to trust in an elaborate conspiracy like that. Tony's Iron Man heroics could have been on Hydra orders all along. The Hulk could in fact be controllable the whole time and the rage is just an excuse for him to smash stuff Hydra wants smashed while diverting attention from them. Hawkeye could be a HYDRA plant. Asgard could be entirely made up by Hydra as boogymen for them to use as scapegoats. Steve doesn't know if it's real or not, he's never been there. Everything he knows is wrong and he has no idea what's right anymore. Widow he can only trust because she found what HYDRA wanted all on her own (him and the drive) but didn't turn him in, and Falcon he only met by chance and isn't actively a part of any force so he can reasonably assume he's not with Hydra. But that's it. Now when Sitwell reveals that Hydra's got Tony and the other Avengers marked as enemies after all, that would be when Steve would decide they're clean. But by then they've got no chances to get to them.
  • Also, Tony isn't exactly renowned for his covert-operations talents or ability to maintain a low profile for five minutes. And he's not the sort to react with calm composure if he learns something personally disturbing ... like, say, that his own parents' deaths were engineered by the Evil League of Evil. Rogers is an honest man at heart, and would feel obligated to tell Stark the truth about HYDRA's killing his parents if he went to him for help. He doesn't want to risk putting the always-volatile Iron Man in a position where he might go blasting off to confront the bad guys at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, without any plan or backup.

Fury's escape from the car

• After having his car blown up by Bucky, Fury miraculously knows he is just above a sewer entry and escapes this way... my question is : what kept Bucky from just following him and killing him immediately ? Well, he obviously followed him to Steve's , but killing him in the sewers would have been easier, stealthier, and more effective.
  • We don't know what happened between Fury escaping from his car and him arriving at Steve's place. The Winter Soldier may have followed him into the sewer and maybe Fury already had secret tunnels down there to escape into.
  • My guess is that after all the very public car crashes, gunfire and explosions, the real cops were closing in and all the Hydra agents involved were ordered to pull back.
  • Attacking Fury on an open street where you've got the clear advantage of numbers and maneuverability is one thing. Chasing Mr. Crazy-Prepared down into a dark hole that he's bound to have booby-trapped with whatever spy-gear he's got in his pockets or glove compartment? Quite another, even for a cyborg superhuman.

Idiotic grenade design

• Why would anyone want a grenade with a 14 second fuse? In the time between the grenade reaching its destination and detonating (5 seconds), Natasha (had she actually been hiding there) could've easily thrown the grenade back the way it came. Was the Winter Soldier at all worried about being injured or killed by his own grenade?
  • Movies are rarely literal about time, unless it's High Noon. Later on, when Cap gets shot just after Maria Hill tells him he has 30 seconds to insert the targeting chip, he doesn't do so for roughly a minute and a half. But in the context of the film all that took place in 30 seconds because the editing has spread out each action, some of which were occurring simultaneously within that time. Likewise, the grenade probably only took 5 seconds or so to reach Nat's phone and detonate, but the film spread out the action for the viewers. In other words, it's just a movie.
  • Magic Countdown or not, it still took 5 seconds for the grenade to detonate after it hit the curb and stopped where the Winter Soldier thought Natasha was hiding. That's more than enough time to pick it up and throw it back (even cook it before throwing).
  • And it can take Captain America five seconds to catch a shield that should have rebounded to him in just one, merely because he's talking. Point being, it's a movie.
  • The grenade likely had a programmable fuse. It clearly wasn't just the kind you whip out and throw. The way Bucky drew and rolled it precisely toward his target makes it seem that he measured distance, set a fuse, and rolled it out. It was almost certainly the kind of weapon intended to quietly be deployed into an enemy's hiding spot instead of hurled in the heat of battle.
  • He's the Winter Soldier, and confident of his own ability to deflect the thing in the extremely unlikely event that they even try to throw it back instead of running as soon as they realize there's an explosive device in their midst...especially considering that they don't know how long till it explodes.

The Avengers Plot hole

• This was something brought up in Honest Trailers, but I have to wonder. If Natasha supposedly dumped all of HYDRA's secrets onto the web in this movie, indicating the secrets were there, then how did Stark not find out about it back in The Avengers when he was hacking S.H.I.E.L.D.? You know, when he discovered the tesseract weapons? How could he not find out about HYDRA in the process? Was it at a higher level of hack? Or he didn't notice it? I mean, how is it that one of the smartest men in the marvel universe could have missed the HYDRA link in that movie?
  • Stark's bug was found pretty quickly, as an alarm went off the moment he activated it. Additionally, it might have only gotten the information locally stored in the Helicarrier's database, not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s entire information storage.
  • Plus, the whole HYDRA secret was hidden well enough that even Fury, who has full access to the entire database 24/7, was unaware. They likely didn't mention the organization's name anywhere at all. As noted elsewhere on this page, there were no HYDRA agents meeting in HYDRA labs while wearing black cloaks and discussing secrets. These were all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, discussing S.H.I.E.L.D. missions.
  • Tony is overconfident, especially prior to his humbling in the Battle of New York and Iron Man 3. Just because Tony thinks he's hacked S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database to its ultimate level, that doesn't mean he has. There is also the part where HYDRA very likely doesn't keep any information on the Helicarrier servers precisely because Nick Fury would have unfettered access to those; also because they don't really have any need to. If you want the super secret stuff on HYDRA, go to Secretary Pierce's office.
  • I thought he was hacking Fury's Files, not Shield as a whole.
    • Even with full access, a heap of stolen files that size would essentially require Jarvis to sort it and run a search engine. Search engines are fast and efficient for specific answers on questions you already know ("What is Phase Two?"), but terrible at guessing that there's something you should know about that might be deduced by looking at the big picture across several decades of files.

How did Zola get so evil?

• I loved that they brought in some of the old school Arnim Zola to give the plot twist on HYDRA's survival a lot more weight and plausibility. On the other hand, considering Zola's previous behavior during WW2, is this a Retcon on his character? I mean, he willingly betrayed Red Skull because he wanted to save his own life, but he did build up HYDRA's arsenal from his designs. He's not all that threatening a person, but he was an enabler. I suppose the question I'm asking is this. From a story perspective, and not a comic book perspective, does Zola's masterminding HYDRA'S return work when remembering his characterization from The First Avenger? (I bring this up because of a review on this site which hated the perceived Evil All Along vibe he got from his reveal, and want to know your thoughts on the subject)
  • I assume you're referring to my review. I've heard some interesting theories since. One is that Zola had no problem with HYDRA itself, he just didn't like the direction Johann Schmidt was taking it in making it openly fascistic with invading armies. Hence why he created a HYDRA that was much more subtle and less aggressive. Another is that Zola blamed himself for Schmidt's apparent death and thus the recreation of HYDRA was his attempt to atone for betraying him. The third is that Zola initially was a Reluctant Mad Scientist at first, but become envious and power-hungry due to being pushed down and treated like a crook at S.H.I.E.L.D., so he recreated HYDRA in order to take control and get revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm hoping the upcoming Agent Carter series will shed some light on what occurred with Zola.
  • I think Red Skull was keeping Zola in check with sheer insanity. Schmidt was hardcore genocidal overlord, and Zola was terrified of him and his sometimes senseless brutality, and he didn't want to live in a world of Schmidt's liking, so he sort of retreated into 'goodness', using the term loosely. When he was taken in by the Allies, there was nothing to push him toward 'goodness' and he gradually started coming up with his own ideas.
  • I think that Zola started out genuinely hoping for a second chance after the war, but was intimidated by the other paper-clipped HYDRA scientists, and was further driven totally insane from the isolation of being computerized. Note that he seems fine with being blown to bits, even when there's the chance he's not taking Steve and Natasha down with him.
  • He computerized himself, so he probably knew the risks, although he could have been cyber-brainwashed at that state.
  • The whole evil Zola stuff was my main problem with the film. Zola had been built as a very reluctant villain whose motivations were For Science! at the worst, and then he is suddenly the HYDRA mastermind behind everything. It certainly echoes the now debunked popular theory of Trevor Slattery being actually the Mandarin posing as a random wacko, and that's something, because his revelation makes Zola a better actor than Trevor himself.
  • The Reveal in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that HYDRA is the modern name of a long-existing secret society with the goal of bringing Hive back to Earth makes Zola's actions more understandable. If he knew HYDRA's true reason for existence, then Schmidt was essentially betraying it by being out for himself (as subsequent HYDRA leaders such as Garrett were also shown to be). Zola's reluctance in going along with Schmidt's plan can be seen as this, but he only kept going along with it out of fear and loyalty. Once the Red Skull was taken out, the war was over and he was part of Paperclip, Zola took the opportunity to rebuild HYDRA to get back to its primary goal.
  • I just figured that sometime between age forty and his digital transfer (when he was in his 70s), Zola's personality shifted. This may have been related to the fatal illness that supposedly motivated his transfer - even if the disease itself wasn't altering brain chemistry, a sudden realization of mortality can cause some people to react oddly.
• Possibly Zola was always a pretty twisted and nasty kind of guy, it just wasn't quite so obvious when he spent so much time hanging out with Red Skull - a guy who is the embodiment of evil. Zola's diffidence and meekness around Phillips in the first film was simply an act, a kind of obfuscating harmlessness. His motivation might have been 'for science!!' but then so was Mengele's, so...

