Comic Book / Captain America

When Captain America throws his mighty shield
All those who chose to oppose his shield must yield!

"I'm loyal to nothing, General... Except the Dream."

— Steve Rogers, Born Again, written by Frank Miller.

Captain America first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (March, 1941), created by Joe Simon and Jack "King" Kirby for Timely Comics. (Timely would later change its name to Marvel Comics). Captain America is one of the many, many patriotic superheroes created during World War II to bolster morale on the home front. But none of those heroes have lasted as long, been as influential, become as famous, or transcended their original time better than Captain America.

As a skinny orphan artist who grew up in The Great Depression, Steve Rogers Jumped at the Call, but the US Army declared him 4-F (unfit for service). They handed him over to Operation: Rebirth, an Allied Powers project headed by Professor Ersksine to create a Super-Soldier for the war effort. Injected with Super Serum and bombarded with radiation, Rogers' treatment proved a complete success with his scrawny body suddenly enhanced to the maximum human potential. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy immediately assassinated Dr. Ersksine at that moment and the formula of the treatment, which was never completely written down, was lost forever.

Deciding to make the best of their one successful subject, the US government decided to make Rogers an elite counter-intelligence agent who could also be an ideal propaganda mascot to oppose Nazi Germany's frightening head of terrorist activities, the diabolical Red Skull. To that end, Rogers was appropriately trained and costumed and given a signature shield. Cap fought the Axis, memorably punching◊ Adolf Hitler in the face on the cover of his first comic. A key supporting character was Bucky Barnes, Cap's boy sidekick and an answer to Robin. Bucky's death became one of the most major — and longest-lasting — deaths in comics.

Captain America Comics ended with issue #75 (February, 1950). The last couple of issues were also titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", an attempt to rework the series into a horror/suspense anthology. The character remained dormant for a few years. There was an attempt to revive him a couple of years later, with Young Men #24-28 (December, 1953-June, 1954) and Captain America Comics #76-78 (May-September, 1954). The character was next successfully revived in the pages of The Avengers #4 (March, 1964).

While Cap's adventures were written and published throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Stan Lee and a returning Jack Kirby retconned his history in 1964: the post-War Caps who fought Communism were impostors (first other superheroes and then an Ascended Fanboy who went insane with a flawed imitation of the Super Serum), and the "original" Cap was killed in action, but they Never Found the Body. Naturally Steve Rogers was found frozen in suspended animation, preserved by the Super Serum, and revived. There he joined The Avengers, bringing his old-style patriotism and battle tactics to the table, eventually ascending to leadership. However, Cap also had to deal with being a man out of his time, with everyone he knew being long gone, while also being plagued with his greatest failure — not being able to save his sidekick's life in their final fight against Baron Zemo — until Rick Jones finally told him to quit his whining and move on. Cap took that advice, and while the Red Skull drove Rick away when impersonating Cap, Rogers got a new partner, the Falcon, who was with him for years.

Captain America threw his mighty shield for decades, proving remarkably more adaptive for the changing times than his creators could have guessed. For instance, when American ideals were shaken by the Vietnam War and Watergate, Rogers reflected that disillusionment in the 1970s when he abandoned his Cap persona to become Nomad, a man without a country, until he realized he could champion America's higher ideals as Cap instead. In the cynical 1980s, Rogers would be forced out of his Cap persona and replaced by an Anti-Hero Substitute, John Walker, only to serve as The Captain to show his ideals still had power in the The Dark Age of Comic Books, loyal to nothing but The American Dream. Eventually, Cap learned that this was all arranged by the Red Skull to sully his name and took back his old motif, with Walker getting Rogers' Captain costume to be U.S. Agent. Rogers even took up armed resistance to the American crackdown on the superhero community in Civil War (2006), until he surrendered and was assassinated. Even though Word of God stated that he was Killed Off for Real, nobody believed it.

Cap's mantle was taken up in 2008 by Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers' WWII boy sidekick who, rather than dying at the hands of Baron Zemo, was brainwashed into the Soviet killing machine Winter Soldier and kept as a Human Popsicle much of the time that he wasn't on missions to explain his age. Cap later freed Bucky from his Brainwashing with the help of the Cosmic Cube, allowing him to make a Heel–Face Turn. In addition to having a bio-mechanical left arm and a new armored costume, he also carries a gun. Prior to being the Winter Soldier, Bucky was often cited as one of the three people in comics who would always stay dead.^note The other two being Spider-Man's Uncle Ben and Batman's second Robin, Jason Todd (who was also eventually resurrected).

Bucky did a pretty good job filling in for Steve, but, this being superhero comics, Steve eventually came back. However, Steve felt that wielding the shield was good for Bucky and insisted that he continue on as Captain America until his apparent death in the Fear Itself Crisis Crossover, when Rogers took up the role again. In the events preceding the AXIS storyline, Steve will be forced to hand over the title of Captain America to his old partner Sam Wilson, the Falcon, after the Super-Soldier Serum is removed from him, turning him into an old man. Notably, Sam is the first person Steve has chosen to wield the shield. While Steve has expressed his approval of and respect for Captains America William Naslund, Jeff Mace, Isaiah Bradley, Bucky Barnes, etc., it was always after the fact. Steve returned to the role of Captain America in the All-New, All-Different Marvel setting, with a new shield with new abilities, while Falcon retained the title and the original shield, turning Captain America into a Collective Identity.

2016 proved to be a rather shocking year for Steve Rogers, as at the end of the very first volume of the comic Captain America: Steve Rogers, he uttered the shocking words: "Hail HYDRA". This sent fandom into a complete frenzy to see the patriotic American icon revealed to be a Nazi, everything he stood against. For about a year, this version of Steve was amongst the headline of Marvel, but as it turned out, it was caused by the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Cosmic Cube, Kobik, trying to make a better world by rewriting reality (but unfortunately thought that HYDRA would be good). All of it came to a head with the 2017 Crisis Crossover Secret Empire where eventually thanks to the efforts of other heroes (including Sam Wilson), Kobik restored reality and the real Steve Rogers returned (or perhaps just the version of him people accepted), defeated the HYDRA version of Steve and resumed being the real Captain America.

Please note that this page covers the Captain America comics only, for tropes pertaining to all Captain America media, and a list of comic storylines and other works in the franchise, see the franchise page.

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Captain America provides examples of:

