YMMV / Captain America: The First Avenger

• Adorkable:
  • Even after his lab procedure, Steve is painfully earnest about everything and the opposite of smooth with the ladies.
  • Bucky shows a deep interest in science, gadgetry, and inventions, and at the exhibit for future technologies, he gets overly excited about Howard Stark’s invention.
  • Dernier, who looks like he just got a puppy for Christmas after he blows up an armored car.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Colonel Chester Phillips: when he thought Captain America/Steve Rogers was dead, was he actually upset about the fact that a man may have died in vain - and with him many other men - or was he just mad because Cap snuck out under his watch meaning he could very well have lost his career? For that matter, was there any real merit in his request to have Cap kept in a lab to see if a new version of the formula could be extracted from him or was he just taking his frustration and resentment out on someone who didn't deserve it simply because Rogers wasn't HIS preferred choice for the serum (remember that Colonel Phillips was advocating someone like Gilmore Hodge, who we saw throwing sexist remarks at Peggy Carter and tormenting Steve during basic training)?
  • Dr. Zola first appears to be a Reluctant Mad Scientist who just wants to invent, not kill, but the sequel calls into question whether he really was just a Punch-Clock Villain, since it suggests he was involved in torturing Bucky and many other POWs and was the one who resurrected HYDRA within SHIELD.
  • There's a theory that the 1941 baseball game (see below) was an intentional "slip-up" on Fury's part, to see if Steve's faculties were intact and / or he lived up to his reputation.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • In the scene where Red Skull is making his escape, he makes his getaway in a weird-looking aircraft that was powered by three jet motors on a spinning rotor placed on the center of the aircraft. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie? Real Life military prototype logs say otherwise. In fact, many of the designs HYDRA uses in the movie are based on actual Nazi prototypes that were either too costly to mass-produce or lacked sufficient power (such as the Tesseract) to be effective.
  • Surveillance cameras. Germans pioneered TV and regular TV broadcasts in the late 1930s. (They even understood it was too expensive for ordinary customers, so they used large TV sets in a sort of mini-movie-theaters.) They built a TV-guided anti-ship missile in 1944. It would be the most logical choice for the Red Skull to use on his factory.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Reception in Germany was mixed. Many people thought the movie was playing the Captain Patriotic trope straight, lacking knowledge of the original comic books from the 1940s to compare it to ^note or even the later comics for that matter; the medium is still subject to the Animation Age Ghetto even as of The New '10s, and publishers were reluctant to import a Captain Geographic in particular, not to mention that patriotism comes across as Blind Obedience to modern Germans). Professional critics also criticized the film's decision to focus on Captain America fighting a fictional Renegade Splinter Faction of the Third Reich while completely ignoring real-life atrocities such as the Holocaust, which was seen as trivializing a part of history that is still a very sensitive topic in Germany. That said, the film was still a box office success, and the sequels are as popular as they are elsewhere.
• Award Snub: None of the cast or crew members received Academy Award nominations. While most of these snubs seem to have resulted from the absence of a "For Your Consideration..." campaign, the absence of "Star-Spangled Man" from the Best Song category might sound baffling to those who know that the Academy only nominated two songs that year^note "Real in Rio" and "Man or Muppet", the latter of which won, making the roster appear to have at least one empty slot.
• Awesome Music: "Star-Spangled Man with a Plan" is a legitimately good song, with epic orchestrations and homages to music in the 1940s. You can see why it helped Captain America sell war bonds. It's no surprise when you learn that Alan Menken composed it.
• Catharsis Factor: It is immensely satisfying to watch Bucky defend Steve from a bully, who he gives a good punch and then a kick up the rear.