Shooter, what shooter?

• When Agent 13 radios for medics after Nick Fury is shot, the person on the other end of the radio asks, "Do we a have twenty on the shooter?". But Agent 13 made no mention of gunshot wounds, so how did the person on the radio know Fury had been shot, and more importantly why didn't Rogers or Agent 13 find that suspicious?
  • In answer to the first question, the person on the other end of the radio was either A) nearby and heard the gunshot and figured Fury was shot or B) a HYDRA Agent. If it's the former neither Steve nor Carter should be suspicious at all and if it's the latter, well Agent 13 was too busy attending to Nick Fury to pay attention and Steve almost immediately left to hunt down the Winter Soldier.
  • If someone has been shot, then someone made that shot. That's just basic logic.
  • This. People don't just up and get shot, and a protective detail would automatically assume that "X has been shot" would mean someone shot them as opposed to an accidental discharge.
  • All Agent 13 said was "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive, I need EMTs." Nothing in there about gunshot wounds.
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. almost certainly has the place bugged. And Agent 13 would've had her radio on. For all intents and purposes, S.H.I.E.L.D. was listening to the same thing and heard the gunshot.
  • There's a much easier explanation: Agent 13 comes into Steve's apartment with her gun drawn, expecting trouble. She heard the gunshots (which were unsuppressed). She called in on her radio before entering Steve's apartment: "Base, this is Agent 13, shots fired, Rogers' apartment, I'm investigating."

Caught In the Crossfire

• So the Helicarriers were about to fire on more than 700,000 targets all at once, some of which are in the Triskelion. But there are also a ton of HYDRA personnel still inside there, including Pierce himself. Was HYDRA really about to risk the lives of hundreds of its own members and leadership just to get at its targets? Pierce doesn't seem the type to forfeit his life so casually, and sacrifices need to save more people than you lose. Even destroying its own headquarters seems counter-productive.
  • Remember HYDRA's motto: "if a head is cut off, two more will take its place"
  • They were going to fire sniper-type shots to kill those targets. Not every gun on the helicarriers are missiles.
  • Does it actually show the Helicarriers targeting the Triskelion itself? If not, then the obvious solution would be sending loyal HYDRA agents to kill those targets.
  • Yes it does. The first shot of the targeting field is zooming out from Maria Hill's red dot on her to a hundred other red dots all over the Triskelion. Even if they're only going fire bullets rather than missiles, there's still the huge risk of dozens of their shots continuing through the floors and hitting more of their own people in the process.
  • I agree, it would be pretty stupid for HYDRA to take out their own people in the process of Insight, which is why I think that the HYDRA traitors would take care of the targets within the Triskelion itself. Just because those targets were marked in the targeting system, it doesn't necessarily mean that the helicarriers would be the ones to shoot them. Though, OTOH maybe HYDRA is that stupid; this page has multiple folders questioning the logic of HYDRA's plan, so it's not really that surprising.
  • You know, the old HYDRA was perfectly willing to nuke cities including Berlin, without making any evident attempt to recall its agents from the targeted locations first. Why should the new one prize its own troops any more highly?
  • The old HYDRA was run by an insane madman who cared about no one but himself and wanted to harness the power of gods. (And we don't know if they had lots of agents in Berlin, or any at all.) The new HYDRA was founded by a guy for ideological reasons who wouldn't sacrifice himself for the cause unless he was sure the outcome would be worth it. Ordering an immediate firing upon the Triskelion is ludicrous if it's going to result in the death of your leadership, your loyal agents, your headquarters and all its data, any of your pawns, and leave you without a stronghold in the country. HYDRA did not get where it was by being idiots; the Triskelion targets' not being aimed at immediately but being tagged for later seems more likely.

Sam Wilson's abrasion proof skin

• How did Sam Wilson not lose any skin after tumbling end over end and sliding to a halt on the highway?
  • The same way he also didn't cut himself getting tossed into computer screens and smashing through a glass window during the climax: because he's a secretly a mutant.
  • Either that, or he's secretly Heroing for Hire in his free time.

Battering ram

• When the police attack Fury's SUV, why is their weapon of choice once bullets fail a battering ram? Why not just roll a grenade or two under the chassis and run away? Or shoot the SUV with an RPG? A battering ram has got to be one of the slowest, most inefficient things out there in this day and age. They've got the resources, they had time to prepare, they don't care about visibility, there really isn't a reason to use something different.
  • Even with the sheer number of bullets they throw at the vehicle and the battering ram, Fury is almost completely unharmed thanks to the SUV armor. They actually had a plan of action that's pretty easy to follow. Step 1) Disable vehicle with impact, possibly killing Fury. Step 2) If Fury is still alive, shoot up the SUV to attempt to breach the armor and kill him. Step 3) If Fury is still alive, open the SUV with a battering ram, then shoot through the window that day. Step 4) If Fury is still alive, something else. Step 5) When all else fails, the Winter Soldier.
  • You don't get what I'm asking. Why are they using a battering ram instead of explosives? The battering ram is slow. As the Winter Soldier shows a few minutes later, explosives are fast. Why not start with explosives?
  • Battering rams concentrate force in a very small, tight area. Explosives direct force outward in all directions. Shaped charges are more efficient at it, but a battering ram would ensure that maximum amount of force is directed into the window to break it. A breaching charge powerful enough to break through that window would likely create a massive explosion. For whatever reason, the HYDRA troops need to stay close to the car. Maybe they want Fury alive or they want his body intact; either would be reason to limit overall force applied rather than annihilate the car outright.
  • Also, the team works in broad daylight, camouflaged as cops. Makes sense that they must use more or less standard-issue equipment (SWAT teams do use submachine weapons, like MP5Ks or the M4A1 rifles that the fake SWAT team uses; it's a bit of a stretch to think a patrol cop would use an M4A1, but after the North Hollywood shootout a lot of police forces did start making rifles standard-issue equipment in their cars) . If your average policeman joe just takes out his RPG-7 and starts blasting everything around, his whole legend is down.
  • On top of all that, even when the vehicle is taken out by Bucky, he certainly acts as though the intent is to take Fury alive. It's possible that everything they were trying to do was just to disable Fury instead of killing him, which actually makes more sense: they shot up the SUV to reduce his armor to make him vulnerable to the battering ram, they used the ram so they could get to him with a disabling weapon (of which S.H.I.E.L.D. has plenty), and only when he started to successfully escape did they actually try to kill him. And they knew exactly how to breach the SUV because they were part of S.H.I.E.L.D. anyway, or at least HYDRA. Had Fury been slightly slower or less tactically minded, they would've had him easily.
  • And why would they want to take Fury alive? They're much safer if he's dead, and it doesn't fit in with HYDRA's way of doing things in the movie. In the overpass ambush, once they had Steve, Natasha, and Sam restrained, the only reason they weren't shot on the spot was the news helicopter. They'd want to kill Fury, and they'd want to kill him fast.
  • Capturing him alive for interrogation, biometrics, or brainwashing like the Winter Soldier, for starters. They were actually trying to capture Steve when they jumped him in the elevator, as well - note the multiple clearly nonlethal weapons they were using - so HYDRA may well have been trying to take them alive at first and then shifted to outright killing them when the situation became more and more out of hand.
  • Speaking of which, does a hydraulic battering ram mounted on a folding tripod like the one the "SWAT" team uses here actually exist? I mean, I doubt that such a ram would see many practical uses in real life. Not to mention that no police department actually uses a hydraulic ram of this kind and they actually just use handheld battering rams (which require the manpower of one to three men max).
  • If not, I see no reason why they couldn't have just built one. It has a very practical purpose: it can apply more force than an arm pushed one and you don't need a bunch of people to lift the thing (based on how it's set up, from when the SWAT team unloads it from their van to when they start using it to breach the window, it takes four strong men to move the battering ram by foot, and only one man to actually operate the ram once the tripod has been unfolded and holes have been drilled into the pavement to stabilize it).