Tropes - # to E

• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • Cap famously abandoned his identity in the 1970s after finding out the identity of the Secret Empire's leader^note which was heavily implied to be Richard Nixon and continued to operate as the Nomad.
  • He also gave up the identity in the 80s when the U.S. Government tried to force Cap to work as a government-sanctioned operative. He then dropped out of sight for a few weeks, just wandering around America, until a chance run-in with the eco-terrorist Brother Nature convinced him to continue superheroics by donning a black costume and changing his name to "The Captain."
  • After he came Back from the Dead before Siege, he refused to take up the shield full-time, instead letting Bucky Barnes continue as Captain America until his Faking the Dead during Fear Itself
  • When his Super-Soldier Serum is deactivated, he gives the identity and shield to the Falcon as he's been rendered an old man. When Kobik restores Steve to full, he tells Sam to keep using the name and the shield, though he'll be back in the saddle as well, missing the adventure of it all.
• '80s Hair: The Super-Patriot, introduced in the mid-80s, sports a mean flat-top.
• Aborted Arc: Played with. The Captain America stories in Tales of Suspense took place in WW2 for the better part of 1965; at one point, Steve had to desert his platoon in order to change into Cap. Apparently, he was about to get into trouble because of it, but then he was brought back into the present at the readers' request. Cap was then depicted as having related the previous storyline to the Avengers, and mentioned that Army Intelligence, who knew about his Secret Identity, had simply provided him with a cover story. The Nazis also had some kind of shrinking ray in that storyline but ultimately didn't use it.
• Abusive Parents: Steve's father was an alcoholic who would take out his stress on his wife and son. Steven still loves him, but also fears ending up like him.
• Accidental Good Outcome: The precise combination of metals in Captain America's shield was a complete accident. At least, the initial combination of vibranium and steel was intended, but not the mysterious third component that somehow got into it when it was in a liquid state. Attempts to replicate it have all failed in comparison.
• Acoustic License: In issue #401, Steve and Tony Stark have a long discussion in a Manhattan bar where Tony, then keeping a secret identity, is pretty open about said secret identity, but amazingly no-one in the bar seems to be paying any attention to this, or why a billionaire playboy is talking with some guy.
• Acting Unnatural: In issue #352, Perun and Ursa Major are hanging out in Avengers Mansion, having apparently defected from the USSR, and Ursa loses his rag over seeing Reagan on TV talking about Russia. He nearly smashes a chair over the TV as Perun tries to stop him. Then Steve enters and the two start acting super-nonchalant.
• Action Girl:
  • Black Widow (who is Bucky's main love interest) is an experienced spy, renowned martial artist and high-ranking member of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • Sharon Carter, Cap's main love interest, is a secret agent who specializes both in hand to hand combat and marksmanship.
  • Sharon's great aunt Peggy was a member of the French resistance.
  • Rikki Barnes, formerly the Bucky from Heroes Reborn, crossed over into the 616 reality and kept on fighting crime after adopting the identity of Nomad.
• A Father to His Men: Any team he gets put in charge he treats like his family, possibly because of his late Sidekick Bucky.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy:
  • Steve was replaced as Captain America by Sam Wilson, better known as the Falcon. He still operates as a hero in Uncanny Avengers, but without the Captain America name.
  • Several alternate universe stories do the same thing. Luke Cage's daughter Danielle is the new Cap in one universe, while a mixed race man name Kiyoshi Morales is one in another.
• The Alcatraz: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run introduces the Myrmidon, run by Baron von Strucker, power dampeners installed all around to prevent any of its powered prisoners from getting out, plus Americops as his security force.
• Alcoholic Parent: Steve's father, Joseph Rogers, was an alcoholic. Steve still loved him despite also fearing him, and the fact that Joseph was apparently an abusive alcoholic towards his wife.
• All-Loving Hero: He's the Marvel counterpart of Superman, after all. At one point, Magneto tried to erase his mind of all prejudice towards mutants. Problem for Magneto: Captain America has no prejudice towards anybody, so he just gives the exact same answer to the question Magneto had given before zapping him.
• All Your Powers Combined: An Empowered Badass Normal version. Anyone who knows about athletes can tell you that not every physique is suited to every type of athletic performance. Marathon runners are not sprinters, sprinters are not weightlifters, weightlifters are not pole vaulters, and so on. However, Cap can do it all thanks to his Super-Soldier Serum that gives him slightly above the peak of human ability in all of these things at once.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Agent America and Fighting American (Awesome Entertainment). AA was so thinly-veiled that Marvel sued, and told Rob Liefeld that FA couldn't throw his shield. The Fighting American, ironically, was originally created by Kirby and Simon for Harvey Comics, as a parody of Captain America type characters. Leifeld either missed the irony or didn't care and quite literally continued telling his Captain America story with the character.
• Alternate Continuity:
  • Combined in the Ultimate Universe. While the "regular" Cap is unusually sensitive and intelligent for any time period, the Ultimate version is a '40s Average Joe thrown into the modern day, leading to a mixture of confusion and outright macho and jingoistic behavior. To be fair, he was advanced for his time in some respects, as evidenced by his treasured photo of him standing with the famed African-American fighter pilots, The Tuskegee Airmen. Depending on the Writer though, these hints can vary or even disappear entirely. (For instance, in a Warren Ellis-written appearance, Ultimate Cap once bragged about how much he hates educated people.)
  • The complete opposite tack is taken in Chip Zdarsky's Spider-Man: Life Story, which looks at the MU from Spidey's perspective had there been no Comic-Book Time. In Issue #1, which deals with the Vietnam War, Captain America admits to Spidey that the war in Vietnam might be a mistake, and by the end has become a renegage who attacks war criminals on both sides of the war, and defends Vietnamese civilians against American soldiers, making him a "traitor" in the eyes of US troops, restoring and accepting Steve's Unbuilt Trope as a man out of his time and having Cap go the other end.
• Amazon Brigade: During his run on Captain America, Ta-Nehisi Coates introduced an organization called the Daughters of Liberty, a coalition of heroines who existed as far back as the 1800s (where they were led by Harriet Tubman) to defend American ideals. The current line-up includes such notables as Sharon Carter, Invisible Woman, Spider-Woman, Misty Knight, Mockingbird, Ava Ayala and Agatha Harkness.
• Amicable Exes: Steve maintains friendly working relationships with both Diamondback and Sharon during their "off" periods, and with Peggy Carter. He's also still friendly enough with Bernie Rosenthal that she agreed to represent Bucky during the Trial of Captain America arc.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Cap obviously isn't, but he has had several villains who were: Cobra, the Serpent Society, Porcupine, Armadillo, Man-Ape, Rhino, Scorpion, etc.
• Anti-Hero Substitute:
  • USAgent's brief stint as Captain America. Only this version, temporary insanity aside with the Red Skull's manipulations, soon made an honest effort to emulate Rogers' ethics and was the one to truly convince his predecessor to become the Sentinel of Liberty again.
  • Downplayed with Bucky Cap, who is a Classic Anti Hero. Ignoring his Dark and Troubled Past, his tricked-out gun, or his costume being more black than red-white-and-blue, he genuinely does try to be a traditional superhero, but a large source of his Mangst is his doubt as to whether or not he can do the mantle justice.
• Arc Welding: Mark Gruenwald revealed, when he resurrected the Red Skull in Captain America #350, that every bad guy or bad guy group that had appeared in roughly the last four years (save for the Serpent Society) worked for Red Skull as part of his newly formed cabal of evil groups under his control. Mind you, the groups themselves didn't know this; the Red Skull infiltrated them with a few sleeper agents to secretly bend the groups' activities to work toward his goals. When Flag-Smasher, the leader of one of the groups, found this out, he fled the group and warned Captain America.
• Arch-Enemy: The Red Skull, for the Captain himself.
• Armed with Canon: The first Captain America run of The Golden Age of Comic Books lasted during all of World War II, and even into the 50 (when he started fighting Dirty Communists instead). Then it was closed, alongside most superhero comics of the era. Jack Kirby, who created the character back then, brought him back in Avengers #4, in 1963, and made up the famous scene of Zemo's rocket where Cap fall into the ocean and got frozen, and Bucky seems to die. In the initial version, this event did not take place in the last days of World War II: it took place "more than twenty years ago". That would be at least 1942... the year when Kirby ended his initial run. Meaning: all the post Kirby golden age adventures of Captain America were rendered non-canon.
• Arrested for Heroism: During his run as The Captain, Steve, Falcon, Nomad and D-Man are all arrested by the Las Vegas police for stopping a group of snake-themed villains robbing a casino. Steve, being the goody two-shoes he is, lets this happen because he trusts the police to eventually let them go, rather than just explaining he used to be Captain America and asking them to do that. They probably would have, too, if not for circumstances.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During "The Captain" arc, the Commission for Superhuman Activities (or more specifically, the Red Skull's agent inside the Commission) charges Steve with several crimes, to whit; Conspiracy to commit sedition (nope), breaking and entering the White House (okay, yes, to stop one of Viper's schemes), assault and battery against the President (he'd been turned into a mindless snake man), aiding and abetting known felons (okay, yes, that's true) and... failure to pay back taxes.
• The Artifact:
  • Steve's secret identity rarely ever served much purpose; he had one pretty much because it was assumed all superheroes should have one. Done away with in 2002, and it hasn't really impacted the comics much at all.
  • The presence of Bucky, a Kid Sidekick in World War II, is awkward to explain, as the US Military would never tolerate a child going into combat with Cap. Ed Brubaker retconned this by slightly aging up Bucky and explaining he was trained to do covert operations that Captain America couldn't be seen doing.
• Artistic License – Biology: Baron Zemo XII had a mask permanently stuck to his head due to Adhesive X. According to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, the mask has two eyeholes that allow him to see and is thin enough to allow him to hear perfectly. It's also porous enough to allow him to breathe, but he can't eat or drink and has to take nourishment intravenously. However, somehow he's able to talk without difficulty, meaning that the mask isn't stuck tightly to his entire face. Even if nobody actually thought of cutting the mask off (or at least a hole for the mouth), normal epidermal shedding and oil secretions would have loosened the mask eventually. Just ask anyone who has accidentally superglued fingers together.
• As Lethal as It Needs to Be: Cap's shield, Depending on the Writer or continuity, has edges that are either razor sharp or blunted.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • Not for nothing is Cap considered the leader of the Marvel Superhero community. When he speaks, Gods listen.
  • During the first Secret War, when the Beyonder had sent a large group of heroes and villains to Battleworld so that they could fight each other, the heroes were all gathered together and Cap was focusing the discussion on who should be in charge. He worked his way through almost all the other team leaders present (Reed Richards, the Wasp, Professor X, even the Hulk, who at the time had Banner's personality in control), trying to get one of them to step up, but all of them had some reason why they could not lead such a large team (in fairness to the Hulk, he just shrugged and said to let Cap give the orders). The way the scene is set up, it's perfectly obvious to almost everyone that Cap should be in charge. Professor X even cuts the knot and suggests it. Wolverine, who at the time was still in his jerkass personality, immediately objected and said Cap was the least of them and he wouldn't follow him (remember, at this time, Wolverine had almost no dealings with Cap and lacked the enormous respect he has for Cap now). Cue Thor, who up to this point had stayed in the background and out of the discussion, to immediately step up and make it very clear that not only was he perfectly willing to follow orders from Cap, but to also get the message across that there wasn't anyone else there that he was going to let take command over Captain America. That ended the entire discussion. Even Wolverine shut up and went along after that.
  • In fact, it's not just the Marvel Universe. A crossover with the Justice League had him lead the combined teams during the final assault upon the Big Bad.
    Superman: [...]But we need a commander... Someone who can lead both teams, fuse us into one. I believe that should be you, Captain America.