• Complete Monster:
  • Johann Schmidt, aka the Red Skull, is a profound narcissist who believes himself a god no longer bound by humanity's rules. The head of HYDRA, a Nazi military organization, Schmidt—as revealed in the tie-in comic First Vengeance—orchestrated the Night of Long Knives to butcher his political opposition before turning the group into his own personal cult. Schmidt is introduced killing the guardian of the Tesseract and ordering the entire village where it was hidden wiped out, before betraying the Nazi party in order to pursue his own goals and murdering three officers sent to check on his research. Schmidt uses the Tesseract to make fantastic new weapons for HYDRA, and has POWs torturously experimented on in order to replicate Dr. Abraham Erskine's Super Serum—which Schmidt originally forced Erskine to create by threatening his family, never informing him that they had already died in a concentration camp. Despite their fanatical devotion to Schmidt, he continually shows no concern for the welfare of his men, having them chomp cyanide pills when captured, executing one merely for surviving an attack, and activating the self-destruct sequence at another HYDRA base when Allied forces overrun it, not caring that hundreds of his troops will be killed in the blast. Schmidt's ultimate plan is to use his new weapons to wipe out half the planet, bombing nearly every major city—including his own capital—just so he can rule over what's left.
  • Dr. Arnim Zola debuts as a cowardly scientist who joins the Nazis so they'll fund his work. Gleefully making war machines as part of HYDRA, Zola delights in the disastrous results of Dr. Abraham Erskine's Super-Soldier experiment in anticipation of Johann Schmidt turning to his scientific expertise instead, all while mocking his rival over the prospect of his family being executed for his failure. When Schmidt lets Zola in on his plot to Take Over the World, the scientist enslaves and experiments on prisoners of war to build the super weapons necessary for the scheme before betraying his boss to the Allies when it's made clear failure is inevitable. Having become a true believer in totalitarianism, Zola joins the newly-formed S.H.I.E.L.D. and goes about reforming HYDRA within its ranks, all the while masterminding global conflicts to make the people desperate for security. To do this, he abducts and brainwashes people into being "Winter Soldier" assassins, keeping them in stasis and torturously memory wiping them between missions. All of this culminates in a plot to launch Project Insight, which will trap the world in an eternal surveillance state and give HYDRA the ability to slaughter any dissidents, with it being explicitly stated that this will lead to tens of millions of deaths.
  • Alexander Irvine's novelization: Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, is a rogue Nazi scientist who created the splinter cell "Hydra" to satisfy his own aims at godhood. After a failed attempt to use a faulty super soldier serum on himself to achieve this power, Red Skull has the serum's creator assassinated to stop the Americans from using it. Red Skull captures hundreds of soldiers in World War II and uses them as guinea pigs and test subjects for his experiments, then tries to kill them all alongside hundreds of his own men in an explosion to tie up loose ends. Red Skull's ultimate goal is to use the powerful Cosmic Cube's energy to stage a massive bombing campaign on various countries worldwide, willing to "blow up half the planet" just to prove his power to humanity.
  • Junior Novel, by Elizabeth Rudnick: Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, is the leader of HYDRA, a Cult of Personality he uses to seek cosmic powers and Take Over the World. To this end, Schmidt sabotages the American super soldier program, leading to Dr. Abraham Erskine's death, and kidnaps hundreds of Allied soldiers for his own ends, setting their prison to self-destruct when Captain America arrives to free them. When the Howling Commandos proceed to destroy most of his bases, Schmidt uses his new technology to attempt to bomb "half the world", including the entire American east coast, into oblivion, uncaring of the massive destruction and death he'd cause as long as he can rule over the remains.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Steve's pre-serum emaciated body which seems to be unable to grow his muscles (or all the fighting would have done it) and the fact that no one else in his community seems to be starved, implies that he may have had a whiff of polio in his childhood. Not full-blown polio, of course.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Connie, Bucky's date at the convention, is very popular due to being played by the same actress as Clara in Doctor Who.
  • Private Lorraine is this for obvious reasons.
• Evil Is Cool: The Red Skull, of all people. It probably helps that he's played by Hugo Weaving. He's a Large Ham Bad Boss and in some ways he's more evil than Hitler, he wears a Badass Longcoat and can fight Captain America to a stalemate. Note, however, that in between all the For the Evulz plotting, he has one Pet the Dog moment. The cool thing is, it's to the benefit of both his minion and his car.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: An interview released during the film's 10th anniversary where the writers stated that Steve probably lost his virginity in casual flings during the USO tours upset a lot of fans, due to the film itself implying he was saving himself for the right person and Steve's continued virginity being a very popular Fanon. Fans who enjoyed the Official Couple of Steve/Peggy were also annoyed that it makes their various acts of jealousy over the idea of each other seeing different people come off as mean-spirited for no reason. The fact that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law would officially make this canon for the sake of a gag did not quell those feelings.