Why Algerian?

• Georges Batroc is played by a Caucasian actor, his backstory involves service in French Intelligence, and the source material has him being French. What was the point of the nationality change?
  • So they can have a "actually he's Algerian" joke. Which is literally all it took to change his nationality. It wasn't a big effort for them.
  • So are Zinedine Zidane's parents Algerians and you could say he is Caucasian as well. Remember, a lot of these countries were European colonies until 60-70 years ago. A lot of public offices were held by the European overlord's population so it's not that much of a headscratcher.

The post-credits scene.

• So as much as I enjoyed the movie, I have to puzzle over one thing: why and how is Loki's scepter still on Earth? And how did no one worry about that before now? Thor's taking back the Tesseract because it's too dangerous for us to handle, but that big glowing spear thing that Fury said was Tesseract-powered? Which had demonstrable mind control powers on its own? Either S.H.I.E.L.D. recovered it after The Avengers, in which case it should have been sent with Thor, or it was "lost", in which case everybody should have been a shitload more worried about it...
  • Just because Nick Fury turned over the Tesseract doesn't mean he's obligated to turn over anything else. Loki's staff doesn't belong to Thor, and Thor may figure it may shut off once Asgard has control over the Tesseract again.
  • The scepter was kept by S.H.I.E.L.D. Yes, the same S.H.I.E.L.D. with double agents everywhere, and with a civil war between them that led to their break up. That means that the scepter, as well as all other dangerous things that S.H.I.E.L.D. ever captured, can fall into the wrong hands in the process. That's not some overlooked detail, see Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.S 1 E 18 Providence
  • The Tesseract was stolen from Asgard, therefore Thor was justified in taking it back. The Chitauri, on the other hand, attacked Earth, so therefore S.H.I.E.L.D. is justified in taking and studying Chitauri tech as shown by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel One-Shots. Tesseract-powered or not, the scepter is still Chitauri tech, therefore S.H.I.E.L.D. can take it, which allowed HYDRA to steal it.
  • OP: That's the best explanation I've heard yet, and the one I'll accept in lieu of something better. It's certainly better than "Our leader is a moron who forgets about dangerous tech", and more fits into the characterization of "We keep alien tech to experiment on until it blows up in our faces."
  • It's also possible that Thor didn't want to take the scepter back to Asgard, figuring that Earth's indigenous protectors needed some sort of Magitek assistance in defending their world. He knew he probably couldn't return himself for a while, and he trusted his new allies to use whatever the Chitauri tech they'd captured - the scepter included - to keep themselves (and Jane Foster) safe until then. Granted, the HYDRA infiltration meant his trust wasn't entirely justified, but Thor had no clue that was going on; plus, Odin had trusted a select group of humans to guard the Tesseract for centuries, and Thor usually respects his father's judgment.

How did Batroc last so long?

• When Batroc and Cap fight hand-to-hand, why didn't Cap end Batroc in mere seconds? That scene doesn't jive with the elevator scene (and countless other fight scenes from this movie, Cap 1, and the Avengers).
  • Several reasons. In the elevator Cap was right next to his attackers, so they didn't have room to dodge his blows; they took the whole force of the punch each time. Batroc had room not only to dodge but to roll with punches, so as to nullify the momentum from attacks. Second, Batroc caught Cap by surprise, in the elevator he knew an attack was going to happen. Lastly, Cap initially was using his shield to block Batroc's kicks, and as such didn't have room to punch back because his shield was blocking his arms. Batroc kept up an offensive the whole time, and note that when Cap fought the Winter Soldier with his shield there were less punches from him and more blocks and kicks. Once Cap put his shield away, he could use his arms again and thus put up a better fight.
  • Seconded. Once Steve puts away his shield and ditches his helmet - i.e. goes from defensive to offensive - he does end Batroc in mere seconds.
  • Plus, it's entirely possible that Batroc simply is a better fighter than an elite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
    • Take any 100,000 reasonably athletic, acrobatic men and school them extensively in hand-to-hand fighting. There will be a top .01% - ten men whose combination of strength, agility, reflex speed, fighting spirit and intuition give them the power to outfight the others. Even this movie's Cap, who doesn't seem limited to 'gifted human' in those categories, might find that a natural prodigy actually does present a threat.
  • Another possability is that he is on some form of super steroid, In Jessica Jones, there is one character who can fight on par with Jessica, who has super strength, by taking some pills, agents of shield also deal with something like that, its nto that far of an assumption that terrorists are starting to up their game by doping by the time of TWS.

Why did Pierce kill his maid?

• This is more from a rational sense more so than an actual plot reasoning. Since story writing plot wise it was to show that Pierce was a man of little standards when it came to killing. My question is from a true logical point of view, what problem could her maid seeing Bucky/Winter Soldier in the house cause? She doesn't know who the Winter Soldier is, who could she tell that would believe her? Pierce would probably already know who if any of her connections would be to cause a problem and not hire her. I feel like from the audience perspective seeing Winter Soldier in Pierce's living room and him giving orders to a ruthless killing machine indicates being the bad guy. He could have easily told her his friend just came by from a costume party or something.
  • Renata is probably fully aware that she lives in a world where there are costumed heroes and villains, and not only does this guy look incredibly creepy but also he would have just asked to enter through the front door if he were legitimate. Her own connections might not be a problem, but Pierce's would. A "friend" like Nick Fury might have come over a few times; what if she told him? Pierce wanted to avoid having to create an unconvincing cover story on the spot; "oh, this is my... um, BDSM partner. Yeah, he's... pretty vicious, which is great, and... don't tell anyone. [beat] Yeah, I can see that this isn't going to work. This is actually an asset of mine you're not supposed to see. Sorry. [bang]"

The Body

• What did Pierce do immediately afterwards with her body? I'd think he'd have to make up a cover story for her death. Did he stage a scene to make it look like she got shot by a burglar or something? Or did he put the body in his car and dump it in a river, figuring that with Project Insight about to be implemented, and Renata possibly being someone who lived alone and didn't have any family or friends who would miss her, it would be a long time before the police started investigating her murder.
  • He's the local head of both S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA. He's not going to have any trouble making a body disappear.
  • Maybe he did what they do with some victims in Breaking Bad: take the body somewhere, put it in a barrel full of acid, and let that do the rest.
  • What did he do? Give the dirty work to the Soldier, as usual. "Make sure the body's not found."

Bucky's missing arm.

• How exactly did Bucky lose that arm of his? I'm pretty sure it was blown off in the movie, but in the movie he "died" falling from a great height, and I can't imagine what kind of impact would caused his arm to dislodge so discretely. His arm was already missing before he was found by the soldiers so it's not like they hacked it off in the process of dredging him up from where they found him.
  • We can't know without a definite answer. Maybe it got snagged by something and ripped off. Maybe, like has happened to several rock climbers, it got caught in a crevice or boulder and he had to hack it off himself. We also don't know that it was missing before the soldier found him, just that it was missing while they were retrieving him.
  • For that matter, what's with the flashback scene where Zola shows up outdoors in the snow? Zola was captured by Gabe Jones immediately after Bucky fell, so it's not possible for him to claim Bucky's body until a good amount of time after the events of The First Avenger. It's possible the Super Serum treatments allowed Bucky to survive in suspended animation (just like it kept Rogers alive in the ice for 67 years) until Zola came back for him but the blood from his arm stump looked rather fresh.
  • Bucky is remembering things out of order. The Zola memory is from when he was first captured while fighting in the 107th Infantry. He's been brainwashed for years; he's not going remember everything in perfect order right away.
  • However, it doesn't seem to have been snowing when Bucky was captured in the first movie, whereas in the scene where Zola appears you can definitely see snow (and it is snowing when Bucky falls off the train). Unless his memories are so damaged that the movie is actively presenting outright fabrications to indicate it.
  • There appear to be two shots of Zola in that scene, one in the snowy fortress, the other too blurrier but with some artificial lighting source (the lab?) Zola appears to be wrapping up his speech in the latter shot, so the latter might be the correct location and the first shot of Zola was Bucky blending two memories. Worth noting is that it was raining the week Bucky was captured, so the blending might have taken place because Bucky confused the rain in his memory for snow.

The dates on Bucky's Smithsonian exhibit.

