Characters / MCU: Johann Schmidt

aka: MCU Red Skull

Main Character Index > Villainous Organizations > HYDRA > Leadership (Johann Schmidt | Grant Ward) | Operatives

---

Johann Schmidt / Red Skull / Stonekeeper

"I have seen the future, Captain! There are no flags!"

^{Click here to see his false face}
"Quite simply, gentlemen, I have harnessed the power of the gods."

^{Click here to see him as the Stonekeeper}
"A lifetime ago, I too sought the stones... I even held one in my hand. But it cast me out, banished me here, guiding others to a treasure I cannot possess."

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: German

Affiliation(s): Schutzstaffel (formerly), HYDRA (formerly)

Portrayed By: Hugo Weaving (The First Avenger), Ross Marquand (Infinity War onwards)

Voiced By: Humberto Solórzano (Latin-American Spanish dub), Abel Folk (European Spanish dub), Kazuhiro Yamaji (Japanese dub), Hélio Ribeiro (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

Appearances: Captain America: The First Avenger | Avengers: Infinity War | Avengers: Endgame

"You are deluded, Captain. You pretend to be a simple soldier, but in reality you are just afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind! Unlike you, I embrace it proudly! Without fear!"

A brilliant yet completely insane German scientist during World War II. He's the head of the Nazi party's deep science division HYDRA. His pursuit of power from Norse Mythology turned him into a greater threat than Adolf Hitler himself. Being a Super-Soldier prototype doesn't hurt either.

After being defeated by Captain America, the Space Stone punished him for abusing its powers by making him the guardian of the Soul Stone on the planet Vormir, which gave him the gifts of immortality and levitation at the cost of leaving him completely alone and leaving a power that he could never possess just out of reach.