• Fan Nickname: Pre-serum Steve is often referred to as 萌やし (moyashi) or "beansprout" in East Asian fandom due to his small size.
• Genius Bonus: Although Odin is usually thought of as a Nordic deity, "Nord" simply means northern Germans, and the Norse shared the same folk religion as the pre-Christian inhabitants of Germany. This folk religion was the crux of the nationalist revival that influenced the Nazi movement and inspired its more esoteric followers. Johann Schmidt, like Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, believes the ancient religion of his people was real.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Although Marvel and Paramount offered simply The First Avenger as an alternative title for countries requesting it, only Russia, South Korea and Ukraine took that option (they also went with that title in Germany for the sequels). All the others, including China, settled for the original title for the film instead.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The movie opens with Schmidt in Tonsberg, Norway, retrieving the Tesseract, then ordering his tanks to shell the town while he shoots the caretaker. The very day the movie was released, Anders Breivik, a neo-nazi went on a bombing and shooting rampage, in Norway.
  • On a thankfully more fictional note, you can make a drinking game out of how many scenes, lines, facial expressions, etc. from Bucky Barnes, Howard Stark, or Dr. Arnim Zola become slightly horrifying when viewed through the lens of the sequel.
  • This movie climaxes with the Allies apparently wiping out HYDRA. Later films and Agents reveal that a) they didn't, and b) Schmidt's little operation was just one tiny part of an Ancient Conspiracy whose plans seem to make him look like a Boy Scout, that is also a friendly corgi - though in terms of actual threat presented, despite the fact that Hive (their god) is genuinely dangerous, the HYDRA cult is pretty limited and held in contempt even by the rest of HYDRA.
  • A part of the climax has Schmidt monologue about a future where "there are no flags". Steve responds that it isn't his future... After the end of Civil War, he gives up his shield and all American symbols, effectively becoming Nomad, the man without a country.
    • Also related to the above quote, the antagonistic faction in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is revealed to be none other than the Flag-Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau. Looks like Karli and the Red Skull had similar ideas about the future having no flags.
  • Tying in with the above, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 shows us that the future of the MCU is indeed one without flags — because the fucking world gets blown up. Schmidt was right.
  • During the bar scene when Bucky is upset that Steve and Peggy aren't paying attention to him, the song playing in the background is one about someone (presumably female, but sung by a man) whose male beloved has left them for a dark-haired woman and is dying of a broken heart. Come Avengers: Endgame, Steve leaves Bucky to go back in time to be with Peggy, which leaves Bucky noticeably heartbroken. By the start of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Bucky is downright suicidal, and continues to cope poorly with his grief from missing Steve for a large chunk of the show.
  • Abraham Erskine explains to Steve that the reason he chose him to receive the super soldier serum instead of Colonel Chester Phillip's preferred choice of Gilmore Hodge is because he's afraid that the serum will enhance someone like Hodge's negative traits, rather than Steve's good and virtuous personality. Fast-forward to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and we see that Erskine was right to be worried about this, as John Walker's usage of the serum turns him from a frosty By-the-Book Cop to an unhinged berserker who uses his newfound strength to kill a man in a blind rage with Cap's shield in public view of everyone.
  • The praise Steve gets for his heroic act of rescuing several P.O.W's from HYDRA's clutches feels a bit more undercut after Isaiah Bradley reveals that he did a similar action while he was active in the 50s, only for the government to throw him in jail, torture him for disobedience and cover up anything related to him from the general public for decades.
  • While not exactly harsh, seeing Peggy Carter decide to go to the observation deck in this film becomes much more important after What If...? shows that had she not done this, Peggy herself would've been forced to take the serum instead of Steve.