• On Bucky's exhibit, it starts with "Born in 1916" but at the bottom, it says Bucky Barnes 1917-1944. So when was Bucky born? In 1916 or 1917? Because I can't think of anything besides a date of birth that the 1917 date could refer to. Additionally, wouldn't it make more sense for Bucky to have died in 1945? Steve went down that year, after they got Zola's info. Did it really take them MONTHS to interrogate him (the scene makes it seem like not much time has passed) and then launch an assault against Schmidt?
  • I would chalk that up to an out-of-universe mistake. In the same scene it also says that Steve rescued 168 soldiers from the HYDRA base when First Avenger claims on a newspaper that it was 400. The Bucky plaque also says he enlisted in the Army when his serial number in First Avenger (recited in Zola's' lab) starts with a 32 instead of a 12, meaning he was drafted. And then computer Zola in his scene claims Cap took him prisoner in 1945, which was the day Bucky "died", Long story, a simple continuity error.
  • The 168 vs 400 thing is easy; the larger number is from a newspaper article written during wartime. They wanted to make Cap look better, and/or the reports were confused and the wrong number was printed. As for '44 vs '45, it's snowing heavily (and the snow is sticking) in the train scene, which even in the Alps means winter. Say the train happened during the last week of December, even a few days later it's 1945.

Sharon being assigned to "protect" CAPTAIN FREAKING AMERICA.

• How does this make ANY sense? If someone can potentially harm STEVE, then what the hell is Sharon Carter going to do? She says "Captain, I'm Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Special Service. I'm assigned to protect you." On Fury's order apparently. But…isn't she a rookie agent? She can't take down Rumlow so what the heck is she going to do to "protect" Steve that he can't do himself? It just seems VERY odd to me.
  • Fury's fear is that Steve is too trusting and may not recognize a sneak attack when he sees it. He find it better to err on the side of caution and give Cap an ally for when he needs one. As for why he chose her, Fury likely knows that Sharon is the niece of Cap's old girlfriend, and thus figures having Cap learn that would cause him to be more trusting of her, especially when an attack arrives. And regarding Sharon's skill as an agent, remember that Rumlow is the guy who becomes Crossbones, held off both Cap and the Falcon, and survived a Helicarrier crashing into him. Rumlow is by no means an average agent.
  • Knowing Fury, Sharon being assigned to him isn't so she can protect him (not mainly, anyway), but to keep an eye on him + his place - she may or may not think/know otherwise. Also, Cap can be harmed by bullets as much as anyone if hit, so even a squad of regular soldiers could be dangerous - one lucky shot, and he's dead. Her being along just in case would give an extra push, which while small overall, would count (or so's the thinking).
  • But isn't that redundant? Especially considering he has Steve's apartment bugged. What exactly is Sharon going to notice as his neighbor that the bugs wouldn't pick up?
  • "Redundant", for Fury, is a feature.
  • A bug isn't going to be able to go in and intervene. Someone who's literally three doors down the hall can.
  • She's going to shoot whatever might harm Steve that he, for whatever reason, isn't in a position to avoid or counter. Exactly like Peggy does in The First Avenger.
  • But Peggy was never assigned to protect Steve — she fought in the mass attack on Schmidt's fortress yes but that's a completely different job from acting as a bodyguard.
  • Missing the point. Steve is a super soldier, but he's not invincible. He'll miss things occasionally and need back-up.
  • Moreover, even if Sharon isn't that formidable in a fight, she's a lot more knowledgeable about the current state of spy craft than Steve. She knows a lot of tricks for foiling surveillance technology that didn't even exist when Rogers was trained, plus she can use her "friendly neighbor" cover-identity to subtly steer him away from committing major Fish out of Temporal Water social faux pas.
  • In addition to the points above, it's just common sense to have an insurance policy. Steve Rogers is a one of a kind super soldier that, in seventy years since his creation, no one has successfully been able to replicate. Fury's going to make DAMN sure he doesn't lose someone THAT invaluable to something as mundane as a basic wetwork operation.

The police officers that ambush Fury's car

• Those police cars look like real Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police cars and the uniforms look exactly like the ones real D.C. patrolmen use. Where did they come from? Wouldn't the real D.C. police know if someone had stolen a bunch of their squad cars or broken into one of their armories to steal SWAT uniforms and gear? Or are these vehicles actually registered to S.H.I.E.L.D. or HYDRA and painstakingly repainted to resemble D.C. police cruisers? Did they kill a bunch of real cops and steal their uniforms (and how did they do that without raising suspicions)? Or are those real police officers who have been bribed by HYDRA (which would also make sense, but would make it harder to explain the car's computer saying that there are no real police officers in the area)?
  • The same way Marvel Studios did in real life: by buying a bunch of Chevrolets and repainting them. If S.H.I.E.L.D. can afford to build those Helicarriers, surely they can afford some cars and uniforms.
  • Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. has covert operations where operatives might need to use conventional squad cars. Or alternatively, HYDRA has bought out the important officials in the MPD (chief, commissioner, and a bunch of cops at every rank in the chain of command) and the MPD loans cruisers, weaponry, officers, and whatnot to HYDRA for them to use in their operations.
  • That's possible, but quite risky, as it would create an obvious paper trail leading straight to S.H.I.E.L.D. If they could wade through 17 fake accounts to link Nick Fury to hiring Batroc, then possibly the FBI or even a non-HYDRA S.H.I.E.L.D. Internal Investigator might be able to find the inside job that way.
  • If the cruisers were real cop cars loaned to S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA, they would have been identifiable by the car's computer. On the other hand, a police cruiser that's been surplussed because the MPDC is overhauling their fleet probably would have whatever ID the computer was looking for removed. HYDRA's definitely got the contacts to steer a "replace your squad cars" grant to the MPDC, and the money to buy up the older cruisers and recondition them to look new. The uniforms are even easier: find out what company has the contract (which would be public record), and place an order.
  • Reconditioning would make sense since I doubt that the contractor that supplies the MPDC with their squad cars would loan HYDRA / S.H.I.E.L.D. brand new Chevrolet Impala 9C1 cruisers.
  • This sounds silly, but I imagine that after that car chase, the real Washington Metropolitan Police Department officials are going to have to answer a lot of weird questions from the media for why cars painted in THEIR livery were seen chasing down an armored SUV and the "officers" driving them were using automatic assault rifles and shooting with no regard for bystanders (one of the "cops" even shoots at the car through the side of a bus).
  • An organization with the resources that HYDRA has would find it trivial to repaint a few cruisers and vans and counterfeit uniforms and body armor that would last long enough to withstand the couple of seconds' worth of time needed to pass any inspection that mattered.
  • Remember, the onboard computer's Exact Words were that the MPDC had sent no units to the area. That doesn't rule out the possibility that maybe some if not all of those men were cops who are secretly HYDRA moles. They could just be there on orders from HYDRA, without an official dispatch. After all, if HYDRA is being covert, the last thing they'd want is a record of their pursuit of the head of a major intelligence agency.
  • They could have been real cops on HYDRA's payroll. After all, Wilson Fisk and Cottonmouth in Daredevil (2015) and Luke Cage (2016) had NYPD cops on their payrolls, allowing them to stave off any police investigations into their activities, and in Fisk's case, acting as assassins for him since they're shown killing the Russians that survived Fisk's coordinated bombings of their hideouts. Fisk had ESU teams, plainclothes detectives, and uniformed beat cops in his pocket. If he could do that to the NYPD, surely HYDRA is capable of doing the same thing with the MPDC.

Police ambush, part II

• A related question: where was Fury going when he was ambushed? Was he on his way home or on his way to meet someone? My memory's a bit hazy.
  • It's not stated.

Tires

• Another question about the ambush: the police box Fury's car in from all four sides with cruisers and a SWAT van before they open fire on the car with their assault rifles. They riddle the car with bullets, all right, but why not shoot out the tires as well while they're at it? Or for that matter, shoot up the engine block to disable the engine? I mean, if they did so, I don't think Fury would probably be able to get very far if he managed to drive off.
  • There are bullet resistant tires built for the military. If Fury's car can have a window capable of withstanding all that punishment, his tires are possibly just as strong. None of them even popped when Winter Soldier's smart mine even detonated right next to them.
  • Don't forget that Fury's SUV also apparently had built-in flight systems. Yes, they were knocked out by the ambush, but the HYDRA agents didn't know that. Shooting out the tires would have been pointless from their perspective; all that mattered was "get through the armor before he recovers."

Ha Ha, Got Your Shield! I'm keeping this.