    Captain America: [stunned] I'm flattered, but I'm not so sure. The conflicting nature of our two worlds has put us on edge... Frayed tempers, judgments...^note (Specifically, since Cap and Supes were the ones most attuned to their home universes, this meant they were the ones who unwittingly instigated most of the bad blood between both teams — and later, just each other — due to their distorted views of the other universe, until everyone finally managed to talk things down.)
    Superman: I know. But you're still the man for the job.
    Batman: I concur.
  • He's also one of the few — if not only — people who can get a thoroughly intoxicated Wolverine to back down.
    Captain America: You will sit down and stop interfering with the flight attendant or I will escort you off this plane.
    Wolverine: All right, all right. Don't get your shield in a knot.
• Back for the Dead: In issue #347, a side-story pops over to an Algerian prison, where a gang of mercenaries bust out Albert Malik, the second Red Skull, last seen in Solo Avengers #16. Just as he's crowing about how he plans to outdo the original, and presumed dead, Skull, his pilot suddenly kills him. Then he declares "Justice is Served!" It later turns out this Scourge was working for the Red Skull all along.
• Back from the Dead: Cap himself, naturally, but also Bucky, as The Winter Soldier, his archnemesis, the Red Skull, and his first girlfriend, Sharon Carter.
• Backported Development: The first time around the Super-Soldier Serum was simply a single injection that transformed Steve. Now, since Captain America: The First Avenger, it's a series of injections and radiation treatments and possibly even a genetic modification through a virus with no traces of special chemicals whatsoever. This notably justifies the amount of failures at replicating such a complicated process.
• Bad Present:
  • Every incarnation of Cap uses this trope to some capacity, as the whole point to the character post-Golden Age is that he's a Fish out of Temporal Water. Depending on the Writer, the modern day can be anywhere between a pure nightmare or a place he no longer belongs to, but fights to defend anyway. That said, he's also the first person to admit that his era was far from perfect.
  • In one story, a reporter is doing a story about the changes Captain America faced when he was revived, and asks Cap "Would you have gone back to the 40s if you could have?" Captain America's answer is to point to a group shot of the Howling Commandos, pointing to the two men to Cap's immediate right and left in the picture. Cap then explains that in all those group shots, Cap would intentionally position Gabriel Jones and Jim Morita right next to him because that way, they'd never be cropped out of the picture. Why would they be cropped? Because Jones was an African-American and Morita was a Japanese-American. Cap then points out that in today's world, it would never occur to anyone to ask why a black man and an Asian man were standing next to Captain America, and that this was one way in which the modern world was better than the 40s.
• Badass Normal:
  • Some of his villains are explicitly non-superpowered, like Batroc the Leaper.
  • His non-superhero allies like Sharon Carter or Dum Dum Dugan lack powers, but pull their own weight alongside Cap anyway.
• Battle Couple:
  • Steve has gone on missions with his love interests, namely Sharon and Rachel/Diamondback.
  • Bucky and Natasha/Black Widow would begin a relationship shortly after the former inherited Steve's mantle, and worked together in almost every mission since.
• Battle Cry:
  • "Avengers, Assemble!" Technically it's for anyone on the Avengers, but usually it's Cap saying it.
  • Likewise, The Invaders' "Ok, Axis... here we come!"
• Becoming the Mask: Meta level. In part because he has no real secret identity, Cap and Steve are pretty much synonymous (and everyone knows it). Any other Captain in Marvel tends to get called by something else.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He may well be the friendliest guy in the Marvel Universe, but if he discovers you're harming or oppressing innocents, his beatdown will often be brutal.
• Big Good: Steve, mainly for The Avengers, but also the Marvel Universe as a whole. Any superhero worthy of the title in the Marvel U will defer to Cap, no exceptions. He's SO MUCH a Big Good that he's actually been able to lift Thor's hammer. During the JLA/Avegers crossover, Superman himself deferred to Cap.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: A plot point. His shield can stop just about anything.
• Body Horror:
  • During a hunt for the Power Broker, Steve runs into some of Dr. Malus's rejected experiments. They aren't pretty looking.
  • Eventually ends up happening to the Power Broker himself. He straps himself into his own empowering machine, but it overdoes it, rendering him so overmuscled he can't even move on his own.
• Boring, but Practical: Cap's fighting style is basically boxing with some jujitsu mixed in, but he's devastatingly effective. Iron Fist, who's regarded as one of the best martial artists in the Marvel Universe, noted in his first encounter with Cap that his technique was basic, but his speed and power were incredible.
• Bound and Gagged: In Avengers issues 275 and 276 he gets tied up and gagged by Baron Zemo and Mr. Hyde. Also counts as Badass in Distress or Distressed Dude.
• Brains Versus Brawn: Captain America is at the peak of human athletic potential and is a master combatant and leader, but typically leaves things like handling technology to his allies. His archenemy the Red Skull may or may not have the same or similar abilities depending on the story, but is usually a Diabolical Mastermind. Other Captain America villains that fit the trope include Doctor Faustus (a Non-Action Guy Psycho Psychologist who relies on manipulation and has a Compelling Voice), Armin Zola (a Mad Doctor who mainly creates monsters), and Heinrich Zemo (a powerless scientist).
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Bucky Barnes, during his stint as the Winter Soldier, on and off for decades. It didn't always take, so eventually his handlers took to putting him in cryogenic stasis between jobs.
  • Happened to Cap himself in one unfortunate instance, courtesy of Dr. Faustus and the Grand Director. He even wielded a swastika-adorned version of his shield.^note Luckily, Daredevil saved the day and helped Cap return back to his star-spangled self.
  • Happens to Wolverine in a guest appearance. Cap tries talking him out of it, but it's magical brainwashing, so no dice.
• Break the Cutie:
  • John "USAgent" Walker's entire tenure as Captain America was one of these. John wasn't a terribly nice or even good person a lot of the time, but he really doesn't deserve what happens to him.
  • Diamondback's origin includes (heavily implied) rape, and her brothers being murdered.
  • Sharon's life following her first supposed death included being stranded behind enemy lines, time in a hellhole-prison, implied rape, and having to do things to survive that she described as "violent" and "degrading".
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Well, the Letter "A": On his mask and an iconic part of Cap's outfit.
• The Bus Came Back: Susan Scarbo first appeared as the villainess Suprema in issue #123 (published 1970). She then disappeared for a good nineteen years before returning as Mother Night in issue #356 (1989).
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • A story by Chuck Austen revealed that Cap's suspended animation was actually at the hands of the US Government, who feared he'd have interfered with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki strikes. All of Cap's memories of the Baron Zemo incident were memory implants. This has never been acknowledged again.
  • Whether Cap has killed enemy forces has wavered back and forth. In the Golden Age, he and Bucky were blow-torching Nazis. After his resurrection, Marvel invoked the classic Thou Shalt Not Kill law on Cap and he claimed he'd never killed anyone "even during the war."
• The Captain: He actually used it for his codename after he refused to become an operative of the U.S. government, and he's actually earned the rank of "Captain" in terms of military ranks.
• Captain Geographic: He was created to boost American troops' morale during World War II, and was therefore named after his home country.
• Captain Superhero: He might not be the first, but he's one of the most famous. However, he is one of the few who have actually earned the title of Captain.
• Character Shilling:
  • He is supposed to be The Paragon, but in some cases writers take his leadership ability a tad too far. An example is Infinity, where he alone is the reason the intergalactic armies prevail against the Builders, despite the presence of people like Gladiator or Ronan who have far more experience in intergalactic warfare. He also is often put against people in a fight who are normally way out of his league, like Wolverine, Spider-Man or even serious powerhouses like the Hulk.
  • There are also times when even his Big Good status can come off as a case of Informed Kindness with plenty of other superheroes singing his praises but Cap sometimes acting the opposite of what an ideal superhero leader should be with a "punch first, ask questions later" attitude that sometimes manifests with other heroes in certain stories, like when he straight up assaults Wolverine over a disagreement during the Avengers vs. X-Men crossover or when he throws his shield into Deadpool's head during Despicable Deadpool, fights Deadpool, and expects Deadpool to happily come with him quietly when Deadpool was already in a pretty bad mental and emotional place over being fooled by Hydra Cap.
• Chevalier vs. Rogue: In some comics, Captain America and Bucky have this dynamic: Cap is the honorable one, while Bucky does the dirty work Cap can't be seen doing (and/or would refuse to do). Not to mention when they fight against each other (as Winter Soldier for the latter).
• C-List Fodder: The whole point of the Scourge of the Underworld storyline, which ran through several Marvel titles and culminates in seventeen villains dying ignominiously in Cap's own title. The point was weeding out villains who the writers thought were just too pathetic to keep around. Very few major villains actually bought it. Actually gets a nasty Lampshade Hanging when the seventeen meet up in a bar, and one of them is so obscure he bitterly notes no-one knows who he is.
• Close on Title: The comic detailing Captain America's death, "The Death of the Dream", saved its title for the closing.
• Clothes Make the Legend: Sort of. While first and foremost it is agreed that it is Steve's personality that makes him Captain America, the costume also helps a lot.
• Coattail-Riding Relative: How the first, male Viper tried to get into the supervillain business. His brother was the original Eel.
• Collective Identity: In All-New, All-Different Marvel, both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson share the title of Captain America. Sort of. Then it turned out Steve was very Not Himself.
• Combat Pragmatist: One of the things that differentiated Bucky from Steve when Bucky first took up the mantle of Captain America was that he wasn't afraid to cheat or just shoot a guy (albeit nonlethally) in a fight to make up for his lack of enhanced physical abilities. Not to say that Steve won't fight dirty if really pressed, he just hates doing it.
• Comic-Book Time:
  • Cap retains an "anchor" in the 1940s, but the amount of time he spent frozen in ice just grows and grows as time goes on. When he was first revived in 1964 he'd spent 20 years on ice, which was lengthy, but wouldn't have been a wholly unfamiliar world — in the current comics he woke up at some point in the early 21st century.
  • The DVD Commentary for Captain America: The Winter Soldier touches on this briefly: a major component of Cap's classic storylines is his perspective on modern-day issues— but the "modern day" keeps sliding forward. In the comics, Steve often reflects the national mood over things like Watergate, but in the film and current 616 continuity, he slept through it all.
  • This also affects Sharon Carter. In the 1960s, Sharon was the much-younger sister of Peggy Carter, Cap's 1940s lover. She was later retconned into Peggy's niece, to match the fact that Peggy had to keep aging to keep the 1940s/modern day split accurate.
• Conflict Ball:
  • Cap and Nighthawk in issue 314. Mainly because Nighthawk just happens to materialize right underneath Cap while he's in the Avengers training room, and their combat instincts take it from there. Fortunately, it only lasts a moment.
  • Cap and Wolverine's encounter in one annual. They're both on the trail of a rampaging robot, and both reach the lab it's ransacking, but Steve at the time didn't like Wolverine, and is being especially judgmental because the X-Men are hanging out with a redeemed Magneto at the time. His attitude rubs Logan the wrong way, and so they start brawling, just long enough for the guy they're after to get away.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: This is the essential modernization of Cap in the 1970s. Rogers became so disillusioned by the American establishment and the abuse of the US Government that he eventually gave up being Cap for a while in favor of Nomad, the man without a country. Eventually, he realized that he could champion America's ideals as Cap, giving him the liberty to butt heads with the US Government when necessary.
• Costume Copycat: U.S. Agent (who was actually given the name and costume of Captain America by the government during one of the latter's ethically-motivated retirements. Though The Cap Came Back, U.S. Agent has never stopped trying to relive those brief glory days.)
• Covers Always Lie:
  • Issue #355 has Steve suddenly declaring the Super-Soldier Serum is wearing off. In the issue, it's actually part of a plan arranged by him and Sersei.