---

A-K

• Adaptational Badass: Most versions of the Red Skull are Badass Normals with their hands on really powerful Magitek. This Red Skull took the same Super Serum that Steve Rogers did so he is also a superhuman.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In the comics, Red Skull is the ultimate Nazi and fully believes in their ideologies, taking part in their many war crimes against humanity. Here, while technically aligned with the Nazis at first, he was only using them as a means to an end to fulfill his own goals. Once that's done, he splits HYDRA from the Nazis and targets Germany as well as the rest of the world. Doesn't make him any less evil, but on the bright side, at least he's not a full-on Nazi!
• Adaptational Ugliness: In the comics, the Red Skull face was a mask and Schmidt had a normal human face underneath during World War II. Here, he wears a normal human face as his mask to disguise his true face which was warped by the Super Serum into that of the Red Skull. Granted, the Skull of the comics did eventually get a true Skull for a Head look, but that was after years of fighting Steve after he was rescued from the ice, the Skull getting his mind put into a clone of Steve, and the Skull inhaling his own Dust of Death poison.
• Adaptation Distillation: While the Red Skull did get the Super-Soldier Serum via a cloned body of Steve Rogers and an actual Skull for a Head down the line in the comics, it occurred long after his WWII days. The First Avenger simplifies this by making him a recipient of the original Serum who was disfigured by the side effects.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: He has red hair in the comics, but it gets changed to brown in this version, as shown in Erskine's flashbacks of him before he took the Super-Soldier serum.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Similarly to above, the Skull has nothing but contempt for Adolf Hitler and his ideology seeing him as nothing but a convenient backer to be discarded. Likewise its implied Hitler effectively exiled Schimdt because of his disfigurement. This is a MASSIVE change from the source material where Hitler was a mentor and father-figure to the Red Skull who remains a fervent Nazi because of everything Hitler did for him. Hitler was also the one who conceived the Red Skull persona for Schmidt and gave him his iconic mask.
• Affably Evil: In Infinity War, he’s a lot more mannerly and honest than he was in The First Avenger, where his tact is a mere front.
• The Ageless: He doesn't appear to have aged much when he shows up on the planet Vormir some seventy-odd years later, presumably a consequence of his new role as the Stonekeeper, and he's also got the super soldier serum in him too. Other than his red skin looking a little more pale (possibly a result of the odd lighting from Vormir's permanently eclipsed sun) and a bit of facial weathering and wrinkling, the man looks fantastic.
• Ambition is Evil: When your ambition is to rule the world because you believe yourself to be a higher form of life, it can be fairly called 'evil'.
• Arch-Enemy: To Captain America, representing everything that Cap opposes. He leads the war that Cap has dedicated himself to, and is foiled over and over by the patriotic Super-Soldier.
• Artifact of Doom: In his hands, the Tesseract is most certainly dangerous.
• Ax-Crazy: Everyone recognizes him as insane and his methods of employee discipline are horrific. However, according to Zola, he is to be feared regardless because his insanity means he never stops to ponder the downsides of his plots, meaning he will carry them out against all odds and circumstances.
• Badass Boast: When giving his speech to his soldiers in preparation for the launch of the Valkyrie.
  Red Skull: Tomorrow HYDRA shall stand master of the world, borne to victory on the wings of the Valkyrie. Our enemies' weapons will be powerless against us. If they shoot down one plane, hundreds more shall rain fire upon them! If they cut off one head... Two more shall take its place! Hail HYDRA!
• Badass Bookworm: A German scientist, he can dent metal with his fists after taking the prototype of the super serum.
• Badass Longcoat: As fits any Nazi officer, Schmidt is often seen in a black leather trenchcoat.
• Bad Boss: Fully expects his soldiers to fight and die for the cause of HYDRA (read: ingest a cyanide pill) and should one fail him and live... See You Have Failed Me.
• Bald of Evil: Post-procedure he's just a red skull though his false face still has hair.
• Beneath the Mask: During his first confrontation with Captain America, he takes off his false skin and consigns it to the flames, at last revealing and fully embracing his identity and further dispensing any pretenses to Nazi loyalty.
• Big Bad: In Captain America: The First Avenger. He leads HYDRA, seeks out the Tesseract, and plots to Take Over the World, including Nazi Germany.
• Black Cloak: In Infinity War and Endgame, he is seen wearing a grim reaper-esque cloak for his new role as the keeper of the Soul Stone.
• Body Horror: The serum enhanced his abilities but also physically manifested his twisted nature, leading to his face becoming horrifically disfigured. As Erskine said, "Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse".
• Book Ends: In a sense, he serves as this to Steve Rogers' journey as Captain America. Captain America: The First Avenger - Steve's MCU debut - involved Cap battling a Tesseract/Infinity (Space) Stone-wielding Red Skull before getting frozen and unthawing in the 21st century. The ending of Avengers: Endgame has Steve travelling back in time and returning the Infinity Stones to their respective eras, which included the Soul Stone in 2014's Vormir - which was when and where the Red Skull was serving as the Stonekeeper.
• Brutal Honesty: When the Nazis visit his base to see what he's up to, do figure out that he's a traitor, he admits it straight away.
• The Bus Came Back: After a long seven-year absence, we finally see him again in Avengers: Infinity War as the keeper of the Soul Stone.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Unlike the subtler modern-times villains (including some other members of HYDRA), Red Skull isn't trying to fool anybody. He's a murderous megalomaniac with a skull for a face, and proud of it. Zola even points out how much of a failure Red Skull's blatantly evil approach to world domination was, and how the new HYDRA has found vastly greater success with Alexander Pierce's subtler velvet glove approach. In Infinity War, he very much admits because he's a heartless monster, he can't take the Soul Stone.
• Clarke's Third Law: He came up with it before Clarke himself. That's why he knew he could use the Tesseract to make scientific weapons.