• Why didn't Bucky just keep Steve's shield? It's Steve's primary weapon, so why not take it? I get that he used it as a momentary distraction, but it was a weak distraction at best. Was he worried keeping it would cause Steve to pursue him? If so, why not just throw it somewhere inconvenient and make Steve play fetch? Or better yet, why not just shoot Steve, and /then/ take the shield? We know how heavily armed Winter is. He had to have a pistol on him at the time.
  • He never seems to like using it, as he throws it away when he ends up holding it during the highway fight and the Helicarrier fight. Probably personal preference, then. He might think it slows him down or hinders his fighting ability. It might even have a tracking device, for all he knows. It was recovered from the bottom of the Potomac, after all.
  • That seems counterintuitive, though. If he is indeed going to throw the shield away anyhow, why not just heave that son of a bitch like 1,000 yards away so Steve has to either fight him without it, or go and retrieve it? The two times he has the shield in his hands, Bucky actually throws it back to Rogers (which, to be completely frank, was just stupid), and then throws it at Rogers in more of an offensive manner (as if he wanted to take him down with the throw). Cap dodges it, though, causing the shield to get stuck in the back of a van, subsequently allowing him to get it back. Don't return your enemy's most proficient weapon AND defensive device once you've procured it (not trying to be a smart ass towards you—just felt like this goes without saying, and The Winter Soldier is no idiot, so the way he handles these situations just comes off as outrageous, especially when you consider that without his shield, Bucky would have probably killed Rogers two or three times over).
  • His line of thinking was "I have a new weapon; try to neutralize him with that weapon." Simple as that, especially when he's in a fast-paced firefight with little time to react. His attempts may have not paid off, but he had a reason for attempting such.
  • This doesn't apply when Bucky catches the shield after Rogers jumps out of the apartment building window. That wasn't even a fight—Cap just tried to take him out with the shield and failed. Bucky had tons of time to think about his next move, shield in hand, as Rogers had no long-range weapon and Bucky is at least just as fast as Cap, so he wasn't gonna get caught in a footrace if he didn't want to be. With that time to strategize, the best idea he could come up with was "Here, take back your signature weapon that you'd probably be dead without"? Did he really think maybe he threw it with enough force that it'd kill Rogers? Seems incredibly unlikely (both the notion and the fact that Bucky thought it could happen).
  • Steve wasn't his target then. At that point he'd shot his target (Fury) and was attempting to withdraw, per orders. He threw the thing back to distract Steve long enough to break contact, which was completely successful.
  • Bucky at this point is simply not an independent thinker. He's not strategizing for future engagements, he's not considering his best way to reduce Steve's effectiveness, he was woken up and programmed with a mission: Shoot Fury, then get out. Stealing a weapon that he is not familiar with and isn't trained to use is not part of either of those missions.
  • Also worth noting is that Bucky may not have even know the shield is one of a kind. For all he knows lots of guys in this time and day use giant frisbees as weapons. Every time he's released from stasis he's going into an unrecognizable world with only instinctual training and what his handlers have specifically informed him about. Bucky wasn't expecting to run into a fellow superhuman, he wouldn't be concerned with keeping the shield away from Rogers if it could be any common weapon, and even less so if the shield proved to not be a threat at all to Bucky.
  • Even noting the two (good) points above, there's still room for debate—a mission as simple as "Terminate Fury with extreme prejudice, get out" can be compounded by anything that gets in the way of either of those objectives. Rogers was obviously trying to stop Bucky from completing the "Retreat" part, and part of finishing a mission is neutralizing any enemies who will interfere with the completion of said mission in any way. So knowing that Cap is attempting to do exactly that (interfere with the mission), Bucky throws the shield back to him. At the very least, this actually gives Rogers a second chance to use the shield on Bucky. If he had, what were they gonna do, play catch with the damn thing until they got bored? Why not just drop the shield where you stand (if you're The Winter Soldier) and keep running?
    
    And yeah, I agree that his top priority wasn't, nor should it have been, to keep the shield away from Steve, but don't blatantly give it back to him. You have a task at hand. Stop playing frisbee with some random dude who's trying to apprehend you and GET THE HELL OUT. The only thing I can think of is, as was said, he didn't even consider the notion of other super humans—the following would be a stretch, but as a result, maybe he was being cocky by giving Rogers his shield back (in a "Your attempted attack didn't work. You can have this back, because I know you'll know better than to try again" way; sending a message to his enemy essentially), but that doesn't fit the character. The Winter Soldier is pragmatic and practical by design. He's programmed to do nothing more and nothing less than what's required. I doubt Hydra would want him showing off during an important assignment.
  • As the movie shows, throwing the shield at Steve does not give him a chance to use it on Bucky — Steve isn't able to recover right away, and Bucky gets away right then and there. It was a one-off attack that he was reasonably certain would distract Steve long enough for him to get away, and it worked. Dropping the shield does nothing — Steve is just going to keep running after him, and he's just going to pick up the shield on his way. Throwing it, even if it misses, forces Steve to defend and react, and in that second of defense and reaction, Bucky gets away. When you're trying to escape from someplace, you do not stop and engage the enemy any more than is absolutely necessary to keep them off your back. If Bucky takes any more time trying to fight Steve, then someone, cops, Agent 13, building security, might show up, and make his escape that much less likely.
  • Agreed. Rewatching the scene, it appears that Bucky was trying more for a distraction to get away, and physically sending something in Steve's direction would accomplish that. Throwing the shield off to the side instead would let Steve keep chasing after him unimpeded.
  • Perhaps somewhere in the Winter Soldier's subconscious he realized that his enemy was his life long friend and returned the shield to him on instinct rather than forethought to give him a way to defend himself without immediately considering the fact that it may be used against him.
  • ^I think its a combination of this and the one above it. When Bucky turns to catch the shield, you can almost see a sense of recognition in his eyes, as if he knows it's Steve, so the buried part of him wants to give the shield back to his friend. However, the tactical part of his mind tells him he still needs to escape, so he hurls it at Steve to distract him, then makes a break for it.

Steve and Bucky's fight over the last targeting blade

• When Steve is attempting to replace the targeting blades at the end of the film while fighting Bucky at the same time, Bucky is able to procure one of them and basically holds it hostage so Rogers can't finish replacing them. Why doesn't Bucky just throw the damn thing somewhere (like, maybe, the gigantic body of water underneath them) so Steve can't get to it? Instead, he keeps it in his hand until Cap chokes him out, which allows him to take it and finish the job. In Bucky's defense, Steve almost immediately traps him in an arm bar, which takes away Bucky's ability to throw (although, as dexterous as he's shown to be [mostly with the knife in his first fight with Cap], it wouldn't have been a stretch for him to toss it into his other hand, which would still be possible in the arm bar, and then throw it with his free arm). Regardless, there was a point when Cap performed a Neck Lift on Bucky, and that was probably his best chance to get rid of it and completely foil Rogers' mission. All in all, if The Winter Soldier just heaves it somewhere totally out of reach at any point, we might have had a completely different (and unimaginably tragic) ending to the film.
  • To throw the chip in the water, Bucky would have had to smash through glass that took a missile strike to break, and that would have made it very difficult to keep Cap from not attacking him. He would have to stand in one spot and keep whacking at the glass, and be careful to not shatter the floor he's standing on in the process. It's not as if they were in open air with wide open windows. The whole area was enclosed in a metal and glass bubble.
  • I thought that they were fighting on a platform with nothing between them and the ground, mostly because of this overhead shot. I assumed that's why they used the overhead angle— to show how high up they were and the fact that they were in danger of falling a tremendous distance at any time.
  • Yeah, that isn't the case at all. As numerous shots of the Helicarrier's underside show, like◊ these◊ here◊, the underside was completely covered and airtight. And probably too thick for Bucky to smash through. The Avengers Helicarrier had super glass designed to withstand blows from Asgardians and the Hulk. Bucky wouldn't have even been able to crack it.
  • There's also the simple answer: Because no one told him to. The weakness of Bucky's brainwashing is the same as its strength: It makes him obedient to a fault. He doesn't know what the chip does or the particulars of Cap's mission. He just knows that he's been ordered to take down the guy attacking the Helicarriers. Unless Pierce included destroying the chip in Bucky's orders, it would never occur to him to do it.
  • Which explains exactly why Bucky keeps the chip intact and on his person: he may not know what it's for, but he certainly realizes that Cap wants it back, so is using the Macguffin as bait to prevent his designated target from retreating and getting away.