  • Peggy's bitter anger upon seeing what appears to be Steve hooking up with a random woman by accident to the point of trying to shoot him becomes less like stereotypical Woman Scorned behavior after She-Hulk: Attorney at Law reveals that Cap indeed did sleep with at least one of the USO tour girls during the events of this film.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Captain America's co-creator, Joe Simon, died about five months after this movie's release, but its box office and critical successes likely helped reassure him of Cap's lasting value before he passed away.
  • A standard bit of evil baddie banter from the Red Skull becomes this when he yells at Steve, "You could have had the power of the gods!" In Avengers: Endgame, Steve gets the power of the gods after all when he uses Mjolnir.
  • Doctor Erskine's last act is to point to Steve's heart, as if to reassure him that he is worthy, not because of the serum they're putting into his body, but because of who he is inside. In Endgame, we find out that even the Gods of Asgard agree when Steve picks up Mjolnir and fights with it.
  • Feel free to start shamelessly ugly-crying when watching this movie and Endgame back to back. Looks like he and Peggy got that dance after all.
• He Really Can Act: After all the Jerk with a Heart of Gold characters he's played, it came as a surprise to some people just how well Chris Evans pulls off an Adorkable puppy dog of a Super-Soldier.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans speculate that Red Skull had actually been temporarily banished from the mortal plane than killed. The fact that the way he was disintegrated was similar to the Bifrost travel in Thor supports it; and if you look closely at the ceiling when the Red Skull first grasps the Cosmic Cube in his bare hand, it temporarily warps to a star-filled view of the same interdimensional void that the Bifrost travels through and that Loki falls into. Fans are proven correct in Avengers: Infinity War, where its revealed that the Tesseract actually teleported the Red Skull to a distant planet to guard the Soul Stone.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Some found it hilarious that Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones played rival German scientists in this film, then a year later found themselves announcing the 74th Annual Hunger Games. And neither of them is German to begin with, as Tucci is American and Jones is British.^note And Zola was never German anyway — he informs Cap that he's Swiss in The Winter Soldier.
  • Natalie Dormer, who plays the young private that flirts with and kisses Steve Rogers, later had a small role in Rush (2013)... as a young nurse who makes out with Chris Hemsworth.
  • In the final scene, Steve meeting with Nick Fury is overseen by a Baskin-Robbins ad. Because Baskin-Robbins always finds out.^note Out-of-universe, though, that is because Baskin-Robbins helps promoting this movie.
  • Howard Stark's remark about HYDRA not attacking Steve with knives. Guess what happens to him (twice!) and to his successor.
  • The writers considered having Baron Strucker as a co-villain, but felt he'd be wasted in such a small part. When Strucker did finally make his full MCU debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron, quite a few fans complained that the movie completely wasted him.
  • The title is "Captain America: The First Avenger"; we find out it was Carol Danvers who had "Avenger" as her callsign and inspired the name for the Avengers Initiative, making this film's title somewhat a misnomer (while Captain America was the first superhero, disregarding the Asgardians and their influence over old Norse culture, "the Avengers" as a concept wouldn't exist until Carol Danvers inspired Nick Fury with it in the 90s).
    • Though it could be argued that, while Fury got the name "Avenger" from Carol Danvers, and while the Avengers Initiative was indeed his idea in the 90s, as he wasn't actually born yet in WWII as Steve Rogers was making his mark as Captain America, Steve is indeed chronologically the first Avenger, even though he wouldn't use the title until after Danvers did.
  • "You could have the power of the Gods!" exclaimed Schmidt during his battle with Rogers aboard the Valkyrie bomber. By Endgame, he did end up having the power of a Demigod upon wielding Mjolnir. That's right, Schmidt: not only are the Norse gods you worship real, but they like Steve more than you. Ouch.
  • And before that, in Infinity War, we find out that Schmidt did indeed get to have the power of the gods. And they made him use it to watch over that same form of power for an eternity as punishment.
  • Assuming that Rogers returned exactly 66 years after his plane was lost, then he's not the only Steve to do so.