• Color Character: The Red Skull.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Played with. Schmidt is only called "Red Skull" once in The First Avenger, and he doesn't care for the name. It's averted in The Winter Soldier and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where he is exclusively referred to as the Red Skull. Even Steve Rogers, who called him "Schmidt" throughout The First Avenger, only refers to him as "the Red Skull" in The Winter Soldier.
• Composite Character: This version is a distillation of two other major Captain America villains combined with his own character. Also a case of Decomposite Character since the other two would show up later.
  • The baseline, obviously, is the Red Skull. He's the Arch-Enemy of Captain America and his evil reflection. He has the Large Ham tendencies, the Nazi Nobleman look, the general insanity, the leadership role, and obviously, the red skull.
  • Of Baron Strucker as the founder of HYDRA. In the comics, he was suspended on ice before HYDRA formed, and was only rescued later.
  • Of Baron Zemo, specifically Heinrich, who brings in the Stupid Jetpack Hitler elements, and was the one responsible for Captain America being frozen and Bucky Barnes "dying", both of which were due to Zemo in the comics.
  • Of Wilhelm Lohmer, a.k.a. Master Man, for being an WWII enemy of Captain America affiliated with the Nazis who has been subjected to a variant of the Super-Soldier Serum and received enhanced physical abilities.
  • Of, Clint Mc Intyre a.k.a. Protocide, having taken an unfinished super-soldier serum to become Captain America's Psycho Prototype.
  • Of the In-Betweener as the keeper of the Soul Stone when Thanos comes for it.
  • Finally, he takes the role of Death, being a powerful entity wearing a Black Cloak and with a Skull for a Head that Thanos becomes associated with.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In retribution for misusing its power, the Tesseract sent Schmidt to Vormir, hiding place of the Soul Stone, while imparting the knowledge of how to attain it, knowing that his cruel, loveless nature would make it impossible for him to make the needed sacrifice. On top of that he is made its immortal guardian, with knowledge about the lives and secrets of all those who come to seek it.
• Cool Car: His transport is a coupé that looks like a mix between a Mercedes-Benz and a Bentley. Quite proud of it, too!
• Cruel Mercy: What the Tesseract did to him, ultimately. It didn't kill him, but it did leave him stuck on the far side of the universe, unable to die as the permanent guardian of the power he wants so desperately but can never possess.
• Deadpan Snarker: When a soldier says his unit "fought to the last man", he replies "Evidently not," and kills him.
• Despair Event Horizon: Schmidt's decades-long exile on Vormir seems to have broken his spirit; far from the forceful personality he once had, he speaks in a detached voice that shows little hint of the ambitious and power-hungry man he was in the 1940s. The only consolation he gets is watching others try to get the stone and fail miserably.
• Diabolical Mastermind: A mad scientist and leader of a terrorist organization who seeks world domination.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He used to be an executive for Hitler until he and HYDRA broke off on their own and renounced the Nazis entirely, fulfilling said agenda.
• Dramatic Unmask: During Johann Schmidt's first confrontation with Captain America, he dramatically peels off his face to reveal himself as the Red Skull.
• The Dreaded: He's such a dangerous villain that even his own henchmen are afraid of his wrath. Especially Dr. Zola.
• Emerging from the Shadows: When we meet him in Avengers: Infinity War, he wears a ragged black cloak that initially casts a shadow on his face.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • Schmidt was already a brilliant scientist and member of Hitler's inner circle when he took the super-soldier serum. Afterwards, he's a superhuman combatant capable of holding his own against Captain America.
  • In Infinity War he was made an unwilling cosmic herald for the Soul Stone, an artifact that he heedlessly pursued, but could never attain. Endgame implies that he has gained a certain level of omniscience with his new position when he gives the name of Natasha's father, which even she herself never knew.
• Enlightened Antagonist: By Infinity War, seventy years of solitude with cosmic power just beyond his grasp seems to have led him to calm down and think about his own failings in life, as well as his place in the cosmic nature of the universe. However, rather than attempt to better himself, he simply seems to accept his own Lack of Empathy as a matter of course.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When talking to a group in Endgame, he refers to Clint as the son of his mother, rather than his father. Since her name, Edith, is shared with the comics, this would imply Clint's family history is as troubled as ever, with his father being either absent, or the outright abusive drunk he was in the comics. Either way, even Red Skull seems to think he wasn't worth mentioning.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When he captures Cap at his mountain base, he pauses to ask him just what made him so special that Erskine would actually make him a Super-Soldier. Steve merely replies that he's just a kid from Brooklyn, enraging Schmidt enough to give him a quick No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Evil Counterpart: He is a complete antithesis of Captain America. Both were injected with a Super Serum and became superhumans, but the similarities end there. Captain America is the embodiment of patriotism, an Ideal Hero who fights for freedom. Red Skull was originally a Nazi who embodied fascism, and if that wasn't enough he ends up betraying his own country and seeks world domination.
• Eviler than Thou: He manages to pull this on the Nazis: He thinks that they will never get him as far as he wants, so he separates himself and HYDRA from them and goes on his world-domination quest without them.
• Evil Genius: He has shown to be a formidable researcher and scientist, able to distinguish truth and myth about ancient powerful relics.
• Evil Is Hammy: His lines, especially when he first meets Roger, is filled with dramatic bombast. It makes sense as well, seeing he wants to be someone special, putting him at odds with Steve's Humble Hero nature.
  "Captain America, how exciting!"
• Evil Makes You Ugly: It does when an imperfect Super-Soldier Serum encounters pre-existing evil.
• Evil Plan: Use the Tesseract to create super weapons and take over the world.
• Evil Sounds Deep: A Eviler than Thou Nazi psychopath with a deep voice.
• Exact Words: He states that HYDRA was formed to eliminate his enemies. This does not go unnoticed by his Nazi auditors.