The Winter Soldier's attire

• Why does Bucky wear the mask over his face at first? The viewer doesn't get a single hint that it does anything other than hide his identity (presumably to keep the twist intact for those who didn't read the comics). Especially obvious since, after he's revealed to be Bucky Barnes, he's never seen wearing the mask again. There seems to be no in-universe reason for it, as he clearly doesn't need it, since he continues to be a one-man killing spree without it (and how would something as trivial as a mask like that help very much in the first place?).
  • Presumably to keep his face hidden while performing missions for HYDRA, who don't want to risk his true identity being exposed. His discarding of the mask in the third act could be because HYDRA would no longer need to keep secrets if Project Insight was successful.
  • While that's a plausible explanation, I'm pretty sure there aren't many people in the 21st century (outside of Rogers and possibly Nick Fury) not affiliated with HYDRA who would instantly recognize Bucky on the spot.
  • No, but a nearby civilian might spot what he looks like, or someone who escaped him the first time like Black Widow might realize it's him should they spot him undercover. The Winter Soldier doesn't just do killing. According to the comics, he also does infiltration, undercover spying, and uses false identities. Part of the reason why he was made was because the Soviets (which the movie briefly hints had a hand in his creation) wanted a spy who looked and sounded American and thus wouldn't raise suspicion while undercover. Fortune would have it that they got an actual American.
  • Going off that point, if Bucky didn't wear a mask, all it would take is 10 seconds for someone to whip out an iPhone and snap a picture of his face, which could easily end up in the hands of any local police officer or FBI / ATF / DEA agent who happens to be investigating a crime that Bucky committed at which he was seen by a witness. Implausible? Perhaps. But HYDRA probably wouldn't want to take the risk. They didn't get as powerful as they did by being careless.
  • Also worth noting; in the comics Winter Soldier didn't have his face covered (aside from an unconvincing Domino Mask) and over the years as facial recognition technology improved S.H.I.E.L.D. started looking over photos taken of suspects after mysterious assassinations and realized it was the same guy over the course of several decades. In a world where they know guys like Namor or Steve Rogers, in a sense, don't age, that's an obvious tipoff that they're dealing with more than just a highly trained soldier. So leaving his face uncovered is indeed a major risk if you intend to use this guy over and over across the century.

Bucky's proficiency with the vibranium shield

• The reason he "died" in the first film is because he appeared to only be able to use the shield as a defensive weapon, not having the wherewithal to actually throw the shield at an enemy whose firepower was too much for the shield to handle, presumably because it takes ages of practice to be able to throw it properly. In the second film, however, he tosses it around like it's a $5 plastic frisbee, arguably using it with just as much acumen (at least with basic throws) as Captain America himself (he's definitely shown to be able to throw it with just as much accuracy, yet with more force, than Rogers). How is this possible if Cap's shield is the only one of its kind in existence? Even if it wasn't, what practical purpose would there be in learning to throw his shield as part of his "Winter Soldier" training?
  • He's just strong. Bucky in the comics even says he's one of the few people in the world capable of using Cap's shield at full strength because of his metal arm. Even then, in the film Bucky is not fully comfortable with it. He always throws it away each time he ends up carrying it, as if he's not used to it.
  • In the first movie, he wasn't strong enough to throw it; with the metal arm he is. And while he hasn't trained with the shield specifically, his Winter Soldier training sure taught him how to throw stuff in general—a well-balanced disk isn't a problem. He doesn't do any of Steve's fancy bouncing tricks, either, just throws it straight like a lethal Frisbee.

Pierce's Rank

• This may not be answerable until Age of Ultron is released, but was Pierce the leader of the entire HYDRA organization, or simply of the agents working inside S.H.I.E.L.D.?
  • Pierce was the guy who spearheaded Project Insight, hired Nick Fury, commanded Bucky, and had the authority to fire a missile inside the United States. And when Sitwell was being interrogated by Rogers, he states "Oh man, Pierce is gonna kill me...", as opposed to any other guy, or "Oh man, HYDRA is going to kill me." It's not unreasonable to think Pierce was in charge of the American branch of HYDRA, while Baron von Strucker leads the European branch, and unknown individuals lead the African, Asian, South American, and Australian branches of HYDRA, and someone who oversees everything.

Incidents attributed to HYDRA

• There's a quick shot of at least one plane crash that is credited as being engineered by HYDRA when Zola is explaining how HYDRA resurrected itself within S.H.I.E.L.D. There are guys in NTSB jackets seen outside the plane, suggesting it's an incident on American soil. Which plane crash would that be that HYDRA was responsible for?
  • Wasn't it Howard Stark who died in a plane crash? I remember that Zola implied Howard's death was engineered by HYDRA so it was probably his plane.
  • Nope. Howard and Maria Stark died in a car crash on Long Island. That's canon from imagery in the very first Iron Man.
  • You might be wrong, but keep in mind canon from Iron Man 1 is shaky because they weren't sure if the MCU would take off and hadn't fully planned everything yet. Coulson acts like Shield is a brand new thing and they'd still been working out the name and nobody had ever heard of them. Since then they'd established Shield had been around for decades, everybody knew who they were and it was named in honor of Cap.
  • Ok, well if there's any celebrity or politician that died in a plane crash, it was probably HYDRA that did it (in the real world or in the fictional universe).
  • You mean... HYDRA caused "The Day The Music Died"??
  • Probably.
  • Wasn't that a part of his speech where he suggested HYDRA was responsible for sowing fear to encourage authoritarianism? That could have been the hijackings of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77.
  • It couldn't have been any of the 9/11 planes in that photograph. The planes that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon disintegrated on impact, as did United 93. The plane shown in the picture is too intact to be one of the 9/11 aircraft.
  • The photo in the movie might be referring to a real-world plane crash in the US, but the NTSB has been called upon by foreign governments to help with investigations. They're very good at it.

What's the media response to each of these incidents

• The attempt to execute Rogers and Natasha in public after the freeway attack is thwarted because a news chopper shows up. What's the news broadcast supposed to say? Furthermore, how would the media respond to the police ambush of Fury? We know that the cops aren't real cops at all, but the media doesn't know that. I mean, I imagine the Washington Metropolitan Police Department's higher-ups like the chief and the commissioner getting grilled by the media for answers about why what appear to be officers from their department ambushed an SUV for no apparent reason, shot up said car in an attempt to murder the driver, then engaged the car in a reckless chase and shootout that destroyed countless police and civilian vehicles, caused millions of dollars in property damage, and endangered dozens of lives, and also if these cops were working for the mysterious masked man who blew up said car after it escaped the police pursuit.
  • Probably lots of speculation and conspiracy theories, all things considered.
  • They might publish a statement from the government saying S.H.I.E.L.D. is looking into this, and not to worry, because in a few days Project Insight will be up and running to keep everyone safe from terror...
  • Something like, "Director Nicholas J. Fury was attacked today by assassins armed with M4A1 assault rifles. Fury, however, successfully managed to escape after a lengthy car chase. Ten of the assassins were reported killed in the attack. Officials with S.H.I.E.L.D., in conjunction with Washington Metro PD Homicide and the FBI, are working to identify the deceased suspects. Director Fury can't be reached for further comment."?
  • Wouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D., and possibly some other government agencies like the FBI and the CIA, get involved still in the investigation? I mean, I'd imagine that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have to take over once the D.C. police run the overturned SUV's plates and find the car was registered to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury, and do the same thing to check the registrations on the fake police cars and the identities on the bodies of the fake cops left in the streets.
  • ...Nick Fury driving a car that's registered in his own name? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Sour jokes about the lease notwithstanding, the most likely registered owner for that vehicle was just S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, and sure, S.H.I.E.L.D. got involved in the investigation...for the 36 hours it had remaining to exist as an organization.
  • Like many police officers, Fury probably has two cars: a personal car that he drives when he's not on-duty which is registered in Fury's name, which is probably just a standard-issue vehicle you buy at any car dealership. And the car he's driving when the police ambush happens is a company car from the SHIELD motor pool that's had custom modifications (on-board flight system, gatling gun, etc.). And I see Fridge Brilliance here: as a car registered to SHIELD, it might have a tracker on it planted under one of the wheel wells that transmits location updates in real time^note Put it another way, kinda like the $3 tracking device that you see Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad use on a few occasions to bug potential suspects' cars, but more sophisticated in that you can look at the information in real time rather than have to download it onto a computer at a later date. This real-time information could then be transmitted to the operatives assigned to the ambush, so they'd know exactly when to get into position and when to strike.

