Spoilers for all works set prior to Avengers: Endgame are unmarked.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
Appearances: Iron Man | Iron Man 2 | Thor | Captain America: The First Avenger | The Avengers | Marvel One-Shots | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Avengers: Age of Ultron | Ant-Man | Ant-Man and the Wasp | Captain Marvel | Avengers: Endgame | Spider-Man: Far From Home | WandaVision | Lokinote | Black Widow | What If...?
Nick Fury: The principle S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded upon was pure... Protection. One word. Sometimes to protect one man against himself, other times to protect the planet against an alien invasion from another universe... but the belief that drives us all is the same, whether it's one man, or all mankind.
Phil Coulson: That they're worth saving.
Phil Coulson: That they're worth saving.
The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is an organization formed from the S.S.R. after the end of World War II. Inspired by the heroism presented by Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded to protect the world from terrorist, alien, and supernatural threats, and to organize the best and brightest of the world to that end.
It would later be learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by HYDRA loyalists from the organization's conception, which would lead to the end of the group's position as the predominant defense organization of the world. As such, the organization was publicly disbanded (although operatives still worked toward cleaning up the mess HYDRA left in secret).
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In General
- Animal Motifs: Eagles, appropriately enough. Their Helicarriers give them mastery over the sky and they're primarily presented as a noble yet arrogant organization that attacks from the shadows with quick cloak-and-dagger tactics.
- Anti-Hero: As a whole, S.H.I.E.L.D. might be ultimately "on the side of the angels" (so to speak), but it's not that big of a surprise in retrospect that HYDRA was able to infiltrate them. In Endgame, when Tony and Steve travel to the '70s and visit their base in New Jersey which was the place where the Captain America experiment and the Arnim Zola AI was housed, Iron Man calls them "quasi-fascistic" which Captain America doesn't challenge or respond to.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Invoked with the numerical clearance level, where an agent's level is based on accomplishment rather than age or seniority. In the premier of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Maria Hill stated that the Avengers are Level Six clearance, even though only three members—Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye—are proper agents. By the time of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Natasha and Clint are at Level Seven, while Steve is at Level Eight. There was a six month difference between these two points.
- Back from the Brink: Phil Coulson and his team (along with the "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D. splinter cell) saved the entire organization from collapsing upon itself after HYDRA made its move.
- Cool Airship: The Helicarriers are present. These versions look like oversized aircraft carriers, and are in fact fully capable of going on the ocean.
- Cool Plane: The Quinjets, the Bus, and Zephyr One.
- Cloak and Dagger: An extra-governmental organization established to deal with unconventional espionage. Justified in that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has enough weird stuff going on in it that S.H.I.E.L.D. would be a necessity.
- Demoted to Extra: Was originally the linchpin that brought the Avengers and the entire Shared Universe together. However, they fall to pieces in The Winter Soldier thanks to the HYDRA reveal, play a minor role in Age of Ultron, and is mostly forgotten in the Phase 3 films, with the only references being Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which never truly crossed over with the films during its run) and some passing mentions in Ant-Man, Civil War, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it's only prominently featured in Captain Marvel (which is set before their disintegration).
- Expy: For a variety of American government agencies. In Phase One they were meant to evoke the Department of Homeland Security (the War on Terror still being more relevant to contemporary audiences than WWII or the Cold War), even having "Homeland" in their name. In Agent Carter, the S.S.R. agents' attire and mode of operation more resembles the CIA (or OSS, rather) or Hoover's FBI.
- Fun with Acronyms: Grant Ward jokes that whomever came up with the name of the organization probably wanted the letters to spell S.H.I.E.L.D. and used a combination of words that would make that happen.
- Good Counterpart: To HYDRA. Complicated by the fact that it's been infiltrated by HYDRA since its founding days.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: People were understandably terrified to learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. was housing a major terrorist cell, which is why they don't officially exist anymore. In season four of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. then Director Jeffery Mace tried to legitimize the agency and get it back into the world's good graces, which worked... Until an LMD of Daisy Johnson shot General Glenn Talbot in the head which led to the remainder of S.H.I.E.L.D. being hunted down by the American government.
- The Men in Black: Back in Phase One, their agents would show up in black suits and try to keep a lid on things. However, it was obvious they didn't have a clear handle on exactly what was going on (they thought Tony had escaped the Ten Rings by turning collaborator, and that Thor was a foreign agent), and they stopped bothering with such secrecy when the cat got out of the bag.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Although S.H.I.E.L.D. itself survived the HYDRA infiltration, many operatives are dead, and the group is working on much more limited resources than before. They also have to cover their tracks because they're not officially supposed to exist. Ironically, this has forced them to Take A Level In Badass as a result to the point that (in a sense) they're even more formidable now than they were before.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: The deep HYDRA infiltration uncovered in Captain America: The Winter Soldier has proven to be nigh impossible to get past, to the point where even though S.H.I.E.L.D. is technically back in the government's good graces, they still don't officially exist anymore. In Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., however, S.H.I.E.L.D. relegitimizes as an agency under the United Nations to help enforce the Sokovia Accords, though people frequently bring up the HYDRA infiltration as a reason to continue distrusting it.
- Spy School: The S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy was split into three separate branches: Communications, Operations, and Science and Technology. Of the three, the Operations Academy was closest to the traditional Spy School trope.
- Sigil Spam: Pretty much every S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle in has the organisation's eagle logo on it. The most noticeable is the team's plane, which not only has the logo all over the inside, but has it emblazoned across the upper surface of the plane itself. The inside of every S.H.I.E.L.D. facility we see also has liberal applications of the logo, although there is some variation in the level of detail and the style with which the eagle is depicted. Remember, this is a semi-covert agency, and some of these vehicles really shouldn't be emblazoned so openly.