• The Exile: At the end of The First Avenger, the Tesseract exiles Schmidt to Vormir for misusing its power.
• Expy: Schmidt's fate, revealed in Infinity War, makes him something of one for Tantalus; in trying to set himself up as an equal to the gods, Schmidt, like Tantalus, found himself condemned to an eternity of having his greatest desire just out of his reach, forever in sight, but beyond his ability to claim.
• Facial Horror: His entire head is a deformed, red skull shape, albeit with eyes, due to taking the unfinished Super-Soldier serum.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Tesseract dumped him out on Vormir, where he was consigned to be the Stone-Keeper of the Soul Stone, unable to die, and made to guide others to a power even stronger than the one he longed to wield.
• Faux Affably Evil: The first thing he says to Captain America is "I am a great fan of your films!".
• Foil: A pitch-perfect foil for the Captain. Steve's a kid from the streets, the Red Skull is a high-ranking Nazi elite. Steve is a Humble Hero, Johann overflows with Pride. The Captain takes on the identity of a whole nation, the Red Skull is disloyal to the party.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Initially just a Nazi scientist, the serum turned him into a real supervillain.
• Genius Bruiser: A brilliant scientist and military tactician and also strong enough to put a dent in Steve's metal shield.
• Ghostly Glide: When first seen on the planet Vormir, the Red Skull is clad in a Black Cloak and floating above the ground, giving him a very specter-like appearance.
• A God Am I: Has one hell of a god complex and gets deflated whenever Cap calls him out on it or acts humble despite his own commensurate super power. The fact that he made himself a godlike figure to his followers also suggests that, assuming he was ever aware of it, he sought (somewhat successfully) to hijack the role of "HYDRA god" from Hive.
• The Grim Reaper: Combined with his scarlet, bony visage, Schmidt starts to truly ape the imagery after watching over the Soul Stone somehow gives him a dark, raggedy cloak and the ability to menacingly levitate.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Unlike his comics counterpart who's a Politically Incorrect Villain, this version of Red Skull isn't a bigot; he thinks everyone not him is equally undeserving of his empathy.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Though not a good guy by any means, he appears to have abandoned his quest for power after becoming the Soul Stone's guardian, and he seems to bear some regret for the dreadful fate his quest for power has condemned him to. At most, he's neutral, but you can sense a bare hint of his former sadism when he tells Gamora that she's wrong about Thanos shedding tears of failure.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: A great deal of his wardrobe is leather, especially his longcoats.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • He builds, finances, and powers an entire army with the Tesseract as his power source. Then his fight with Captain America knocks the cube out of its containment vessel, and Schmidt makes the mistake of trying to pick it up with his bare hand. And it doesn't kill him, either! Although he may have wished it did.
  • His megalomania and sociopathy makes him the perfect guardian of the Soul Stone, as he ultimately can never have it for his own as he doesn't care enough for anybody to act as a worthy sacrifice for the Stone. As a result, it's just within his physical reach, but still lightyears away.
• Hypocritical Humor: This line to Steve when the latter is captured at his mountain base, especially priceless coming from someone whose superiority complex is in the stratosphere.
  Skull: Arrogance may not be a uniquely American trait, but I must say, you do it better than anyone.
• I Am X, Son of Y: He doesn't do it for himself, but after being banished to Vormir, Schmidt greets any who come seeking the Soul Stone by addressing them in this manner, doing so for Thanos (son of A'Lars), Gamora (daughter of Thanos), Clint (son of Edith), and Natasha (daughter of Ivan). His preternatural knowledge of these seekers might suggest that he now possesses a degree of omniscience in his role as the Stonekeeper; only Thanos would be aware of the name of his father, and not even Natasha knew her father's name.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Inverted. The Red Skull is already convinced that he is special, that he was worthy of the serum. He sees in Captain America his opposite number, another god like him... so during his second encounter with the Captain, he demands to know what makes the Captain special, and the answer is his Berserk Button.
  Steve: I'm just a kid from Brooklyn.
• I Lied: Played With. During the scene in Tønsberg, he promises the church keeper to spare the town if he tells him where to find the Tesseract. However, even after obtaining the Tesseract, Red Skull still orders his men to shell the town, and shoots the church keeper. That being said, the church keeper didn't actually tell him where the Tesseract was, Red Skull managed to figure it out by himself, so technically he did exactly what he said he would do.
• In the Hood: As the Stonekeeper, he always wears a hood.
• Ironic Hell: His status as the guardian of the Soul Stone. One of the most powerful artifacts in the universe is right within his grasp, he knows how to get it and would readily pay the price for it... But the price it asks is something he will never have: a loved one.
• It's All About Me: As is to be expected of such a narcissist, Schmidt's universe revolves around him. His aims for HYDRA expand to nothing less than world domination in Schmidt's name, a mission that he shamelessly sacrifices any of his followers to see accomplished. This ends up screwing him over in the long run; exiled to the planet Vormir by the Tesseract, Schmidt is unable to claim the Soul Stone's power because he cannot complete the Stone's test: to sacrifice someone you love. As Schmidt loves nothing but himself, he is condemned to act as the Stone's keeper, with it being forever out of his reach.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He apparently looked better before taking the serum.
• Karma Houdini: invoked In a way. While he did suffer decades upon decades of being trapped on Vormir as the unwilling keeper of the Soul Stone, Word of God confirmed that he is free to leave and continue to pursue his own evil plans after Thanos took the Soul Stone. The same would have applied to the Red Skull of the alternative 2014 timeline in Endgame when the Soul Stone is taken by Clint Barton; however, it's implied that Steve Rogers put a stop to that by returning the Stone back to Vormir in his time travel mission, thus leaving the Red Skull to his fate as Stonekeeper.