  • Issue #365 shows Namor whaling on Cap with the proclamation "Namor gone wild!" Actually, he's under the Controller's, uh, control.
• Cross Through:
  • Issue 314 has Nighthawk of Squadron Supreme traveling to Earth-616 to find allies against his former teammates, finding Cap and then some of his own enemies who'd already fled their reality. Both titles were being written by Mark Gruenwald.
  • Issue 339 has Stev dealing with the events of "Fall of the Mutants", then follows on from Iron Man issue #228, part of that title's Armor Wars storyline, and Steve having to deal with a supervillain break-out caused by Tony's antics.
• Cultured Warrior: Rogers is a talented visual artist who drew for his own comic book about himself once.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Sin is the Red Skull's daughter and just as psychotic as the man himself.
• Dating Catwoman: Captain America and Diamondback, who reformed in part because of his influence (and also because she had a serious crush on him).
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: A Captain America/The Punisher teamup comic has Frank cause this with a precise knife-throw into a guard with a machine gun, which takes out the other guards for them.
• Dead Sidekick: Bucky was a textbook example of this (emphasis on "was"). He would've fit this trope again, if it weren't for Nick Fury using the last vial of Infinity Formula to save him.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • Captain America was shot by a brainwashed Sharon Carter. But the gun didn't shoot ordinary bullets, the projectile trapped Steve's mind in the flow of space and time.
  • Rick Remender's run is getting as much mileage out of this trope as it can. First, he killed off Ian Rogers and Sharon Carter in the same issue, and got a ton of flack for fridging the latter. Then it turned out, wait, not only were Ian and Sharon both still alive, but Sharon had adopted Ian and he considered himself as much her son as Steve's, setting them up as a happy family unit. Then Ian was killed in a messy stabbing, only to turn up alive two issues later... followed shortly by the death of Redwing, Sam's pet falcon and crimefighting partner.
• Decoy Convoy: After Steve's death, SHIELD transports his iconic shield by deploying four identical vans in four different directions, one of which allegedly contains the weapon. Bucky Barnes is savvy enough to know that it's just for show — SHIELD wouldn't trust just anyone to transport it. His suspicions are proven correct when Black Widow emerges some time later, carrying the real shield.
• Depending on the Artist: The trend in recent years of depicting Cap (Steve Rogers' suit, anyway) with scale armor (see the current page pic), a look that debuted in the 1990s Sentinel of Liberty miniseries that retold his origin. Historically, Cap's shirt was said to have been made of "synthetic chainmail", which wouldn't have such an obviously scaly look (and was usually drawn as though he was wearing normal superhero tights).
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Exactly how strong and tough Steve is compared to regular guys depends on the writing. He's never depicted as being strong enough to throw cars around or anything like that (even agility-based Spider-Man is stronger than him), but if the writer is generous, with great effort he can bend weak steel, heal from injuries in days that would have most guys laid up for months (and heal in months what would take most guys years, or never) and run at the speed of a sprinter for the duration of a marathon runner...but again, the extent of this depends on the writer. Many claim "it's not superpowers, really," but isn't having the body of an omni-athlete without needing to train excessively a power of its own?
  • While he is widely considered the Big Good of the superhero community, how Steve interacts with his fellow heroes during teamups or Crisis Crossover stories can wildly vary. During times of need, Captain America can approach other heroes much more diplomatically, try to talk things through, and even defer to them if he really feels the need to. But in other stories, he can be much more unreasonable, refuses to consider any other points of view, maintains a stubborn "my way or the highway" attitude, and will throw the first punch with little to no provocation, like he did against Wolverine during the Avengers vs. X-Men story.
• Determinator: Of all the heroes of the Marvel U minus Spidey, none have the willpower and "never say die" attitude that Cap has.
• Didn't See That Coming: John Walker's supposed assassination in issue #351 has a little hitch in that the supposed hitman is then himself killed by a passing Scourge of the Underworld. That wasn't part of the plan.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Basically his day-job as leader of the Avengers. In his spare time, he has faced villains holding the reality-warping Cosmic Cube, and defeated them more than once.
  • He took on Thanos while he was holding the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet, a glove that basically made Thanos the supreme being in the Marvel Universe. Though he was ultimately killed, he was the last hero standing before the team's defeat.
  • In a telling quote from the Nineties, when Cap was missing and feared dead, Hercules summed it up:
    "On Olympus, we measure wisdom against Athena...speed against Hermes...power against Zeus. But we measure courage by Captain America."
• Disappointed by the Motive: A villain-on-villain version, when the current head of AIM is upset at Superia's plan to kill him and take over AIM mainly because her motive is simply to use them for funding.
• Disguised in Drag: Captain America and Paladin engage in one of the least convincing examples ever recorded when they have to pass unnoticed through Superia's base filled with female supervillains. They simply take the costumes (which, incidentally, are skintight) of two defeated villains and put them on, with no further attempt at disguise, trusting that the presence of a number of Brawn Hilda types among Superia's followers will be enough to deflect suspicion. It works!.
• Displaced Origin: Cap is almost synonymous with The Avengers, despite the fact he predates them by twenty-two years and wasn't a part of the team's original roster.
• Disposable Superhero Maker: The man who created the Super-Soldier Serum that made Cap was killed, and No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup is firmly in place. Cap is the only success story of the project.
• The Dragon: The Skull has had several, including the aforementioned Sin, Crossbones, and Mother Night. Note that the Skull himself began his career as a Dragon, in this case to Hitler himself. Post-World War II, though, he's working for himself (and, in fact, disposed of at least one cloned version of Hitler specifically because he wanted to stay that way).
• Dramatic Unmask: Subverted when Captain America catches the Scourge of the Underworld, to find that he's... some guy he's never met before, and who looks completely normal.
• Drugs Are Bad: The "Ice" arc of the early 90s has Cap accidentally inhale some of the titular drug, which makes him into a Blood Knight.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Cap's cowl was originally a separate piece of material like a hat, which was soon changed to a full connected cowl. John Byrne later explained that Cap had it knocked off in a fight and his secret identity was almost exposed as a result. To fight that, Cap modified with connecting material to the rest of his costume, which had the added benefit of covering his neck with his costume's armor.
  • In the old WWII stories, Steve Rogers was a smoker. The 1941 story "Captain America and the Riddle of the Red Skull" shows him smoking a cigarette in the middle of the story and a pipe at the end.
  • The original Red Skull wasn't the Nazi we all know and hate; instead, he was an unrelated person simply wearing a Skull mask.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • James "Bucky" Barnes gets a cyborg arm after being turned into the Winter Soldier. He lacked powers before that.
  • Steve himself, when you consider that his physical abilities were explicitly enhanced to above peak human levels (depending on the continuity). No unenhanced human can be as fast and as strong and as agile, as Steve Rogers, at the same time. He has another power, though it's not good in a fight. Even the flawed super-soldier variants like Nick Fury's greatly increases their life span. Years after his deep freeze, Cap's really not getting much older than his WWII days.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • During the Scourge of the Underworld's rampage, Cap finds himself fighting Iron Man baddie Backlash. When the man is beaten, Cap questions the oddity of his apparent Motive Decay, trying to rob a bank. Backlash explains that he was doing it to provide for his mother in case the Scourge killed him.
  • The Serpent Society collectively lose it when Death Adder is found dead by the Scourge's hand.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Flag-Smasher once abandoned one of his plans to unify the world when he learned it was financed by the Red Skull. As he explained to Cap during an Enemy Mine scenario, no matter how much it might benefit him, it would benefit the Red Skull more, and he couldn't stomach that.
  • Batroc the Leaper may be a mercenary, but Mister Hyde's plan to kill everyone in New York City just to get revenge on Cobra is enough to make him help Cap take him down.
  • During the Acts of Vengeance, Loki tried to put the Red Skull on a supervillain team with the Mandarin (who is Chinese), Doctor Doom (Romani), and Magneto (Jewish Holocaust survivor... who spent time among Romany), among others. They tended to look at the Skull like something you'd scrape off your shoe. Magneto ends the team-up by burying him alive.
  • When even The Joker won't work with you (and this was the baddie who once became the Iranian ambassador!), you've crossed a line.
  • Alarmingly, even the Red Skull has experienced this. He sabotaged one of Viper's plans because it was too pointlessly evil and stupid even for him.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • 50s Cap, when his sanity takes a downturn. Thanks to the Super-Soldier serum damaging his mind, he has a tendency to become mentally locked in extremist interpretations of 50s standards of morality, resulting in him lashing out like a violent bigot with Super-Strength at anything that a typical 50s joe would consider indecent (like, say, mixed-race marriage, homosexuals, black people considering themselves equal to whites...) This trait is so strong that Arnim Zola once tried to use an unstable 50s Cap to ignite a violent racial war in America.
  • Minor Marvel villain Nuke is an even clearer example. He's an American Super-Soldier, like Cap, he shares a similar "chemical based enhancements" power source/back story, and in fact the project that created him is officially descended from the project that created Captain America. However, whilst Captain America was a volunteer, Nuke was abducted and forced into the role, being mentally "broken in" with a regime of brainwashing and physical torture. Cap believes in the basic principles of the American dream and is not afraid to call the country itself out when he feels it is allowing nationalistic pride to obscure those principles. Nuke is a fanatical believer in My Country, Right or Wrong. Captain America is calm, rational and willing to talk before resorting to violence, whilst Nuke is a drugged-up berserker who's always a hair trigger away from gunning down everyone in sight as a "Commie". It even gets played up in their origin stories; Captain America was created for World War II, when America had a clear and unambivalent position as "the good guys" against the genocidal butchery of the Nazis, whilst Nuke was created for The Vietnam War, where America's moral standing was far murkier and heavily questioned even at the time. The Ultimate Marvel version of Nuke really plays it up by changing Nuke's origin slightly; he was an actual attempt to create a new Captain America, this time one to fight in the Vietnam War. And whilst Ultimate Captain America still considers his country worth defending and trying to redeem when it goes off the rails, Ultimate Nuke broke down and turned against America when he realised all of the morally awful things it was doing in that period.
• Evil Versus Evil: One issue just after "Acts of Vengeance" has the Red Skull's gang get into a tussle with Selene of X-Men fame. They were looking for Magneto, and went snooping at the Hellfire Club, and ran into her.
• Evolutionary Retcon: Captain America's original costume was what appeared to be the traditional spandex tights with buccaneer boots. Retcons of his 1940s adventures have reimagined the costume as a more sturdy militaristic outfit with pouches and hard protective headwear in place of a cowl and sensible combat boots in place of red buccaneer boots.
• Expansion Pack Past: He's probably had more adventures in World War II than there were days in the war; there's a tendency for stories involving him to feature a one or two-page flashback to some World War II event to contrast with whatever's happening in the present. Famous World War II events (D-Day, for example), have been retold frequently with conflicting information about what he was doing then.
  • Cap's Marvel NOW! ongoing series appears to do this for his past prior to becoming the Super-Soldier, showing the hardships Steve and his family had to go through in 1930s America.
  • The limited series Hail Hydra! does this for the entire HYDRA organization — unmoored from being the Marvel equivalent to the real-world ODESSA (and later a generic and amorphous "ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world''), it is now part of a massive Ancient Conspiracy that has been laboring since the days of Gilgamesh to create an army of immortal superhumans to rule the world with.