"Real" S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Real" S.H.I.E.L.D.
Gonzales: You have your orders, Agent Morse. This is not a democracy.
Bobbi: Maybe it should be.
Bobbi: Maybe it should be.
A splinter cell of S.H.I.E.L.D., formed on the day S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. Nick Fury gave Bobbi Morse an order to sink the Iliad, a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft carrier, to prevent HYDRA from getting the cargo. She refused to follow through because she would have had to sacrifice the loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agents still onboard. Against all odds, they took back the ship and then picked up survivors from the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy. Reasoning that Nick Fury's autocratic leadership style and secret-keeping is what led to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s downfall, they decided to rebuild it on the principles of democratic leadership and transparency. Distrusting Coulson for his loyalty to Fury and exposure to alien influence, they kept themselves hidden and sent moles to infiltrate his team, gathering intel to prepare to seize control from him.
- Accomplice by Inaction: They haven't really done anything against HYDRA, focusing all of their resources on stopping Coulson. The members always deflect when anyone from Coulson's team brings up HYDRA.
- Broken Pedestal:
- None of them have any respect for Nick Fury after the HYDRA Coup. In fact their organization began with Bobbi disobeying Fury's orders.
- Many of them—particularly Gonzales, Weaver, Bobbi, and Mack—were well-respected by members of Team Coulson, particularly FitzSimmons and Hunter, only for their plotting against Coulson to seriously damage their admiration.
- Conflict Ball: They refuse to talk to Coulson about their misgivings over his leadership style, instead opting to plant moles on his team and then essentially hijack control of the organization when they believe he must be stopped.
- Cosmopolitan Council: Gonzales and Calderon are Latino-Americans, Anne Weaver is African-British, Mack is African-American, Bobbi and Oliver are Caucasian-Americans, and Hartley might be a queer.
- Easily Forgiven: They never get any punishment for all the trouble they caused by trying to wrest control away from Coulson, nor do they even admit they did anything wrong. Instead they're assimilated back into the organization - albeit with a lot of tension.
- Fantastic Racism: They really don't like gifted people — in fact, they fear Coulson is forming an army of them. Bobbi is the only that doesn't have a natural distrust of gifted people, while the rest run the spectrum of calling enhanced people "it" and "something" to trying to kill an enhanced despite Bobbi ordering the use of ICERs to take her alive.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: Although they stopped following Fury's orders they still have good intentions, but their heavy-handed methods and hypocrisy don't make them very trustworthy. They unite with Team Coulson in "Scars", serving as the successor to the council that had guided Fury.
- Hero Antagonist: Misguided and hypocritical as they might have been, overall they were not evil. They were convinced Coulson's group was under alien influence to build an army of enhanced humans.
- Hero of Another Story: Their version of what happened post HYDRA Coup is that while Coulson ran around hunting alien artifacts in order to raise a Gifted army for his alien handlers, they scrambled to save as many of their fellow agents as possible. In truth, Coulson was in the progress of checking bases for survivors before Talbot forced him on the run. With limited resources, he decided to refocus his efforts on stopping Garrett. It wasn't until Fury gave him the assignment to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. that he had the means to search for survivors.
- Hypocrite:
- They claim to value transparency but they're even more secretive than Coulson is. They also make claims of wanting to resolve the situation amicably but actively avoided any attempts to work things out with him rationally, jumping straight to force on flimsy pretenses.
- They believe Fury's secret-keeping is why S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, ignoring or unaware that HYDRA's infiltration was a systemic problem from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s very inception at the beginning of the Cold War. Whatever Fury's role in HYDRA's endgame, Fury is at best one link in a very long chain, and they're ignoring HYDRA to focus on him.
- I Reject Your Reality: When somebody brings up the fact that Coulson was hunting alien artifacts so HYDRA didn't get them first, they always twist the facts around so that the HYDRA factor is inconsequential.
- Improperly Paranoid: They see Phil's favoritism over Skye (who is like a daughter to him and is a teammate) when she develops her inhuman abilities, his manhunt for criminals in the index (most of which were detained by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place to protect the public) and his secrets regarding Theta Protocol (reconstructing the Helicarrier for extreme emergencies, something that becomes vitally important in Avengers: Age of Ultron) as a nefarious plot where he is building an army of powered people for World Domination.
- Jerkass Has a Point: For all their hypocrisy, Coulson admits they do have legitimate points over concerns about any negative effects of the GH serum might have on him, and that there are flaws in his leadership style.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After "The Dirty Half Dozen", they quickly fold themselves into Coulson's command structure. Implicitly, knowing that he has both Nick Fury and the Avengers (through Hill) on his side made them reconsider any further hostilities.
- No True Scotsman: Both in their name and actions. They are convinced that Coulson is illegitimate as Director because he does not answer to a board or council and thus his attempt to reconstruct S.H.I.E.L.D. is a farce hiding something nefarious. Unfortunately, rectifying this seems to take precedence over any more obvious or immediate threats like HYDRA or the super-criminals that have been running amok.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: They're led by a board of operatives with Gonzales as the chairman.
- True Companions: Became this after the liberation of the Iliad, facing waves of Hydra mooks while completely outnumbered and on their own.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Apart from Bobbi and Mack, Calderon and Weaver are the only council members to have survived the events of season 2, yet neither has been seen since.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: They think Coulson is an alien sleeper agent building up a stockpile of Gifted soldiers who is bringing S.H.I.E.L.D. to ruin, and that they are the heroes who must come in and stop him before it's too late.
"We are not agents of nothing, we are agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and that still carries weight!"