The disappearing/reappearing equipment

• When Steve, Natasha, and Sam Wilson are taken into custody by S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA, it's clear that their special gear (Cap's shield, Falcon's flying harness, etc) aren't left on them. That much is evident because we see Sam without the harness on — it's not exactly a subtle thing to wear. However, after having been rescued by Maria Hill (and when walking into Fury's secret base, they still didn't have the gear on them), they were re-equipped before the next day's assault on the Triskelion. Since they went straight from the back of the prison van into an unnoticed getaway — somehow, which we can plausibly handwave by saying "rule of cool ninja awesomeness" — are we really meant to believe that somehow both Cap's shield and Falcon's flying harness were there in the van with them? Do HYDRA's after-action debriefings read something like this?
  "Wait, how did they get their stuff back?"
  "Well, it was in the same van we were transporting the prisoners in..."
  "IN THE SAME VAN?!?"
  "We had them, we didn't think they'd esca—"
  "No. Stop right there. You didn't think. Period. Idiots. Report to Reprogramming for reassignment, you're on janitorial for six months. You can be glad it isn't worse."
  • Did you notice that Maria Hill drove them to the secret base in another van? It's likely what happened was she un-handcuffed them, burned that hole out of the van with Fury's device, hijacked another van which had their stuff in it, then drove to the secret base.
  • True, but them getting out of the van while it was moving is enough of a feat without them also somehow managing to hijack another van in the same convoy without anyone managing to raise an alarm on the radios. Maria Hill taking out the one guard in the van was plausible; managing to grab another one of the vans (specifically the one with their gear) while the convoy is in motion strains credulity. So there must have been some offscreen stuff we didn't see.

Helicarrier shrapnel.

• Sam's Falcon harness is cool and all, but he's got no armor on. How the hell was he not turned into swiss cheese by all the shrapnel and debris that would've been sent flying from all the Helicarrier munitions launched at him?
  • The same way he's immune to broken glass and why Captain America basically never gets shot anywhere but his shield: telekinetic powers.

HYDRA's recruitment strategy

• How would HYDRA decide who to recruit for different missions? For instance, how would they decide who to assign to operate the police ambush of Fury's car? I'd assume that for disposable agents, HYDRA would want men who are single, possibly unmarried, live alone, and don't have many friends or family who would miss them if something happened to them. Does HYDRA use that algorithm of picking men or does it use something different?
  • Zola's algorithm can pick out millions of potential threats based on the most miscellaneous information you can imagine. He or someone else probably had some kind of system for picking out recruits and ideal agents for dangerous operations.

HYDRA being responsible for the insanity known as North Korea

• Given the amount of insanity that North Korea is known for, which HYDRA agents would be assigned to handle that operation? Is North Korea basically a project into which HYDRA funnels their bizarre and over-the-top ideas?
  • Well, the organization that is Marvel's answer to the Hyperion corporation, run by total dickheads and having a private army made up of apathetic nutjobs who are A Nazi by Any Other Name, has to have some fun in a while. Or, alternately, North Korea could be considered HYDRA's greatest failure due to how much the country is mocked, and only the head of HYDRA and their pals know about it, as exposing it could result in millions leaving out of sheer disgust. And S.H.I.E.L.D could use that info to humiliate HYDRA, which, frankly, would be awesome and funny. Or maybe it's just where they dump all their "rejected" inventions, or a propaganda experiment Gone Horribly Wrong.
  • Which means North Korea is where the HYDRA operatives who piss off the wrong people in the organization (but may still have value later) get sent.

Why is Batroc using capoeira in the film?

• He is a French savateur in the comics, but in the film his fighting style is clearly Brazilian capoeira. Surely, it fits his Leaper gimmick, but isn't that an odd choice?
  • He isn't. Georges St. Pierre is a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, and kyokushin kaikan, and a quick Youtube search for capoeira shows distinct differences between the wide, scything spin-kicks of capoeira and the style St. Pierre uses as Georges Batroc.
  • Intuitive, but not correct. In his fight scene, Batroc uses movements which are exclusive to capoeira. You can search them: he does, in this order, a tombo de ladeira (the cartwheel into a downward axe kick almost to Cap's groin), a martelo de negativa (the kick from the ground), a raiz/mariposa (the corkscrew jump to dodge Cap), and after some kicks, a cartwheel backflip which is done in a very capoeira folha seca feeling motion. All his other kicks aren't exclusive to the art, but are in capoeira as well.
• Georges St. Pierre was a bit of stunt casting/cast the expert - you want someone who's a good enough kick-boxer to plausibly give Cap a good fight and GSP gets a bit of recognition from MMA fans. There's jumps, there's kicks, he's Batroc The Leaper - the precise details of which style he's using are secondary - or rather styles, in this case as he seems to be combining moves from several different styles.

Helicarrier

• Why, exactly, does Project Insight need Helicarriers? In the Avengers, the Helicarrier made sense as it was an aircraft carrier that converted to a flying fortress. In The Winter Soldier, an entire step is skipped as the Helicarriers are launched immediately airborne. Those big glass sensor globes and a large portion of their weaponry is on the belly, meaning extended sea-based traveling will severely hamper or stop entirely their entire purpose as part of Project Insight. It's also mentioned that, once launched, the Helicarriers don't need to land at any point in their operational cycle, so presumably they wouldn't need to land on water for any reason. And even if having runways was the reason for the design of an airborne aircraft carrier, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flight vehicles seem to bed comprised of mainly Quinjets - Up-down liftoff - making the long runways are completely unnecessary. Essentially, having those hulking monstrosities (that people can't even see based on the shielding tech, so making them symbols of a rule by fear is out too), with loads and loads of unnecessary weight, systems, and features, is incredibly inefficient to the point of being asinine.
  • Well, HYDRA's an evil organization that wants to dominate the world, so grandiose, inefficient weapons are par for the course for groups like that (in fiction and reality). At any rate, these Helicarriers are meant to be mobile launching stations and suborbital weapons platforms that can track and target any individual from anywhere in the world, so having those things land on water is unimportant. As for the runways; just because most of their aircraft are Quinjets, it doesn't mean that they don't have fixed wing aircraft that would require long runways (case in point; the jet from The Avengers that launched the nuke at Manhattan came from the first helicarrier). Also, by your logic, I fail to see how the first helicarrier would make any sense, considering that if it was already a normal sea bound aircraft carrier, why would it need to be able to fly?
  • The thing is... Project Insight's helicarriers were basically just vehicles for the Insight rail guns and computers. However, in order to get them up into the air using S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA had to operate within the S.H.I.E.L.D. paradigm, which includes using the Helicarriers as airborne launch platforms for aircraft and tactical teams. If they were to just launch airborne rail guns, the Council might not have approved of them. They needed to be a component of a larger, multirole, flexible response force (i.e., what S.H.I.E.L.D. does) for the entire plan to work. And HYDRA is not the agency footing the bills for the Helicarriers, so they wouldn't care if their railgun platforms came with all the pesky baggage associated with aircraft carriers.

Sharon's cover

• Why is she a nurse in an infectious disease ward? Not that it's not a believable cover in and of itself, but that's almost exactly what Steve's MOTHER did. She was a nurse in a TB ward. Couldn't that tip Steve off that something's not right? Plus it seems weirdly manipulative to me to ask an agent tasked with protecting someone to pretend to have the same job as his MOTHER. Particularly when she's the niece of his lost love… It's just kind of creepy.
  • Why would it tip Steve off to anything? Do you think he's so paranoid that someone having a similar job as his mother did a hundred years ago is going to make him suspicious? I honestly don't see how any part of the situation is as suspicious or manipulative.
  • Plus, nurse is a great job for a cover, as it provides plausibility for her to be home and awake at basically any hour: her shift just changed and she's trying to alter her sleep schedule, she had to stay late for an emergency so has extra time off, she can't go in at all because she has a mild cold herself...

The USB stick inside the snack machine

• How did Steve manage to get the USB stick inside the snack machine so quickly? You can't just casually open those machines, otherwise people would be stealing stuff from them all the time. Steve didn't have the time to dismantle the machine, and it doesn't look like he broke the glass either, since it's shown to be intact when we see the stick inside. (Also, breaking the glass would draw attention to the machine, which Steve obviously didn't want to happen, lest someone find the USB stick.) So how did he do it?
  • Rewatch the scene. Just after Rumlow tells Steve they need to get going, Steve stops to ponder for a bit and sees a guy has opened the snack machine and is restocking it. The guy is looking down so he doesn't see Steve hide something in the upper levels, and it's when he closes the machine that we see the drive hidden with the gum.

The glove on Bucky's metal hand

• Why does Bucky wear a glove on a metal hand attached to a metal arm? Is there ANY point at all? Not even Rule of Cool seems like a good excuse— a cybernetic arm is already badass as it is.
  • For traction, probably, so things don't slide out of his smooth non-squishy hand.
  • And keep things from getting pinched in between the plates.
  • Those two things, plus Rule of Cool

Cap and Widow murder innocents?