L-Z

• Lack of Empathy: It's because he views other humans as ants. Why should a superior being care about something so insignificant? Ultimately, this ends up being his Fatal Flaw when it keeps him from ever being able to claim the Soul Stone for himself. It also means that he's totally apathetic to who is sacrificed to claim the Soul Stone; Schmidt doesn't make a move or even react to Thanos sacrificing Gamora, or to Clint and Natasha's struggle over which of them will give their lives to obtain the Stone.
• Large Ham: When he losing control of his temper or the situation or both, he loses his cool and gets outright loose in his shouting and fury. "YOU ARE FAILING!"
• Latex Perfection: His normal human face was evidently an example of this but it's actually averted at a few points: the neck sometimes has problems fastening so that the red flesh can be seen underneath.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After spending the entirety of The First Avenger building an army and his own weapons tech based on the Tessaract, he seemingly gets killed when he grabs it in his bare hand. Then it turns out that he survived grabbing the Tesseract, and it instead teleported him to the planet Vormir, put him within arm's reach of what could be considered the most powerful Infinity Stone with the knowledge that it requires a price he will never be able to pay, and left him there. For seventy years.
• Mad Scientist: According to Erskine he's a brilliant scientist, and he’s definitely mad.
• Marquee Alter Ego: In Captain America: The First Avenger, he spends about half the movie wearing Hugo Weaving's face before he finally dramatically peels it off.
• Masking the Deformity: Johann Schmidt wears a Latex Perfection mask for the first half of Captain America: The First Avenger to hide the red skull-like face he developed from a botched prototype of the Super Serum that empowered Cap.
• Mouth of Sauron: As the guardian of the Soul Stone. While more openly evil and villainous than what he's serving in question, he's the one who explains on its behalf how it demands a particular sacrifice before anyone can use it.
• Narcissist: Has one of his minions paint a portrait of him with entrails. This quality ends up being Schmidt's one-way trip to his personal hell: the Tesseract sends him to act as keeper to the Soul Stone, which requires one to sacrifice someone they love to claim it. Since Schmidt loves no one and nothing but himself, the Stone is beyond his reach.
  Church Keeper: [about the Tesseract] It's not for the eyes... of ordinary men.
  Red Skull: Exactly.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He tries this kind of speech on the church keeper, who quickly refutes this in a Shut Up, Hannibal!! manner. Red Skull admits they aren't alike, but have similar views on mythology and the occult not really being so mysterious.
• Mr. Smith: Alluded to the fact that his name is German for "John Smith" suggests that he doesn't have a real human identity.
• Nazi Nobleman: While he doesn't identify with the Nazi party anymore, he undeniably likes to invoke the Nobleman half.
• Never Found the Body: In-universe, he's presumed to be dead after he grabbed the Tesseract and disappeared. Infinity War reveals, however, that he's alive and well, acting as the Soul Stone's guardian as punishment.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Minor example. Red Skull is technically Cap's physical equal and is superhuman, but unlike the experienced Cap, Red Skull clearly treats direct combat as a last resort; beneath him. This shows when they do fight, as Red Skull relies either on factors like his advanced technology, or the other agents to give him an advantage and if forced into direct one-on-one, he doesn't have the same fighting prowess Cap does.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Red Skull doesn't mess around when it comes to facing Cap. When he sees Steve rampaging through the base, he immediately activates the self destruct sequence to kill him and the escaping prisoners all at once. When he captures Cap at his mountain base, there's no elaborate death trap or Cold-Blooded Torture, just a quick No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and a Tesseract-powered pistol to the head. And when Cap arrives on the Valkyrie and reaches the control room, Red Skull sneaks behind him to get off another Tesseract-powered shot.
• The Noseless: Justified; he's a skull and the nose is made of cartilage rather than bone.
• Obviously Evil: He's a genocidal Nazi control freak with no empathy, a giant trench coat and a freaking skull for a head. Everyone, even Zola, can tell from the start that he's bad news. As the Stonekeeper, this continues with the sinisterly tattered Grim Reaper cloak he now wears.
• Older and Wiser: Gives off this vibe as the Soul Stone's guardian in Infinity War, being much more subdued and even respectful. This does not mean that he is benevolent, however.
• Omnicidal Maniac: His plan for bombing his enemies includes Berlin. No place is safe from him.
• The Omniscient: To a degree; in his role as Stonekeeper, Red Skull demonstrates knowledge of those who come seeking the Soul Stone that he has no obvious way of knowing, most prominently their identities and those of their parents. This even extends to information that the seekers themselves do not know, such as the name of Natasha's father. How he knows these things is unclear, but this, along with his intimate knowledge of the Soul Stone itself, implies that the knowledge may come from the Stone.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: According to the Russo brothers, the Red Skull in Infinity War and Endgame is more of a ghost whose only purpose is to guard the Soul Stone forever than the maniacal HYDRA dictator seeking to be a god. They're not even sure if his past consciousness even exists anymore.
• Personality Powers: The Super Soldier Serum "... amplifies everything inside. Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse." Thus, a psychopathic Nazi who gave Adolf Hitler the creeps essentially becomes an Omnicidal Maniac and even crazier than ever, with power to match his madness.
• Piggybacking on Hitler: He sets up HYDRA like this. It's not until his Nazi allies notice that Berlin is on his list of targets that they realize he isn't exactly on their side.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Schmidt could have easily left Zola to die, but instead gives him the keys to his Cool Car... Because someone has to drive it out of the exploding base. And Zola himself is at least a competent scientist.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Gives one to a Nazi soldier while standing among the ruins of a HYDRA lab destroyed by the Howling Commandos.
  Soldier: We... we fought to the last man!
  Red Skull: (raising his pistol) Evidently not. (shoots the soldier in the face)