Tropes - F to O

• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Captain America was accused of doing one during Operation Rebirth (teaming up with the Red Skull, though the two were teaming up to stop Hitler), leading to him being briefly exiled from the US.
  • The Fixer did one during "No Exit", but managed to avoid getting caught.
• Faking the Dead:
  • John Walker, when turning the title of Captain America back to Steve Rogers in a public press conference, is assassinated by a member of the Watchdogs, presumably in retribution for Walker's violent campaign against them. The Watchdog was a fake, however, and the assassination staged so as to rehabilitate Walker's image, and allow the government to resurrect him as US Agent.
  • Bucky Barnes, then-current Captain America, was supposedly killed in battle by Sin/Skadi, but actually survived and had his death faked by Black Widow and Nick Fury in order to convince Steve to return to the Captain America mantle and give him the Plausible Deniability to return to the Winter Soldier identity and attend to his own matters.
• False Flag Operation: In order to lure out Magneto, who they think is behind the Skull's disappearance, the Skull Crew make it look like Magneto's attacking his fellow Mutants. The plan goes wrong when Steve intervenes and punches their Magneto-bot's head off.
• Fan Disservice: Issue #350 begins with the Red Skull working out in nothing but some underwear.
• Feud Episode: Steve's had a few over the years, though his time as Old Man Steve double-downed on this, between his war against Tony Stark during the tail end of The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) and his spat with Sam Wilson at the start of the All-New, All-Different Marvel era.
• The Fettered: Captain America is the embodiment of America's ideals and virtues, and has throughout his run has avoided killing whenever possible (well, there was a vampire that one time, but he doesn't count). He's killed several times, but it's always been only when he has no choice, and causes much angst. During World War II, he did kill people, but he was a soldier, and it's not something he boasts about. He also frets about damage to churches, and is very accommodating to accountants trying to total up superfight destruction.
• Fictional Political Party: Once featured a Presidential Candidate who started the Third Wing Party. It turned out to all be part of Red Skull's latest evil scheme.
• Fighting Irish: Both Dum-Dum Dugan and Steve himself.
• Fights Like a Normal: His physical attributes are cranked up past peak human capability via his Super Serum, but he still fights with ordinary punches, kicks and shield throws.
  • Iron Fist lampshades this in their first encounter, when he observes that Cap's fighting technique is very basic, but his speed and power are incredible.
• First Law of Resurrection: First for Bucky, then for Steve.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The basis for Cap's re-introduction into the modern era.
  • This got worse in the Dimension Z arc. Although Steve was missing from his home dimension for only 30 minutes, he lived there for 12 years — Word of God states that he spent longer in Dimension Z than he has spent in the present day since thawing out.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Sometimes, Steve has been known not to believe in the supernatural. All well and good in the early days, less so in the 1980s when he's worked and fought with multiple gods, wizards, witches (Scarlet or otherwise) and all manner of weirdness.
• Foreshadowing: Just at the start of Operation: Galactic Storm, which begins in Cap's title, John Jameson is unusually grouchy for some reason. After the crossover, he disappears, and when he does finally reappear, he's a bit... fuzzier than usual. It's only at the end of "Man and Wolf" that he and Cap have a chance to reconnect, and it turns out John's tetchiness was because of jealousy toward superheroes.
• Four-Star Badass: While the highest rank he ever attained during his active service in the Army was Captain, post revival he was officially retired from the US Army with the final rank of Brigadier General.
• Friendly Enemy: Steve Rogers and Batroc the Leaper. They are usually really friendly with each other and culminated in Steve Rogers spending the last couple of hours he thought he had left alive with Batroc.
  • Subverted when Batroc squares off against Bucky Cap in the "Captain America and Batroc" special. He looks at their confrontation as an opportunity to improve himself in combat, as he does in his Friendly Rivalry with Steve, but all Bucky is concerned with is dealing with him in short order.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Red Skull is one of the best examples in comics: Johann Schmidt was an ordinary teenage petty thief growing up in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. He eventually managed to land a job as a bellhop at a luxury hotel frequented by Hitler himself. By pure chance, he happened to be in Hitler's room while the latter was berating an officer, prompting Hitler to claim he could turn the bellhop into a better Nazi. He did. And it went From Bad to Worse. He went from a petty hooligan to being listed by S.H.I.E.L.D. as one of the greatest existing threats to humanity, despite being a Badass Normal most of the time in a setting that includes things like a planet-eating Eldritch Abomination. If that isn't a perfect example of this trope, then nothing is.
  • Sin is a more recent example; a completely forgotten character who under Brubaker, became Red Skull's chief underling and ultimately scoring an act of evil even the Red Skull found horrific: killing Captain America's unborn child when Sin shot Sharon Carter in the stomach. And then she became the New Red Skull and tried to outdo her father. And she nearly killed Bucky Cap after ripping his bionic arm and beating him with it. Only for it to turn out she hadn't killed him, but rather Bucky's Faking the Dead, courtesy of the Infinity Formula, and a well-placed Life-Model Decoy.]]
• Frozen in Time: See Comic-Book Time. His Human Popsicle backstory means he can stay rooted in the 1940s without the kind of problems this has posed, say, Magneto.
• Fully Absorbed Finale: Issue #332 has Cap dealing with several plot threads from the just ended Thing, such as the fate of the new Ms. Marvel, and the Power Broker.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The Committee to Re-elect America's Principles, or C.R.A.P.. Funnily enough, their adverts seem to always position it so that the words aren't quite aligned on-panel.
  • Flag-Smasher's army, U.L.T.I.M.A.T.U.M., or Underground Liberated Totally Integrated Mobile Army To Unite Mankind.
• Genius Bruiser: The man's mind is as well-developed as his body.
• Gentle Giant: Steve is this trope even with his costume on.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In 1974, Cap first encountered the Committee to Regain America's Principles, a villainous organization whose acronym violated the ban on "[p]rofanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings" in the 1971 revision of the Comics Code.
• The Good Captain: Was actually a Captain in the US Army before getting frozen and being listed as MIA. One 2002 story by Christopher Priest revealed that, post-revival, he was given the permanent retirement rank of Brigadier General, making him a Four-Star Badass.
• Good Counterpart: Rogers was given the whole Captain America persona specifically in part to counter the terrifying propaganda value of Germany's Red Skull.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Cap is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet and more than once a baddie has tried to throw down with Cap under the belief that that kindness makes him weak.
• Good Is Old-Fashioned: Often jeered at for upholding "outdated" principles.
• Good Old Ways: Sometimes he attributes his standards to his coming from an older time. However, he would also be the first to point out his time's negative aspects and appreciate modern progress in social attitudes.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Adolf Hitler during the Golden Age. Red Skull can also take on this role from time to time. And then there’s Weapon Plus, the true masterminds behind Project Rebirth...
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Along with Innocent Blue Eyes, befitting of one of the purest people in the Marvel Universe.
• Hands Looking Wrong: When Machinesmith's robots subject him to an Emergency Transformation and upload his mind into a robotic body, he doesn't realise anything is different until he sees his new robotic hands.
  I shall never forget the sight that greeted me upon regaining consciousness! [...] I remember I felt well ? even strong ? although I had this incredible sense of detachment. And then, I lifted my hand to my face... but it was no longer my hand!
• The Heart: Of The Marvel Universe. Also, Captain America is not only The Leader of The Avengers, he's also The Heart seeing as the Mighty Avengers without him seemed more like a millitary institute (which is somewhat Fridge Logic, considering Captain America is a Military Superhero) and he's the one that most people rally behind when someone cries Avengers Assemble!
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Cap is this with a lot of people. Among the core Avengers, he's particularly close with Iron Man and Hawkeye, and Thor to a lesser extent, while outside of them he's really close with the Falcon and Bucky Barnes. Spider-Man also seems to have a man-crush on him, on top of that.
  • Falcon and Bucky also became this during the time Cap was dead. As a favour to his dead best friend, Falcon sought out Bucky and made sure he was OK as Steve was trying to do before his death, and helped him come into his own as Captain America. The two continued to be friends well after Steve was revived, and on his trial, Bucky pleaded to be given a pass to go save Falcon and Natasha, specifically calling them his best friends.
• The Hero: He's The Leader of The Avengers and the Big Good of the Marvel Universe.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Finding out someone (definitely not Richard Nixon) is the head of the Secret Empire did a serious number on Steve.
  • After the events of Operation: Galactic Storm, Steve gets into a funk over the events there. Fortunately, Hawkeye and Iron Man manage to help rouse him out of it.
  • A rare sight, but at the end of the first issue of the Age of Ultron storyline, we see Cap slumped against the wall, looking utterly hopeless and emotionally defeated for the first time, since ever.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Yes, even Steve himself is not immune to this one. During Mark Gruenwald's run, Steve is forced to shoot an ULTIMATUM goon to save some hostages. It doesn't quite work, and the survivors tell the news, which spreads like wildfire. Steve has to deal with a public split between people think he's now a crazy gun-nut who shoots everyone he fights, and people cheering him on.
• He's Back!: The appropriately-titled Captain America: Reborn, dealing with Steve's return to the land of the living.
• History Repeats: In Marvel 2099, it was revealed that Steve once again found himself in a block of ice at the end of the Heroic Age and finds himself thawed in 2099: Manifest Destiny. That said, a clone of him created by John Herod as a puppet had this as his cover story.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: D-Man suffers one thanks to the Power Broker's scientists pumping him too full of stuff. Cap manages to save him via CPR.
• Honor Before Reason: Even as the world becomes more hateful, dark, and cynical, Steve Rogers refuses to lower himself to the standards of "normality." This can be both blessing, since it means his sworn enemies know Steve is a man of his word, and a curse, since it also means Steve will save those enemies, regardless of how heinous their actions can be.
• Hope Bringer: Steve's return was more or less the beginning of the end of Norman Osborn's reign of power.
  • He's pretty much the Hope Bringer of the superhero community. It's an unspoken rule that if Captain America is still fighting, you keep fighting.
• Horror Host: Cap can actually be considered one, albeit only on a technicality. The last two issues of his Golden Age title were retitled Captain America's Weird Tales, because horror was selling and superheroes weren't. Cap didn't actually introduce any stories "on panel," though. In issue #74, he appeared in a regular Captain America story (albeit one with horror aspects, as he fought the Red Skull in, literally, Hell.) He didn't appear in #75 at all, except in the title.
• Humble Hero: Part of the point of him. He wasn't anything too special before he got the Super-Soldier Serum, and he's pointed out he wasn't supposed to be unique, just the first of many. His humility is one of the reasons he's the embodiment of the American Dream: he's a nobody who became a somebody, and he's eternally thankful for it. Perhaps best summed up by the following exchange from Captain America: The First Avenger:
  Red Skull: What makes you so special?
  Cap: Nothin'. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn.
• Human Popsicle: One of the Trope Codifiers; any use of this trope in comics is almost always a reference to him.
• Hypocrite: Any time Cap tells people not to kill, or even fight, Nazis (especially people who have more right than anyone else to hate them, like Jews).
  • In issue #245◊, Cap tells a Holocaust survivor that killing the Nazi general who murdered her family and raped her would make her "just as bad".
  • Issue #275 has Cap declare that a Jewish man punching a Nazi is just as bad as Nazis breaking into a synagogue, robbing it, and painting swastikas everywhere. And then he says "the First Amendment should protect everyone", but objects when a Jewish character wants to exercise his free speech by counterprotesting a Nazi rally. Uh, Steve, you do remember what your very first issue has on the cover, right? And what you did in WWII? It becomes even worse when you remember that Jack Kirby was a militantly anti-fascist Jew, who literally fought them himself.
• I Call It "Vera": Some stories indicate that, in Cap's head, the shield is actually named "Shield".
• Iconic Item: If a character who isn't Cap holds up the Mighty Shield, everyone stops and takes notice.
  • And more often than not, seeing someone who isn't Capt holding the shield tends to make them angry. During the Civil War storyline, there was a skirmish between Cap's people and Iron Man's people, and Cap got separated from his shield and had to retreat without it. Spider-Man, while on Iron Man's team at the time, went to retrieve the shield so he could get it back to Cap. When he found it, a bunch of street punks had gotten to it first and were gloating over it, speculating on how much they could sell it for. That's when they heard a voice say "put that down right now," and looked up to see an extremely pissed-off Spider-Man getting ready to kick some serious ass. Needless to say, they put down the shield and left quickly.
  • It's different when Cap gives the shield to someone because he knows they'll need it, like when he gave it to Wonder Man because he was injured and knew Wonder Man would need it as a defense against the enemy's laser blasts, or when he gave it to Superman during an intercompany crossover because he had to stay behind to direct the battle, and knew Superman was going to draw the brunt of the enemy's fire. Under those conditions, no one said anything. During the battle, an impressed Superman said "This shield...it's incredible!" To which Thor responded "Enjoy it while you can. There is nothing else like it in all the worlds."
• Ideal Hero: Captain America is Marvel Comics' moral equivalent to Superman.
• Implacable Man: The Red Skull learns the hard way why you should not be a Nazi near Magneto. He throws everything he has at the man, and it just slows Magneto down a little. He still catches the Red Skull in the end.
• Improbable Weapon User: Cap's shield, which he uses as not only a shield against weapons fire, but as a throwing weapon itself.
• Inadequate Inheritor: John Walker as Captain America. He initially starts off as just a slightly-more jingoistic replacement for Steve, aware of the burden of the role and terrified of screwing up. Then he beats a supervillain to death. Then two former friends of his reveal his identity on national television, which leads to serious Sanity Slippage when his parents are abducted and gunned down. The CSA keeps him on as Captain America anyway, partly because of the Red Skull, who wants an increasingly unhinged John to discredit the name.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Steve, you the man.
• Inspector Javert: Steve turns into this in X-23: Target X. He feels personally responsible for all the killings X-23 has carried out because she slipped his grasp after her field test by masquerading as a wounded survivor. He reveals he's been tracking her down ever since (approximately six years) and is obsessed with bringing her to justice. He's driven to the point where he completely ignores Matt Murdock's attempts to warn him that S.H.I.E.L.D. won't care really about justice, but instead will use her as a weapon the same way she was used by the Facility. Before he can actually turn her over, however, he recognizes the truth of this and that Laura was as much a victim as the people she killed, and lets her go.