• If the "kidnappers" in the opening sequence were hired by Fury, then haven't Cap and Black Widow essentially murdered a bunch of innocent people?
  • Batroc is said to have a reputation for maximum casualties, and the other pirates demand they get to killing hostages already. They weren't innocent mercs for hire; these were Ruthless Modern Pirates that Fury tricked into doing something for him. Even if they weren't, Cap and Widow were under the belief that the pirates were about to kill people, so if blood is on anyone's hands, it's on Fury's for not telling them the truth.
    
    Also of note is that while Widow killed pirates aboard the ship, Steve didn't kill any. All of his attacks were knockout blows, and the worst anyone got from him was a stabbed hand.
  • Point of order, a normal human can kill another normal human by punching them in the head hard enough. Steve, a super soldier who can punch you in the head hard enough to send you flying 20 feet, almost definitely killed the people he was fighting, especially the ones he knocked over the side of the boat.
  • For the record, it's possible that Rogers doesn't actively try to directly kill anyone. He may punch a guy hard enough to send him flying 20 feet with the intention of disabling, and if said guy dies from internal injuries, so be it.
  • Tap on the Head is not uncommon in superhero moves. Steve was pretty rough to the guys he fought in the elevator, tossing them into walls and punching them in the face, and yet they made it out fine.
  • Batroc and his men were literally seconds away from killing S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, and not one of them blanched at the idea. Hell, the leader of the team watching the hostages was outright eager to start executing them. Those mercenaries were not angels.
  • Fury knows Rogers has a moral code, and respects him for it. He'd have made sure that every one of the pirates involved was soundly deserving of whatever mayhem Cap or Widow subjected them to, because doing otherwise would risk alienating Steve in the event that the true nature of the mission came out.
  • "Innocent" is a strange word to apply to a bunch of guys who agreed to take a job that involved hijacking a ship and threatening to kill its crew (and at least one merc was eager to get to the killin'). The phrase "live by the sword, die by the sword" applies here; these weren't, for example, random crew members who were only fighting because they'd been attacked.

The Apple Store

• Why access the USB at the Apple store, where they can put many lives at risk? And why didn't the Apple store employee recognize them from the battle of New York?
  • They had to do it somewhere. And it's a lot less obvious who they are out of costume.
  • They seriously couldn't do it somewhere where they won't risk the deaths of many innocent people?
  • The crowd is their defense. They figure S.H.I.E.L.D. agents aren't going to open fire in a crowded mall. And they were short on time. If they plugged in the flash drive anywhere, their location would be known, so they chose a place where they wouldn't be immediately shot through the walls.
  • Uh, the fake cops who ambushed Nick Fury didn't seem to care about the possibility of innocent bystanders when they opened fire on his car in traffic. Or do the agents who have allegiance to S.H.I.E.L.D. but not to HYDRA have a different set of rules?
  • They may not know anything about the fake cops, considering how Cap's briefing was so short and so soon after he met Fury that night. But what they do know is that the agents who attacked Cap in the elevator tried to take him alive. They could've use their superior numbers to mow him down, but instead they used non-lethal weaponry. So they're counting on a capture attempt again.
  • Also, HYDRA's S.H.I.E.L.D. pretend-to-bes are very sensitive to public perception (i.e. avoiding shooting Cap in public), as well as the fact that at that point Steve and Natasha likely think that the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents being sent after them are actually just misinformed S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel and not HYDRA assassins. They believe that Rumlow wants to capture them, not kill them.

Captain immediately trusting Kate

• So, a sniper shoots Nick inside Captain's home. Nick's last words are literally: "Don't trust anyone". Then, an armed woman enters the apartment and says, that she is from S.H.I.E.L.D. and is here to protect Captain. He immediately trusts her and turns his back to her. The he leaves wounded Nick with her. Wouldn't it be reasonable to at least suspect, that she may be lying and is actually working with the sniper?
  • If she had been trying to kill him too, then she would've shot him rather than introducing herself. There'd be no reason for her to overcomplicate an assassination when she'd already have him at gunpoint.
  • Plus, he seemed to be wary until she radioed for EMTs. Maybe Rogers recognized the voice on the other end.

The Winter Soldier's age

• Natasha says that The Winter Soldier has been credited with over two dozen kills in the last 50 years. Does he not age? Is that part of the super-soldier serum knockoff he received? Or is "The Winter Soldier" possibly a title given to multiple agents, as opposed to one person?
  • This is answered in the Winter Soldier's flashback montage. Whenever he's not on a mission he's put into cryogenic suspension. This is also how they kept him young in the comic the film was based on.

Would the antagonists in the Netflix shows be constituted as threats to HYDRA?

• While this might be a better question for fanfics and WMG, seeing how the ties that Daredevil (2015) and Jessica Jones (2015) have to the MCU are somewhat dubious, I do sometimes wonder, would Wilson Fisk be the kind of person HYDRA might target with Project Insight? Likewise, would Project Insight also target someone like Kilgrave or would Kilgrave be spared?
  • With Fisk, it depends on whether or not he would join or oppose HYDRA. Kilgrave intentionally hid all traces of his existence, so he wouldn't be targeted. But if Insight was aware of Kilgrave, he'd definitely be dead.
  • Kilgrave is about mind rape. I imagine HYDRA would want to weaponize Kilgrave's Mind Rape abilities to further their own agendas.

It couldn't have been someone who just happens to look like Bucky?

• Steve immediately assumes that the cold-blooded assassin who's trying to kill him is Bucky, based on what his face looks like. There are many instances in Real Life of two people who happen to look almost identical facially, but aren't related at all. Yes, Steve may have just spent decades in cryosleep, but you'd think that at best he'd think that this Caucasian male, who's in his 20s/30s (whereas Bucky would be in his 90s by now, had he aged naturally), has longer hair than Bucky ever had, and is trying to kill him, just happens to be someone who looks like his friend (whom he thought he saw plunge to his death)? No one seems to acknowledge the possibility, even while they're discussing it after Falcon, Widow, and Cap are arrested. It'd be a bizarre coincidence, sure, but weirder things have happened in the MCU; it doesn't feel like "My best friend who I saw die is an ageless assassin who doesn't remember who I am and wants me dead" is any more rational of an explanation than "That guy kinda looks like Bucky."
  • It's not just "someone who happens to look like Bucky," it is Bucky's exact face. Bucky was Steve's best friend. He knew him for his entire life, saw his face practically every day and would have it memorized better than the back of his own hand. Steve knows him well enough to recognize him despite the logical inconsistencies. "My best friend showed up looking the same age 70 years after his supposed death by falling into a frozen river after being experimented on by a Swiss mad scientist" makes a lot more sense when you remember Steve showed up looking the same age 70 years after his supposed death by crashing into the arctic after being subject to experimentation from Erskine. Steve accepts the premise because it's nearly the same exact thing that happened to him.
  • It would be totally different if it was someone other than Steve who encountered Bucky. They'd at best be able to say "He looked kinda like one of those soldiers I saw in the Howling Commandos exhibition over at Air & Space."

Nick Fury passing notes... on digital devices

• So Nick has barely escaped with his life and is in hiding. Hes Properly Paranoid about being spied on and chooses to write what he has to say to Cap. But since he's up against an organization that's boasting about feeding off all info that's digitally availabe (he didn't hear Sitwell say that but if anyone would know, it's Nick) why not... you know, actually write it? On a piece of paper? Instead of typing it out on some elaborate and, presumably, hackable, smart device, especially since not a year ago Tony Stark hacked the Shield helicarrier's mainframe in under an hour?
  • He wasn't sending the messages anywhere. Just typing them out on the screen and, presumably, erasing them. Besides which, they already were trying to kill him. At that point he doesn't have to worry about people catching on to a plot against him, he was just trying to keep from being overheard and his options were limited.

Ambushing Fury

• Nick Fury has just led his ambushers (the mock police) on a several-block chase through D.C. Finally throwing off the last pursuers (okay, he let a truck throw them off, same diff), he makes a left turn, and sees... the Winter Soldier waiting in the middle of the street to ambush him with his grenade/mine launcher. The question: How the hell did the Soldier know where Fury would end up in time to position himself in his path? How would anyone predict Fury's ultimate path, especially given his making a turn at the last minute? Given, Hydra is good at this kind of thing, but how are they that good?
  • They have Fury's psych profile, extensive personal observations, access to the same type of AI his car has, knowledge of the traffic jams that keep him on a certain route (which they may have arranged), and, oh yeah, an algorithm intended to predict people's reactions. We don't know if it can be applied on a more tactical level, but it would make sense. It's also possible the Soldier planned to shoot Fury however Fury took that intersection (all of the options would force Fury to slow down, including straight), realized the crash would force Fury left, and Fury just happened to end up on the worst route.

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