  • At one point in the film, Steve is coerced into being used as a propaganda piece by being used in musical theater performances of "The Star-Spangled Man" onstage, which both he and the actual U.S Army find utterly ridiculous. Apparently somebody in Broadway decided to try this idea again in Hawkeye, which results in Rogers: The Musical. Clint Barton and his family are just as unimpressed with it.
• Ho Yay:
  • Howard Stark towards Steve Rogers. First, just look at how Stark looks at Rogers before the injection! Second, just look at how Howard observes Steve's newly-enchanced shirtless body.
  • There's tons of devotion between Steve and Bucky:
    • Steve is willing to walk 30 miles beyond enemy line into Austria for the hundred-to-one chance that Bucky may still be alive.
    • When trapped in an exploding HYDRA base, Steve is stuck on the wrong end of a collapsed bridge. He yells for Bucky to go, but he refuses.
    Bucky: No! Not without you!
    • The drinking song that plays in the bar while Steve and Bucky are talking to Peggy is "There is a Tavern in the Town". It's just a catchy period piece at face value, and Bucky is definitely acting like a Hopeless Suitor in the scene, but the song's literal meaning coupled with Bucky's general feelings of inadequacy during the scene leads to some ...interesting undertones about who of the two he's actually jealous of.
    • There is no way the writers intended for the scene between Steve and Bucky in the bar to come across the way it did.
    Bucky: [leans over] But, you're keeping the [Cap] outfit, right]]?
    Steve: You know, it's kind of growing on me.
    • And when Bucky says goodbye to Steve before shipping off to war, he affectionately calls Steve a punk. While he was most likely using it in the modern sense, historically "punk" also had quite an interesting alternative meaning...
    • Tying in with Fridge Logic or Fridge Brilliance (depending on one's personal Fanon), movieverse Bucky is a Composite Character whose backstory takes a lot from Arnie Roth, a childhood friend of Steve who was bigger and stronger than him and protected him from bullies, and was also super popular with the ladies. Oh, and the other thing Arnie was most famous for? A Gay Aesop. There's also the fact that his namesake James Buchanan's biggest claims to fame are being terrible^note Presidential ranking lists were popularized in 1948, but chances are his dismal reputation among the public extended to the late 1800's. or possibly gay. Bucky's parents were apparently sadists or prophets.
    • Bucky's relationship with Steve is similar to Peggy's relationship with Steve, in the sense that they only ever saw Steve, not Captain America, and that's who Bucky chose to follow into battle. Bucky never saw the hero — he only ever saw his best friend and the man he'd stand by no matter what.
    Steve: You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?
    Bucky: Hell, no! The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him.
  • When Steve asks the Howling Commandos to go back to the front with him, two of them, Jones and Dernier, converse in French and they're sitting awfully close to each other. Makes you wonder what else they use that for...
• I Knew It!: As confirmed by the sequel, Bucky survives and becomes the Winter Soldier.
  • Over a dozen movies later, we learn that the Red Skull didn't die when he was seemingly disintegrated, as many fans suspected. Turns out he was actually transported to a distant planet and transformed into the guardian of the Soul Stone.
• Iron Woobie: Cap. You can tell he's sad about waking up after most people he knew were dead, but he won't let that get in his way.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The title character himself. He's shipped with Peggy, Howard, all of his fellow Avengers, Bucky, every single one of the Howling Commandoes... Super-Soldier's a super-suitor.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Schmidt's line "YOU ARE FAILING!" has been getting some recognition due to its hamminess and its use as either a Take That! statement, or a meme about failing grades.
  • Fondue took off among fans as an Unusual Euphemism in earnest due to the scene of Steve misunderstanding it as one.
  • Captain America predicted the Coronavirus. ^Explanation In June 2020, someone pointed out how both an advertisement of Corona (the beer) and a strange shape that looks like a virus can be seen the Times Square billboards when Steve Rogers wakes up in 2011◊. This lead to many people speculating that this movie predicted the Coronavirus nine years before it became widespread, even after it was clarified that the "virus symbol" is just an an ad for pasta.