• Pure Is Not Good: Only a being without any attachments could be made the Soul Stone's guardian, but Schmidt is pure evil, and that's more than enough to place him there.
• Psycho Prototype: His serum was flawed (and he's evil), so it made him more psychotic then he already was.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: He's the leader of HYDRA, and is a Super-Soldier just as strong as Captain America himself.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: After Schmidt's transformation, Hitler "gives" him a secret base in the Alps. The Red Skull knows that he's really being exiled. However, it gives Schmidt enough privacy to turn HYDRA into his personal army. Played straight with the Tessaract. By trying to misuse its power, it more or less "hires" him to become the Soul Stone's guardian while simultaneously punishing him for his evil ways.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: A black trench coat with a red HYDRA symbol on it. And that's not even mentioning his head.
• Red Right Hand: His face. He has a fleshy mask to cover it.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Twice. To the in-universe public and official history, they are a Renegade Splinter Faction of the Nazi Party; however, they are also somewhat this to HYDRA itself, as under Schmidt's leadership in the 1940's, HYDRA drifted away from the ancient, Hive-worshipping cult it had previously been, focusing more on science-based methods of world domination, with the latter becoming much more well-known for most of its existence. The two groups never actually split apart, and although there seemed to have been some minor tensions (Whitehall, a noted disciple of Schmidt's, expressed contempt for the ancient cult, and the HYDRA Council referred to Schmidt as "our founder"), they worked together, with the ancient cult returning to prominence after Schmidt's HYDRA was decimated by the combined efforts of Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers.
• Retcon: Originally presented as the founder of HYDRA until Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. said otherwise.
• Retired Monster: How he comes across in Infinity War; his time on Vormir hasn't reformed him, as his given reason for being unable to take the Soul Stone is that he's so purely evil he has nothing and no-one he cares enough about to sacrifice for it, but he's also abandoned his megalomaniacal persona and seemingly his imperial ambitions as well. It's unclear, though, if this is because he's genuinely given up on his plans or if he's simply unable to act on them due to being cursed to stay on Vormir.
• Sanity Slippage: He was never a paragon of sanity to begin with, but towards the end his craziness goes up a notch.
• Sanity Strengthening: The time on Vormir for more than a human lifetime has given Johann Schmidt time to calm down from his Ax-Crazy persona previously shown. This isn't to say he's no longer evil by any stretch, but he is calm and rational when speaking about the Soul Stone, apparently having come to terms with the fact that he will never have it himself. In all he comes across as a Retired Monster.
• Satanic Archetype: Not only is the Red Skull the founder of HYDRA, which brought corruption to Earth for decades, but he also serves as the black-robed Soul Stone keeper because he is completely, utterly, irredeemably evil, and he offers a deal to anyone seeking the Stone, giving it to them in exchange for a loved one's life.
• Skull for a Head: It's in the name and he doesn't like it.
• Small Role, Big Impact:
  • For the MCU as a whole. Despite appearing in only one film for seven years, the repercussions of his actions extend far beyond his assumed lifetime. Schmidt's discovery of the Tesseract ultimately leads to Thanos turning his attention to Earth (leading to the events of both Avengers films), and his incarnation of HYDRA later destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D. and plunged the world into a state of uncertainty. It's likely that, without Schmidt's influence on history, the spread of superhuman and world-changing conflicts would not have come to dominate Earth at the turn of the 21st century.
  • Also for Infinity War. He appears for all of one scene, but it is his guidance that makes Thanos realize that he has to kill Gamora to realize his ambitions. This murder later on ends up being the primary reason Star-Lord botches an otherwise successful attempt to defeat Thanos.
  • Similarly for Endgame, Black Widow ends up dying for real due to his role in the story.
• The Social Darwinist: Expresses the view that the strong should rule and the weak are expendable in the tie-in comic. However, his social Darwinism isn't tied to Nazi racial ideology, and he in fact indicates he's not a racist... mostly because he doesn't care about humanity at all anymore, so the distinction of race is meaningless to him.
• The Sociopath: Feels free to ignore morality and empathy because he was serumed — he's above humanity now. Why should he care for human morality? Apparently, it made him ideal for being the Soul Stone's guardian — there is no one more detached and uncaring than a sociopath to guard the stone without taking it.
• Special Person, Normal Name: Ironically, despite Schmidt's god delusion and narcissism, his true name is as mundane as it gets; "Johann Schmidt" is the German equivalent to "John Smith".
• The Starscream:
  • Fully intends to usurp Hitler, and has his minions chanting "Hail HYDRA". Eventually he's revealed to have Berlin as one of his targets for annihilation, and kills the Nazi officers who come to look through his projects.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reveals HYDRA's ultimate purpose is to worship and serve Hive. Though this is very much retroactive continuity, it's pretty clear from Schmidt's overall philosophy that he'd have absolutely no interest at all in this even if he were aware of it.
• Super-Soldier: Same as Steve. The serum helps magnify everything about the subject, including their personalities and inner qualities (good becomes great, bad becomes worse). Schmidt, being decidedly insane and hungry for power, had all of his physical qualities enhanced but gained his grotesque appearance as a result of his psychotic personality.
• Super Smoke: In a deleted scene from Avengers: Endgame, he is seen turning into smoke when Thanos's forces attack Vormir. Apparently, this is one of the powers he obtained once he became the Stonekeeper.
• Super-Strength: He managed to dent Steve's first shield with a punch, which forced him to get one made of Vibranium.
• Take Over the World: In Captain America: The First Avenger, Red Skull makes no secret that his goal is world domination. As Zola points out, it doesn't matter if he's delusional or not if he has the power to do so.