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Pointed out during "The Bloodstone Hunt". While in Tokyo, Zemo's crew are set upon by a group of Japanese cultists. Zaran proclaims they're using kung-fu, and it's Batroc who sets him straight; kung-fu is Chinese. If they're Japanese, then it's more likely karate or jujitsu.
• Irony:
  • Steve Rogers has blonde hair, blue eyes, and is at the peak of his physical condition thanks to the Super-Soldier Serum. Nonetheless, this man who would be considered the ideal Aryan man would go on to help defeat Germany and the Nazi regime in World War II as Captain America (not to mention, decking Hitler in the face on the cover of his very first issue).
  • In the Two Americas arc, Naslund declares that Bucky is the worst Bucky he has met. He's saying this to the original Bucky, for whom the role as "Cap's sidekick" is named.
• It's Probably Nothing: Dr. Malus, running away from Steve and also the twisted results of his sick experiments, hears an odd howling noise, but dismisses it as "just the wind". In a sewer. It's not the wind. It's a werewolf.
• Just One Man: No single other hero has caused so many enemy commanders to scream out "kill him you fools, he's only one man!"
• Killer Robot:
  • The Sleepers, one of Red Skull's last-ditch "screw yous" to the world.
  • Tess, a robot made by a Mad Scientist during WW2 for getting rid of all the super-soldiers Operation: Rebirth was meant to create when the government... didn't need them anymore. Since Heinz Kruger nixed the necessity of that, the government told the scientist not to bother. He still went ahead and built it anyway.
• Kudzu Plot: The Scourge of the Underworld plotline.
• Lampshade Hanging: At one point during Gruenwald's run, Steve unmasks when he's sitting down at a diner table with a single mother, whose son is one of his fans. She's momentarily startled that she now knows Steve's identity, until he points out she only knows he's a blond haired, blue eyed man, and there's not exactly a shortage of those around.
• The Lancer: Bucky was his during the war. Sam Wilson is another when not Avenging, Tony Stark is another when he is.
• Legacy Character: Cap and co. have scads of people who have taken up their monikers during brief bouts with death or retirement
  • Captain America and Bucky
    • After their "deaths" in WWII, Harry S. Truman asked the similarly-themed hero Spirit of '76, William Naslund, and Bucky's friend Fred Davis to take over as Captain America and Bucky, to keep America's morale up. After Naslund died in the line of duty, Jeffrey Mace, another flag-themed superhero called Patriot, finished his mission and took over as Cap.
    • In the '50s, William Burnsides and Jack Monroe were genetically altered to be the new "Commie Smasher" Cap and Bucky. They were put on ice after their version of the serum started driving them crazy. "Evil '50s Cap" takes this a little far, having gotten plastic surgery and altered his vocal cords to look and sound exactly like Cap, and even legally changed his name to "Steven Rogers."
    • When Steve had the Captain America identity taken from him by the government, he got a new costume and called himself The Captain. John Walker became Captain America, and Lemar Hoskins became Bucky. Hoskins later changed his name to Battlestar, while Walker traded costumes with Steve, using his "The Captain" costume to become "U.S.Agent."
    • Rick Jones, sidekick of the Hulk and the Avengers-at-large, also did a stint as a substitute Bucky. Sam Wilson acknowledged him as the other person who knows what it's like to be Steve's partner when he eulogized Steve.
    • Isaiah Bradley was the only survivor of a government program to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum using black men as test subjects.^note As the title of his debut story Truth: Red, White & Black implies, he was originally supposed to be the retconned-in prototype for Steve Rogers, but then the story was pitched to be in Alternate Continuity. While Truth was in progress, it was decided that it would be canonical after all. But since the story is (fortuitously) set in 1942, Steve and his serum still came first. But the story sure reads like Isaiah was first, and later writers have thus confused the order. Out of hundreds, only a few men survived the serum tests and Isaiah was the last of them because they were sent on missions without any protection. For his last mission, he stole a spare uniform and shield of Steve's - and was captured and remained a prisoner until the end of the war. Then he was imprisoned for treason (stealing Steve's stuff) until he was pardoned by JFK and sworn to secrecy. Despite this, he became an urban legend as "the black Captain America," revered by African-Americans and completely unknown to anyone else for decades due to extensive government cover-ups. Steve eventually found out about everything, to his horror, and paid his respects. By this time, Isaiah had suffered brain damage due to the imperfectly recreated serum. Isaiah's grandson, Eli Bradley, took up his legacy and that of Jeffrey Mace, as Patriot. For bonus points, Eli also got Steve's original triangular shield.
    • The Heroes Reborn universe included Rikki Barnes, Bucky's granddaughter, as the new Bucky. She later crossed over to the main 616-verse.
    • In the event of his death (which happened in Civil War (2006)), Steve made two requests of Tony Stark: choose a new Captain America and ensure Bucky doesn't lose himself. Tony misinterpreted that as Steve wanting Bucky to be Cap, and while that wasn't what Steve had in mind, he approved and insisted Bucky keep it, taking over SHIELD as Commander Rogers, up until Bucky faked his death and returned to covert ops as the Winter Soldier.
    • After losing the super-soldier serum, Steve chose longtime friend and partner Sam Wilson to be Cap. Sam's Cap incorporates his Falcon wings and bird powers into the costume.
  • There is also Nomad. When Steve became disillusioned with the state of America, he discarded Cap and became "the Man Without a Country." After he realized that he could still fight for his ideals as Captain America, he passed the Nomad identity to former '50s Bucky, Jack Monroe. After Jack's death, Black Widow bestowed it on Rikki Barnes, the alternate universe female Bucky, the so-called "Girl Without a World." After Rikki's death, the mantle is set to be inherited by Ian, Steve's adopted son from another dimension.
  • Superheroes inspired by Steve's aesthetic include the aforementioned Patriot and Spirit of '76, as well as American Dream from MC 2 and Commander A, a futuristic Cap analogue from Captain America Corps.
  • Peggy Carter was first known as Agent 13, before her sister (later niece), Sharon Carter. American Dream, whose real name is Shannon Carter, is their niece, as well, and was raised by Peggy.
  • He's also got a few Legacy Villains, such as the 12th and 13th Barons Zemo. Sin has also taken her father's mantle.
• Le Parkour: Pretty much Batroc the Leaper's schtick. It's really played up in the "Captain America and Batroc" one-shot. This is a bit of a Retcon since Batroc originally practised Savate, a different French martial art. He uses both these days.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • Issue #341 has Steve and Tony Stark fight over Tony's actions in "Armor Wars". It's part of a straining of their friendship that lasts for several years.
  • Due to a misunderstanding, Battlestar and D-Man get into a fight in issue #344. D-Man's slightly groggy from being near-fatally poisoned, and sees Lem standing over several captured members of the Serpent Society, thinking he's about to free them, so he attacks. Unfortunately, Dennis is too groggy to explain himself properly.
• Literal Disarming: In issue #334, John Walker fights training dummies to get used to Cap's shield. He throws it with too much force, accidentally cutting a dummy's hand off.
  John Walker: Now's my chance to disarm it. Oops! I didn't mean to do it literally!
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of the best-known examples. Cap's shield is one of the most durable items in the Marvel universe: it can take a LOT of punishment. This is taken to extremes with the second Marvel vs. Capcom 3 trailer when Cap uses his shield to STOP A CRASHING HELICOPTER.
• Machete Mayhem: The villain Machete, who oddly enough bears a striking resemblance to Danny Trejo.
• Made of Indestructium: Captain America's shield, made out of a unique Vibranium-steel alloy melded together by a unknown catalyst and the only non-magical thing more durable than true adamantium. Only the power of a skyfather or a cosmic entity can destroy the shield.
• Mad Love: Red Skull and Mother Night, one-sided at least. God only knows what she saw in him.
• Magnetic Hero: Captain America is so well-respected by the superhero community that they usually follow his lead whether he's their official leader or not. This is because he's both incredibly competent despite being only barely superhuman and because they trust him to always be true to the right ideals. It comes to a point that when he fails them, the whole community gets demoralized (ex. in Civil War.)
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The end of the story "The Haunting of Skull House". Through the story, Cap's had to deal with some of Doctor Faustus' inventions making him experience highly realistic hallucinations, nearly leading to a fatal case of Your Mind Makes It Real. Then Faustus catches a taste of his own medicine, and sees a ghost of the Red Skull, who starts strangling him. Cap comes across a near-dead Faustus and figures this is what happened, but is troubled by something: Faustus habitually chews his fingernails, and the injuries around his throat go down to the bone...
• Military Superhero: Emphasis on both words. Cap started out as a Super-Soldier (and actually ranked officer, the Captain is both his moniker and actual army rank) for the United States Army. He actually did the jump in D-Day with the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and fought the frontlines against the Nazis. Yet back then, he was already a paragon of virtue and heroism. Being unfrozen in the present only confirmed that honest and selfless asskicking is NEVER out of style.
• Miraculous Malfunction: The material that became his shield was created accidentally during an experiment to merge vibranium and an iron alloy. An unknown catalyst entered the mixture while the scientist overseeing it was asleep.
• Mood Whiplash: Issue #351 begins with Val Cooper trying and not exactly succeeding in making a speech reintroducing Steve as Captain America. Then, just as John Walker hands over the title, he's shot repeatedly.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Faustus, an evil psychologist, and Dr. Arnim Zola, an evil geneticist.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Roger Stern gave this to Captain America, in order to handwave various conflicting backstories for Captain America, past and future, in terms of having Cap's memory damaged due to him being frozen alive.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Very much averted with the character's transition to The Bronze Age of Comic Books, where Cap came to accept that while his country did not always live up to its ideals, those ideals themselves are worth fighting for, especially when his own government violated them.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Losing the Civil War X-Over, as hell on earth broke out afterwards.
  • Well before that, there was his failure to save Bucky from dying in WWII. Well, until it was revealed that Bucky didn't exactly bite the bullet that time...
  • He spent as much as eight years personally hunting X-23 down after her first assassination, because he mistakenly let her go when she disguised herself as a survivor of her own rampage. He subsequently blamed himself for all of her subsequent killings (of which there were lots). It pushes him into full-blown Inspector Javert territory.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: A rare male example with his original Nomad costume. That deep, plunging neckline is JUST criminal!
• Nazi Hunter: Cap hunted them during the war and has had to sniff them out after being unfrozen, since many of his enemies are Nazis. This includes the Red Skull.
  • The 1950's version of Captain America also hunted former Nazis. He also sought out Dirty Communists, and anyone who didn't fit his moral or political perspective, which was largely why he was so dangerous.
• Never Found the Body: Most famously with Bucky, though he has a pretty good justification of being at ground zero of an exploding plane in mid-air. And it eventually turned out he survived that.
• Never My Fault: Left-Winger and Right-Winger reveal John Walker's identity on national television, leading to the Watchdogs kidnapping his parents, which then leads to their death. When John goes after them for it, they complain that's it's hardly their fault the Watchdogs did that. Their manager Ethan Thurm, the one who gave them the idea in the first place, goes even further, calling John stupid for not being able to protect his parents.
• New Season, New Name:
  • Cap's Golden Age book became Captain America's Weird Tales in its last two issues.
  • Once Cap became the main focus of Tales of Suspense, the comic changed its title to his name starting with issue 100.
• Nice Guy:
  • Steve Rogers, under the uniform, is still a kind and polite gentleman and the picture of the wholesome 1930's boy next door.
  • Same goes for Bucky.
• '90s Anti-Hero: When he was resurrected, Bucky's new look embodied this, right down to his Cable-esque cyborg arm. Bucky actually averts it, however, since he actively tries to be a better hero, especially since he became Captain America.
• No One Could Survive That!: Nomad and Cap's tussle with the Slug ends with him supposedly drowning. In fairness, Slug is fat enough to make Jabba the Hutt look swoll, so it's not an unreasonable thought. Once they're off, the issue ends with Sluggman floating to the surface and gasping.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Abraham Erskine, the scientist who enhanced him, was killed by a Nazi spy just as he completed the process. The secret of creating super-soldiers died with him.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: One issue has Sidewinder of the Serpent Society going over the bills in bed when "Black Mamba" enters the room in a french maid outfit. Sidewinder's too busy looking at the bills to notice his girlfriend's suddenly got a different build... and hairstyle... and hair-color... until Viper bites him with her poisonous fangs.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The Armadillo was given his powers by a mad scientist, but he's not a bad guy. One of his particular jailbreaks from the Vault was motivated by thinking his wife was cheating on him, and it had driven him nuts. A chance encounter with Vagabond, who'd been left behind by Team Cap to guard the van, has her talk him into peacefully surrendering.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Red Skull once tried to do this to Magneto. Magneto disagreed. Very, very strongly.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: People have a bad habit of underestimating Batroc the Leaper because of his usually friendly nature. Forgetting that he can fight toe to toe with Captain America. He was once even able to hold his own against Cap and Hawkeye at the same time!
• Not Worth Killing: During her plan to turn everyone in Washington into snake people, Viper finds Definitely Not Nancy Reagan, and has her at gunpoint... then decides she's not worth bothering with, and hurries on.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Not even Cap is immune to attacks from them, such as the Commission for Superhuman Activities, who learn Steve has a couple decades of back-pay owed to the US government, and demand he work for them as repayment. It eventually turns out one of them is working for the Red Skull.
• Offhand Backhand: Steve has been known to do this with his shield. He has very good aim. For example, doing so in issue #314 to the villain Pinball.
• Older Than They Look: Cap looks to be in his physical prime despite being over 80 years old. Same goes for Bucky when he was brought back.
• One-Man Army: OK, sometimes Cap brings along a partner or a friend. But it's not like he needs to....
• One-Steve Limit: Enforced lethally by the former Madame Hydra when she decided to take on the name Viper. She murdered the original Viper and took over the Serpent Squad.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: A memorable arc in the early 90s had Cap turned into a werewolf (affectionately named "Cap-Wolf" by some) due to a chemical injection by Deadly Nightshade, who was working for another supervillain who had convinced an entire town to let themselves be turned into werewolves.