  • "Hail Lobster."/Jordan Peterson as Red Skull ^Explanation After the comics depicted a scene comparing the Red Skull to controversial academic Jordan Peterson, fans started editing images of the Red Skull from this movie with quotes by Peterson, due to fans believing that the quotes sound like something the Red Skull would say.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm: See here.
• Narm Charm: Though the Hydra salute may be silly-looking to some, others may find it chilling anyway.
  • It's always an issue to adapt Captain America to any medium, because a character who is actually living up to his own principles of righteousness can far too easily come off as straight-out Narm, and by all rights that's exactly what this film should be. But somehow it comes out as a genuine, heartwarming, awesome, tear-jerking, triumphal ode to true patriotism and human goodness instead, a feat that should have been impossible outside the Golden Age of Hollywood. The writers, director, and Chris Evans deserve a lot of credit for striking the right tone with Cap: The Hero is a trope that's almost never played straight anymore, without veering into self-parody or coming off as self-righteous.
  • Bucky's shout of "Let's hear it for Captain America!" can cause oscillation between laughing and cheering. The cheesiness is acknowledged in-universe, with Steve giving Bucky a "Seriously?" look, and Bucky grinning and half-shrugging while clapping in earnest, as if to say "I know it's silly, but I'm proud of you, so just go with it".
  • Cap's simple "Nope!" when Red Skull says he never gives up. It's a jarring piece of "not even trying" writing, but also fits perfectly into his characterization: he doesn't care at all about looking or sounding cool while being a hero, and just wants to get the job done.
  • Cap's propaganda show is pretty ridiculous with its Eagleland imagery and cheesy script. But "The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan" is such a catchy song that it's easy for viewers to get swept up into it just as much as the audience in-universe.
• Never Live It Down: The scene where Peggy shoots Steve to test the shield seems to have become one for her. Fans have pointed out how little regard for everyone's safety she has in that scene - and by all accounts she should have been punished for the stunt. Especially since Steve wasn't holding the shield up below his waist when she picked up the gun.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • When Johann Schmidt rips his mask off, revealing his rather gruesome-looking true face. There's a good reason he is nicknamed "Red Skull". Doesn't help that Rodgers lands a punch on him moments before, jostling the mask and giving him pure Unintentional Uncanny Valley as you can see the hints of the red beneath in the gaps.
  • Between all the people disintegrated so hard by the Tesseract-powered weaponry that they don't even leave dust behind, and one unlucky Hydra soldier getting mulched into a fine red mist in a quarter of a second by propellers, a lot of people die rather swift and violent demises in this movie.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first film to have the Red Skull as the Hero's Evil Predecessor to Captain America. The 1990 film also had the Red Skull as the first recipient of the Super-Soldier Serum.
• Once Original, Now Common: Peggy's popularity might strike some newer fans as odd - since her role in the film still is as the love interest. She just happened to be played by an actress who really brought her to life and got to do some things in the film beyond pining over the hero. Black Widow made a striking appearance in Iron Man 2 a year earlier, but she was largely a supporting character and female superhero movies were thought to be a dead genre. This movie also came out before The Hunger Games and Divergent broke out of the Girl-Show Ghetto. Sif in Thor experienced a similar phenomenon.
• Questionable Casting: Quite a few people even had this reaction after Evans was cast in the title role after his stint as a certain other Marvel Comics character, especially considering Chris Evans was mostly previously known for boisterous Jerk with a Heart of Gold characters, but now it feels like he was born to play the Sentinel of Liberty.

• Rainbow Lens: While this reading has been present since the comics days, the movie's depiction of pre-serum Steve's desire in the film to contribute to the war efforts and the subsequent transformation of his body into a Manly Man in order to fulfill those desires has been interpreted by many gay male and transmasculine fans as a metaphor for the desire to conform to conventionally masculine gender roles and presentation.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Thorin Oakenshield works for Elrond!
  • And, of course, Jenna Coleman, before she was more known as Melia Antiqua in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 (which released in Europe a month later) or Clara on Doctor Who.