• Tear Off Your Face: Inverted. To show what he really looks like, he tears off his own face (or at least the false one) to show to Cap.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: He's so cruel and heartless that the Tesseract rejected him and punished him by making him the guardian of the Soul Stone. The Tesseract doesn't even try to do that on Thanos when he crushes it with its un-gloved hand to give an idea of how loose the Infinity Stones are in term of morality.
• Übermensch: Schmidt proclaims himself (and Captain America) to have left humanity behind, rejects outside ideologies in favour of one of his own design, and believes himself to be superior to lesser men.
• The Unfettered: A given for a sociopathic Übermensch; Schmidt was willing to wipe out millions of innocent people to prove his delusions of godhood.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He's a scientist first, and when he tangles with Cap it's clear his hand-to-hand combat training isn't at the level of guys like Winter Soldier or even Batroc the Leaper. He can still trade punches with Cap on an even basis since they're both products of the same super serum.
• Villainous Breakdown: "YOU ARE FAILING!!! We are close to an offensive that will shake the planet, yet we are continually delayed because you cannot outwit a simpleton with a shield!"
• Villainous Friendship: His interactions with Zola imply this. Despite his contempt for those he views inferior, Schmidt is almost always polite to the doctor and always treats him with respect. He even seems to regard him as a friend or at the least as a close confidant, asking his opinion on a portrait of him. Schmidt even gives the doctor his personal car to drive out of the exploding base. Though he gets annoyed by the doctor's failure to stop Cap, he instead vents his anger on a soldier. Of course, this could fall under Pragmatic Villainy as he requires the doctor's scientific expertise. Also, Zola knows that Schmidt is a certified psychopath and knows full well the Skull will not hesitate to kill him if he finds him to be a liability. But even then, the sequel shows that Zola is still carrying on Schmidt's legacy in a roundabout way.
• Villainous Legacy: As Steve was the world's first superhero, the Red Skull was effectively the first supervillain, and his actions indirectly influenced future conflicts. He causes the events of The Avengers via his discovery of the Tesseract and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s recovery of it, and as the arc reactor is implied to be based on Howard Stark's research on the Tesseract, he also played a hand in influencing the events of the Iron Man films and all that Tony Stark did with the technology. Furthermore, the fact that his assassin caused the super soldier serum formula to be lost by killing its creator means others try to replicate it, resulting in the events of The Incredible Hulk. And then in The Winter Soldier we find out HYDRA outlived him and has continued on under new leadership, and it's confirmed through Civil War that they continued with their own super-soldier program — though more accurately a super-assassin program. Then as if that wasn't enough, his presence in Infinity War as the Soul Stone's guardian has the greater consequence of leading Thanos on the path to realizing his plan, ultimately culminating in the erasure of half of the universe.
• Villains Out Shopping: He recognizes Captain America on security monitors and calls to him by name, saying he's a fan of his films.^note It also doubles as a reference of sorts to the secret "decadent" tastes of various real-world dictators, such as Hitler's love of pulp cowboy novels and Stalin obsessively watching gangster movies.
• Villains Never Lie: In Endgame, Clint briefly considers the possibility that Schmidt is lying about the need to sacrifice a loved one in order to claim the Soul Stone. The audience is well aware that he's telling the truth, and Natasha comes to the same conclusion when she recognizes that Schmidt knew things about her that Natasha herself never knew (specifically, her father's name), while also pointing out that Thanos went to Vormir with Gamora, and left the planet after claiming the Soul Stone without her, noting that can't be a coincidence.
• Villain Teleportation: As the Stonekeeper, he seems to have the power to disappear at will, as seen in a deleted scene from Avengers: Endgame during which he vanishes into smoke when Thanos's forces start attacking Vormir.
• Visionary Villain: He has a vision of a world united under a single banner: his own.
  Schmidt: I have seen the future, Captain! There are no flags!
• Vocal Evolution: Upon his return in Infinity War, his voice is much lower and his German accent has become much less pronounced, likely from many years of isolation.
• Walking Spoiler: His appearance in Infinity War, given he was absent for 7 years and 14 movies, and is related to the one Infinity Stone that wasn't introduced in previous movies.
• Wham Shot: How his intro in Infinity War plays out. Thanos and Gamora visit Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone, where it is guarded by an ominous being in a hooded cloak. When the ghostly figure emerges from the darkness, we see a familiar red face within his hood...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We don't know what happened to him after Thanos obtained the Soul Stone (and later destroys it). Presumably, he is free from his Stonekeeper role, but it's unknown if he has a way to leave Vormir, or what he's planning to do.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: During the escape from his self-destructing base, Red Skull just walks away with the super-human Captain America in direct line of sight of him. Had he just shot him there instead of revealing his backstory, he would have won the war.
• Wicked Cultured: Shows an appreciation for folklore (for business purposes) and has his picture painted the old-fashioned way.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Though he manages it well and in fact, it's all but stated by Zola, who notes that the sanity (or lack thereof) of his plans are irrelevant, because he can carry them out anyway.
• Worthy Opponent: He tries to regard Captain America as this, but not only does Steve not care for it, but when Steve states that there's nothing special about him (in contrast to Skull's "ubermensch" speeches), the Red Skull has finally had enough.
• Would Harm a Senior: He cruelly shoots the old church keeper during his first scene in Captain America: The First Avenger.
• Would Hurt a Child: When interrogating the church keeper during the beginning of The First Avenger, he threatens to kill everyone in his village if he doesn't tell him where the Tesseract is, including his potential grandchildren.
• You Have Failed Me: He lectures one HYDRA grunt of failing to live up to his report (which also counts as lying to the Red Skull himself) before "correcting" such mistake.
  HYDRA grunt: Sir! I'm sorry, Herr Schmidt. We fought to the last man...
  Schmidt: Evidently not. [shoots the lone survivor]