Tropes - P to Z

• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • An old trope in the old days was Cap disguising himself while still in costume by wearing a hat and trenchcoat. Somehow, this would hide the 6', blue-eyed, lantern-jawed man with a head-covering cowl.
  • For a while, Cap disguised himself as a hero known as The Captain. The costume looked identical to his normal Captain America costume except for darker colors and a slightly different chest-insignia. He even threw a shield around that also had a slight color-change. Here is a cover depicting both costumes.◊ This costume somehow fooled everyone, including his allies on The Avengers. The costume would later be worn by the USAgent.
• The Paragon: It's pretty much a given that in all of comic books, regardless of companies, the only characters who are bigger paragons than Captain America are Superman and DC's Captain Marvel. See the page quotes. They're his promise to himself that he'll use his abilities only in pursuit of a future better than the present.
  • The Red Skull tried to break that image in-universe by using the Commission to force Rogers to quit as Captain America and give the title to the Super-Patriot, John Walker. It wasn't until the Watchdogs murdered Walker's parents that he truly became unhinged and threatened the image of Captain America as The Paragon. Once the Skull was exposed and forced out of power, the remaining members of the Commission decided that the only way to rehabilitate Walker's image was to stage his assassination and give him the new identity of USAgent, going so far as to change his civilian identity as well.
• Parental Substitute: Is one to Bucky, whose own father George died in a training accident some three years before Steve took the Super-Soldier serum.
• Pinball Projectile: Cap's shield. Oooh boy, Cap's shield.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He's pretty much this with most of the female Avengers he works with, with special mention to Wasp (with exception to the Ultimate universe counterparts who dated briefly) and Carol Danvers. He's also decent enough friends with Black Widow, but they're much closer friends in the films.
  • Falcon and Sharon Carter are pretty good buds, in part because of their mutual closeness to Steve. After Steve's death, Sam spent a lot of time looking out for Sharon and visiting her regularly, often staying over, but they explicitly never got intimate.
• Politically Correct History: The regular continuity Cap is usually depicted in his World War II days in the modern stories as a man without any prejudices in his personality that were considered perfectly reasonable assumptions by many mainstream Americans in the 1940s, like homophobia or the like. Sometimes justified in those period stories by him discovering the horrors of bigotry at its absolute worst, such as the Nazi concentration/death camps, which obliterated any racial/religious/sexual orientation prejudices he had left. Sometimes it is simply explained that Steve Rogers was a sickly, intelligent and well educated artist from liberal New York before he enlisted, so he probably wouldn't be that mainstream in his views and he knew what it is like to be bullied as a minority. In an 80's Avengers/X-Men crossover, he and Magneto were half-fighting, half-debating. Magneto doubted Cap's claims that he had no prejudice against mutants, and blasted him with a device that could remove prejudice from someone's mind. Magneto then questioned Cap again, and got the same answer; the device hadn't affected Cap because there was no prejudice to remove. Magneto, whose entire worldview centered around the belief that humans could never accept mutants, was profoundly shaken and immediately surrendered.
• Power Trio: The Invaders core group: Namor the Sub-Mariner (Id), Human Torch (Ego), Captain America (Superego).
  • And of course, him and the other Big three of the Avengers, Iron Man and Thor.
• Powered Armor: While Cap's faced off against many armored villains, he himself had to don an armored version of his costume in the 90s due to the Super-Soldier Serum breaking down in his body and causing Cap to be paralyzed.
• Powers Do the Fighting: MODOK doesn't put in much effort in a fight except for pressing buttons on his chair or using Psychic Powers. That's good for him, because he's a huge head in a chair with stubby limbs.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Again, Cap's shield.
• President Evil: In a story by Steven Englehart back in the early 70's, Cap was hunting down a Secret Circle of Secrets; he managed to track down the boss, all the way into the White House. Turns out that — at least at the time — the Big Bad just happened to be — or at least implied to be — Richard ''F***ing'' Nixon. Oh, and then he offed himself. Of course, thanks to the Sliding Timescale, Nixon was likely no longer the Big Bad... but that just raises the question of who now was.
• President Superhero:
  • Near the end of the Ultimate Marvel line, Captain America was elected to the presidency of the United States, and apparently did a very good job.
  • One of Marvel's What If? titles explores what would have happened if Captain America were elected President.
• Pretender Diss: One story has U.S. Agent repeatedly told he's very much not Cap, even though by that point he isn't even trying to be Cap, in any sense.
• Principles Zealot: A lighter version, but still very much in effect.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: The most extreme example in Marvel Comics period. Fans and even writers often lampshade this by saying If Cap agrees with it, it's ok. It even goes as far as condemning torture or mass murder. See also You Remind Me of X below.
  • Parodied in "The Ballad of Captain America's Disapproving Face" by the Murder Ballads.
  If you can't tell the Captain what you're damn well up to, then don't damn well get up to it!
• Psycho Serum: Cap has discovered there have been multiple attempts to recreate his Project Rebirth enhancements and the results have typically produced murderous psychotics, with the most infamous of these being William Burnside, the man better known as the 1950s Commie Smasher Cap.
• Ratings Stunt: Marvel has said in several interviews that Captain America being a HYDRA agent was this.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: After the first appearance, Timely Comics was prompted by MLJ Comics to change Cap's shield from the triangular shape to the discus one. Years later, this change of shields was retconned as being presented as a new weapon to Cap by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself.
• Red Skies Crossover: Cap's involvement in Infinity Wars. Just as he's about to deal with his werewolf problem, his evil doppleganger bursts into the room to try and kill him. Cap fights his copy and kills it. Nightshade bemoans that the fight has wrecked her anti-werewolf vaccine and it'll take time to whip up some more. Cut to some time later, when she's whipped up some more. Crossover over, never to be spoken of again. For Steve, at least. An amnesiac D-Man also gets attacked by a doppleganger, which moves his own plot along.
• Reforged into a Minion: As has been widely noted, Bucky's return as the Winter Soldier played this for a Gut Punch.
• Refugee from Time: Steve Rogers will always be a WWII vet - the amount of time he spent in the ice will just get longer.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: In-story, Captain America is technically a religious icon for this one tribe of Inuit. Granted, since the story got mainstream coverage in the Marvel U, said tribe have distanced themselves from it, but the story is there...
• Retcon: Old saying...Nobody stays dead in comics except Bucky and Uncle Ben. New saying: Nobody stays dead. Nobody.
• Reality Warper: In a meta-loophole, Marvel was actually telling the complete and honest truth with the "revelation" that Cap had always been a member of Hydra and was Not Brainwashed. The Red Skull had managed to convince a Cosmic Entity named Kobik (who has the appearance, personality, and naïvete of a little girl) to alter reality and change history to make this true.
• The Reveal: Cuthroat, a low-level minion of the Red Skull, turns out to be Diamondback's last living brother.
• Right Makes Might: Whenever Captain America throws his shield, you can see this written on it in six-inch letters. His Nigh-Invulnerable Unobtainium shield is literally reinforced with American Righteous Might - not Self-Righteous Might. America is the Greatest Country in the World - but only when it maintains its idealism.
  What If? #44: Without its ideals — its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!
• Robotic Reveal: Superia's attempt to take over AIM goes a little wrong when the guy she blasts casually gets back up again, revealing he's actually an Adaptoid.
• Running Gag: US Agent's names. His real name is John Walker, but after the government fakes his death, they give him a new identity... as Jack Daniels.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Cap has given up his identity numerous times whenever a government's ruling clashed with his own ideals, as well as the American ideal. The incidents involving the Secret Empire and the Commission on Superhuman Activities are two notable examples of this. This trope is also the driving force for Cap rejecting the Superhuman Registration Act, as he leads a contingent of heroes who don't approve of the Act.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Frozen in 1945, woken up... about twelve years before now.
• Second Super-Identity: Captain America went undercover as The Captain on two different occasions. This was because the Government demanded that he work exclusively for them, and when he refused, they forbid him from using the Captain America identity, which they legally owned. They gave the identity to another hero, Super Patriot, who later ended up trading costumes with The Captain and being renamed USAgent.
  • His Ultimate Marvel counterpart spent some time as that universe's Black Panther.
• Shadow Archetype: Red Skull.
• Shield Bash: He uses his shield as a melee weapon in addition to throwing it.
• Shooting Superman: In one of the Red Skull's particularly stupid moves, he once tried attacking Magneto with robots. Magneto. The Master of Magnetism. They don't slow him down for a moment.
• Shout-Out:
  • The story of his resurrection appears to be a Whole-Plot Reference to Slaughterhouse-Five.
  • Cap's "Stars and Stripes" attack in the Marvel vs. Capcom series is a good, old-fashioned Shoryuken-style attack, and the Hyper variant tips its hat to Ken's Shoryu Reppa super. His Charging Star special also draws comparisons with M. Bison's Psycho Crusher, especially Hyper Charging Star (ironic considering how Bison's the Big Bad of SF).
  • Cap's red, white, and blue shield is a design ripped straight from The Apotheosis of Washington, where Lady Liberty is wielding a similar shield to protect George Washington's seat in Heaven.
• Sidekick Graduations Stick: And has even triumphed over Steve Rogers' return from the dead.
• Skull for a Head: The Red Skull, of course. Originally, it was just a mask, but then he caught a face full of his preferred weapon, and he's stayed that way ever since. His daughter too, now that she has become the new Red Skull.
• Slasher Smile: John Walker starts sporting one of these after his parents are killed. Issue #347 has him with a particularly manic one, complete with drool. Likewise, the Red Skull in a clone of Steve's own body spends a lot of "The Captain" with one, made all the more unnerving because, again, he's in a duplicate of Steve's body.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The strongest appeal of the Captain America franchise is its stalwart refusal to stop believing in love, kindness, faith, and fundamental human decency. Which in turn is why so many Captain America fans hate Ultimate Captain America, as Mark Millar designed that alternate version of the character as a parody of jingoistic Bush-era conservatism.
• Sliding Timescale: All superheroes do this, but Cap is one of the few whose origin uses this trope perfectly - he always started out in World War 2, and the only thing that changes is how long he was in the ice. If anything, it adds resonance to the character - when he first thawed out in the early 60's, the difference between then and 1945 was only about 18 years, and for a smart guy like Cap, a couple of hours in the library with old newspaper headlines would bring him up to date, and he'd be able to see how his time begat the current one. Nowadays, he's about 75 years removed and counting, and feels more than ever like a man out of time, rather than a guy who was away longer than he anticipated.
• Small Steps Hero: Despite being a soldier, Cap will not sacrifice lives. Anyone who dies on his watch does so despite his best efforts.
• Snake People: One of Viper's particularly nutty schemes has her turning everyone in Washington, D.C. into these, Ronald and Nancy Reagan included, meaning Cap has to fight the Pres turned into a snake man (which the Secret Service take in entirely the wrong way).
• Something Only They Would Say: Flag-Smasher is reluctant to believe Steve as The Captain is who he says he is, having just had a run-in with John Walker as Captain America. Fortunately, Steve says something typically noble and heroic, and that convinces Karl instantly.
• Spanner in the Works: Turns out Hydra!Steve didn't quite cover his tracks as well as he thought he did during The Reveal issue. The circumstances were fishy enough for Taskmaster and Black Ant to look into it, and due to the plane crash being in Bagalia (the "nation of super-criminals"), the black box recorder was easily stolen. And it has Steve confessing to being a Hydra agent on tape. Taskmaster proceeded to show the tape to Maria Hill, and now the jig is officially up.
• Spectral Weapon Copy: Steve uses a Hard Light version of his shield whenever he can't use it.
• Spotting the Thread: During Operation: Galactic Storm, Steve, previously in the heart of Kree territory, finds himself surrounded by his worst enemies (and Batroc) trying to kill him. Steve fights them all off, but finds the whole situation suspicious. He asks Batroc to unmask himself, and when Batroc does... he has no face, since Steve has never seen it, and therefore couldn't know what it looks like. He's actually in a Lotus-Eater Machine as the Supreme Intelligence tries to kill him.