  • Meredith Quill greets Cap at the war bonds rally! But it turns out to be her mother.
• Signature Scene:
  • Steve jumping on the grenade that Colonel Phillips tosses as all the other men flee. He shouts at them to get back, shielding the others with his body. After a Beat, he realizes he's still alive and asks if this was a test. Dr. Erskine can't help but grin smugly as Colonel Phillips mutters, "He's still skinny."
  • The whole serum scene, from the moment Steve gets a penicillin shot to when Peggy sees him and curiously touches his abs. He then proceeds to chase down a Hydra operator who shot Dr. Erskine and stops him from escaping in a submarine.
  • Steve and Peggy's conversation, thinking it will be their last. They start talking about the date that Steve will never attend, about dancing at a local hall. The transmission cuts short as Steve admits he's worried about stepping on her toes. Peggy remains calm but starts crying as she puts down the radio.
  • In The Stinger, Steve Rogers waking up in a mysterious room, and realizing something's not right when the radio plays a baseball game he remembers attending. The nurse also has a slightly different outfit than what they wore in the war. Steve busts out, with the nurse reporting it but saying for no one to hurt him; he ends up in New York, confused as there are moving billboards and 2000s-style taxis, with more people than he's ever seen. Nick Fury then comes, reassures him that it was just a "party trick" to see how he was doing, and tells the Captain he slept for seventy years. Steve stares in shock and whispers, "I had a date."
• Smurfette Breakout: Peggy Carter has been heralded as one of Marvel's better supporting ladies, and her popularity led to her receiving her own short film that led into her own TV show, and cameos throughout the MCU.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • In the 10 years since the movie's release, it's become painfully obvious that Chris Evans' head does not belong on that small body.
  • The scene of Bucky Barnes falling to his apparent doom is very clearly Sebastian Stan in front of a green/blue screen.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Before Overlord (2018), this was the closest thing we had to a big-budget, Hollywood-made Wolfenstein movie.
  • Some consider the title character's portrayal to be a more faithful portrayal of Superman than the DCEU version.
• Starboarding: While Steve/Bucky eventually became a Fan-Preferred Couple after the next film, this one created a camp of fans who see Bucky as a Patient Childhood Love Interest with unrequited feelings for Steve due to some Ho Yay and Homoerotic Subtext of that nature. One notable instance is when Steve and Peggy flirt in front of Bucky, with Bucky's jealous reaction seemingly aimed more at Peggy stealing Steve from him than the other way around while Suspiciously Apropos Music plays^note There is a Tavern in the Town, whose lyrics include "He left me for a damsel dark, damsel dark/Each Friday night they used to spark, used to spark/And now my love who once was true to me/Takes this dark damsel on his knee". The events of later entries, especially Avengers: Endgame and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, have intensified this camp with time.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The downplaying of real swastika-bearing Nazis (and the real German Army) in favor of the fictional breakaway group HYDRA to keep the film family-friendly is controversial, due to the way it trivializes the World War II setting, removing historical gravitas. Not helped by Cap being firmly established as fighting real Nazis in the comics, where the Red Skull was also loyal to Hitler. Further not helped by being released in the same year as X-Men: First Class, where the Nazi element is much more prominent.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The decision to fast-forward through nearly two years of Cap's time in combat by using an action montage is seen by some as a waste, since it would've been a good opportunity to show Cap dealing with the trauma of the war, being a soldier in general, and bonding with the Howling Commandos or interacting with Bucky, all of which more grounded, realistic movie. As the later films deal with these subjects it would have built up his character and relationships more in these areas.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: In the first half of the film, it's quite obvious that Schmidt is wearing a rubber skin mask over his mutated face. The effect can actually make him look far creepier than his Red Skull face does.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The visual effects used to make Chris Evans look scrawny^note a combination of body doubles and motion capture were so convincing that a lot of people thought that Marvel had cast a genuinely short and skinny actor and used CGI to bulk him up.
  • The make-up for the Red Skull is fairly impressive too, especially the rubber skin mask Schmidt wears, which has semi-obvious neck flaps and red areas around the eyes which make it more realistic.

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