Variants

Captain Carter's Red Skull

Johann Schmidt / Red Skull

"The Third Reich will fall...And HYDRA will rise from its ashes!"

^{Click here to see his false face}
"The Tesseract was the jewel of Odin's treasure room, fabled to rewrite the Laws of Physics and unlock doors across the universe."

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: German

Voiced By: Ross Marquand

Appearances: What If...?

The leader of HYDRA, Hitler's supernatural sciences division, on Earth-82111. Like his Sacred Timeline counterpart, he seeks to conquer Europe and eventually the world using the Tesseract, albeit using very different means under very different circumstances...

---

• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Downplayed. While he was willing to bomb his own country's capital in the Sacred Timeline, here, he was simply content with watching the Third Reich collapse to the Allies and let HYDRA continue on.
  • He isn't shown to be a Bad Boss to any of his subordinates, never mentioned to be forcing them to ingest Cyanide Pills nor executing any of his own men for failing him, isn't shown ordering Tonsberg to be leveled, and doesn't personally shoot the Norwegian churchkeeper guarding the Tesseract (his men execute him via firing squad instead). He also never forces any of his men to shout "Hail HYDRA", with them doing so willingly when Schmidt proclaims that HYDRA will outlast the Third Reich.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. While it's clear that this version of Schmidt also took the Super Serum developed by Dr. Erskine, he never actually uses any of the superpowers granted by it, using only firearms or having his men do the fighting instead.
• Alternate Self: To the Red Skull of the MCU, coming from a universe where he loses Arnim Zola and the Tesseract earlier in the war, and is forced to come up with an alternate solution to try and achieve world domination.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: He is the Red Skull, after all.
• Arc Villain: The main antagonist for the first episode of What If...?
• Big Bad Wannabe: His scheme to summon an Eldritch Abomination to win the war immediately backfires, as it kills him the moment he opens the portal.
• Color Character: Again, he's the Red Skull for a reason.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: The Red Skull survived in the Sacred Timeline. Not so much in this universe.
• Death by Adaptation: Whereas he lived to become the Stonekeeper of the Soul Stone in the main MCU universe, this version was killed by the Kraken.
• Didn't Think This Through: He was so obsessed on summoning HYDRA's Champion that he never actually bothered to find a way to direct or control it once it was actually summoned, a mistake that ultimately costs him his own life.
• Dramatic Unmask: He unmasks his true face after shooting Roeder, to tell him that he no longer cares about the Third Reich and is no longer part of their collapsing regime.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Red Skull attempted to harness the power of a being from an alternate dimension without having any real idea what it is or what its behavior is. Predictably, it crushes him to death almost instantly.
• A God Am I: His God complex shines even brighter as he proclaims himself a God even while deprived of the Tesseract.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He summons a Kraken to fight the Allies. Said Kraken kills him almost immediately.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The Kraken he's summoned with the Tesseract crushes him to death in the midst of his Evil Gloating to Captain Carter.
• Latex Perfection: Like his Sacred Timeline counterpart, he wears a mask to conceal the scarring on his face. Compared to the former, though, his mask here is able to hide his scarring much better.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Even moreso here, as he never demonstrates his Super-Strength nor does he show any of his combat abilities against either Captain Carter or the Howling Commandoes.
• Oh, Crap!: He has this look on his face just before he's crushed to death by the very Kraken he summoned.
• Rogue Soldier: Like in the Sacred Timeline, he ends up betraying the Third Reich, although this time it's done much later in the war when the Third Reich is much closer to collapsing, and HYDRA itself lacks Zola and any of his advanced weapon designs.
• The Unfought: The monster he summoned with the Tesseract crushes him to death before Captain Carter, Steve, or any of the Howling Commandoes can fight him.

---

"YOU ARE FAILING!"