• The Spymaster: Steve's stint as Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• The Stateless: In the aftermath of the Secret Empire (a conspiracy to take control of the United States led by a thinly-veiled version of then-president Richard Nixon), Steve Rogers lost faith in his country and abandoned his identity as Captain America, adopting the persona "Nomad".
• Sterility Plague: Superia attempts to release a plague that would sterilise the world's female population except for her and her cadre of supervillainesses. As the only fertile women in the world, they would essentially be able to hold the world to ransom.
• The Strategist: There's a reason why any hero worth their weight will defer authority to Cap when the world's about to break.
• Strapped to a Bomb: Captain America and Bucky Barnes were strapped to an experimental plane laden with explosives by Baron Zemo. They managed to untie themselves, but while trying to defuse it Cap fell off and landed in the Arctic Ocean where he was frozen solid. Bucky was presumed blown up for many many years.
• Strapped to an Operating Table:
  • Happens to Steve himself, courtesy of Dr. Malus, who works for the Power Broker. Steve is a little annoyed to find he doesn't get superpowers out of nearly being experimented on.
  • Then it happens to D-Man and Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura) a few issues later. D-Man to see what happens when someone's given too much superpowers, and Ms. Marvel to see if it can be reversed.
• Straw Feminist: The villain Superia.
• Strawman Political: As might be expected of a character intended to embody what is best about a nation. Writers either tend to use him as a mouthpiece for what they personally think America should be (616 Captain America is usually used for this), or as a voodoo doll for everything they see wrong with America (Ultimate universe Captain America is usually used for this). Needless to say that character consistency usually isn't a priority for these writers.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Even with his patriotism-inspired Popularity Power with both fans and writers, he can have moments like this. There will be times where he can knock out members of the Wrecking Crew with one punch or get into fights with an Iron Spider-enhanced Spider-Man where Peter can't land a single punch on him. Then in other portrayals, you'll see him struggling in physical fights with different human Nazi soldiers or officers, with Cap looking like he's legitimately on the ropes, or he can also struggle against a crazed Daredevil in a graveyard, with Steve admitting that an off-his-game Daredevil is still more "top form" than most other people he knows.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Steve's World War II girlfriend Peggy Carter and his modern girlfriend Sharon Carter; originally (in the 1960s) they were sisters, now they're aunt and niece (expect grandniece in a few years). A major difference tends to be that Sharon is blond and Peggy isn't.
• Suicide Dare: Captain America once defeated the Super-Adaptoid — who was at that time nigh-omnipotent thanks to a Cosmic McGuffin — by convincing it that the thing that kept it from equalling his "human spirit" was that it could not die. The Adaptoid proceeded to prove Cap wrong by dying on the spot, thereby ending its threat.
• Superhero Packing Heat: Cap's original incarnation used guns in addition to his nigh-invulnerable shield, in keeping with his status as a Super-Soldier fighting Nazis in World War II. It wasn't until The Silver Age of Comic Books that Cap ditched the guns and just stuck to just using his shield. Modern depictions have it that he sometimes carries a piece but prefers not to use it. Bucky plays this straight.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham:
  • Despite having multiple close friends who are mutants, despite leading Avengers teams which included mutants as full equal members and despite having a long-established belief in equality and freedom, Cap never used the massive platform he has as one of the most universally beloved and respected superheroes in America to speak publicly in favour of mutant rights, or offer any material support to the X-Men or persecuted mutant citizens. At some points in comics, Cap was depicted as a loyal and patriotic agent of the US government, the same government which was legislating mutant apartheid. Lampshaded in Avengers vs. X-Men, when Cyclops essentially tells him "we almost went extinct, and you did nothing!" This is especially noticeable since Cap was deafeningly silent on the various iterations of the Mutant Registration Act, but went to war with the US government once artificially created superhumans like him were affected.
  • Explored in issue #314, when Nighthawk of Earth-712 asks the Avengers for help with his world's Squadron Supreme, who are becoming a little too fascist for his taste. Cap, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four mull on the issue, but decide they can't interfere in another world's affairs just because they don't like them, since that would set a bad precedent (Black Knight points out the Avengers had just interfered in Skrull affairs, but Monica Rambeau points out the Skrulls had been trying to interfere with them first).
• Super-Reflexes: Captain America doesn't dodge bullets, he blocks them with his mighty shield. Yet somehow, even when surrounded on all sides by gun-wielding Mooks, the shield always seems to be in the right place. This even applies when he is mindcontrolled chemically, an early story set in World War II had him under the influence of such a chemical by the Red Skull, but when he is taken before Adolf Hitler and the Fuehrer takes a swing at him, Cap reflexively blocks it with his shield, a body function that the Red Skull can't suppress.
• Super Serum: The Super-Soldier serum, which might be the Trope Namer.
• Super-Soldier: He began as the first of what was to be an army of super-soldiers, but after he was altered the creator was killed and the process was never successfully duplicated. This was eventually retconned to be part of the Weapon Plus program. Has a good claim on being the Trope Namer.
• Survival Through Self-Sacrifice: Captain America was once accosted by Black Crow, a Native American champion who demanded his life as punishment for the US government's treatment of indigenous people. When Cap willingly offered himself up, Black Crow spared him, impressed with his conviction.
• Take That!: In the Ultimates — "Surrender? Surrender??!! You think this letter on my head stands for France?" Lampshaded later on by Nick Fury pointing out how hilarious it was, while Hawkeye bemoaned that it was illustrative of how unprofessional the team had become since going public. Cap himself says he isn't entirely sure why he blurted that out.
  • And again in Nextwave by Elsa Bloodstone, who is English; for one issue, she wore a European Union t-shirt with the € symbol encircled by stars, and at one point, when described as "my victim" by a villain, (a villain wearing a costume that was apparently stolen from Cap's wardrobe, no less) shouted "Victim? Victim?! Do you think this letter on my chest stands for America?!" (Cue title box: "You have been getting insulted by NEXTWAVE.")
  • The regular Marvel Universe Cap even got in on it: while talking about fighting alongside the Maquis Rebellion in WWII, Steve explains how disgusted he is with the way modern Americans belittle the French with claims of cowardice. It's been suggested this was in response to the Ultimate version's statement.
• Take Up My Sword: After Steve's seeming death in 1945, William Naslund and then Jeffrey Mace took his place in order to keep up troop morale; when he seemingly died again in the 21st century, his former sidekick Bucky took up the shield.
• Team-Up Series: The Captain America and... series, which features a different hero taking second billing in every arc.
• Technical Pacifist: Some writers have gone out of their way to say that Captain America has never taken a life, even during World War II. This would ultimately be debunked by Mark Gruenwald, who had Captain America kill an agent of ULTIMATIUM in order to stop the goon from killing innocent hostages. It has also been stated that he had killed during WW2. That said, Steve prefers not to and would like to avoid it if possible.
  • Handled beautifully in Captain America: The First Avenger, when asked by Dr. Erskine if he wants to enlist to kill Nazis, Steve Rogers answers that he doesn't want to kill anybody... but that he dislikes bullies of all stripes and wants to stand up for the little guy. He's subsequently shown to go in guns blazing in many missions, but hey, he's doing it to save the world, a valid reason if there ever was one.
• Teens Are Monsters: Sin, Red Skull's daughter, thanks to a big of age futzing. She's accompanied by the Sisters of Sin, a gang of equally psychotic gals who are big into violence, murder and torture (not necessarily in that order). One of Mother Night's plots had her and the Sisters planning to turn a whole generation of American teenagers into psychotic hate monsters.
• Teleportation Rescue: This is part of Sidewinder's stock in trade. When he founded the Serpent Society, one of the perks he promised members was that he could free if they got arrested. He was shown doing this here, teleporting into a jail cell, grabbing the imprisoned member, and teleporting out. He even offers to do it for D-Man and Nomad during "The Captain", owing Vagabond for saving his life, but D-Man declines. Nomad does not.
• Temporary Scrappy: Cap is replaced by his Anti-Hero Substitute —his former enemy Superpatriot (John Walker). The new Cap is shown as a tool of the government first and an uncontrollable violent man second. Meanwhile, good ol' Steve Rogers takes a black suit to remain playing hero. Superpatriot would later go on to become a somewhat successful character in his own right once they gave him his own costume and the name U.S. Agent. He's since appeared in a number of titles such as West Coast Avengers and Dark Avengers.
• Tempting Fate: On his resurrection in a clone of Steve's body, the Red Skull brags to Steve how now he has an all-American face, he can hide in plain sight (presumably if he stops smiling like a serial killer first). Then Steve manages to give him a face full of his patented skull dust, disfiguring the Skull's face so that he looks like... well.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Only the Red Skull may kill Captain America. No-one else. Crossbones learns this one when he lures Cap into a trap and calls up his boss to tell him. Skull chews him out and tells Crossbones to knock it off. Brock figures if he just holds off going back long enough for the trap to do Steve in, then hey, it's not his fault, right?
• Theme Naming: John "Johnny" Walker; after his public assassination, he's brought back as USAgent with the new civilian identity of Jack Daniels.
• Think Nothing of It: Cap commonly is portrayed as being a bit embarrassed or taken aback by praise and hero worship, as seen in the Capmania miniarc.
• Threatening Shark: The Bloodstone Hunt arc has both sides run into a whole bunch of sharks while recovering a Bloodstone from a crashed plane. The bad guys stab one of the sharks, which just releases a whole bunch of blood and... well.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: The Cap's Signature Move and also one of the most iconic examples in fiction, making him the trope's patron saint.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Has died a couple times but always gets better.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He has his moments. Whether it's justified or completely out of character the fans will never agree on.
• Trespassing to Talk: Issue #341 has Steve break into Tony Stark's apartment to confront him over their tussle in Iron Man's own title a few weeks prior, as part of "Armor Wars". It's noted that in order to do so without Tony noticing, Steve also had to disable all of the notoriously paranoid Tony's security systems.
• A True Hero: Captain America is one of the few superheres who sometimes gets a pass when a story wants to contrast The Real Heroes with superheroes, because Steve Rogers was a World War II soldier that enlisted to fight even though his poor health would have almost guaranteed that he'd get himself killed. His bravery is thus never questioned; the issue is with his loyalty: is it with America or the world, and with the American people or its government?
• Underestimating Badassery: There are villains who dismiss Cap as a "glorified acrobat." One gang with that assumption tried invading the Avengers Mansion with just him inside on monitor duty. They soon learn what dealing with a One-Man Army really is like as they barely subdue him with a lucky grazing shot, then get their butts kicked thoroughly when he revives and breaks out of his bonds for Round two.
• Undying Loyalty: Easily inspires this on all the superhero community, but it's also a defining trait of his. He'll never leave a man behind.
• Ungrateful Bastard: After one fight, Cap goes through several hours of Hell to save Flag-Smasher from dying of injuries and exposure to sub-zero temperatures. Does Karl show any gratitude? Err, no. In fact, being saved just makes him hate Cap more.
• Unobtainium: Cap's shield is a unique alloy of steel and vibranium, rendering it not only invulnerable to anything less than the Beyonder or the Infinity Gauntlet, but also capable of absorbing impacts up to "pissed-off Hulk" levels and beyond. It's also impossible to reproduce. During his stint as "The Captain", Steve had two replacement shields; a mirror-finish adamantium shield from Tony Stark (which he returned after their falling-out over the Armor Wars), and a black-red-white pure vibranium shield from T'Challa, which went to USAgent after Steve got his job (and old shield) back. Neither had quite the same action as Cap's regular shield. In the late 2010's, his shield gets broken but repaired and upgraded by Odin. So yeah, it currently stands among the pinnacle of technological and magical advances. And it says something that compared to things like the Cosmic Cube, it's a 'simple' shield - something explicitly designed to protect.
• Unstuck in Time: Was forced to go through this by the Red Skull in Reborn, following his apparent death after Civil War (2006), to prepare his body for an eventual Grand Theft Me. It didn't work.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The return of the racist 50s Cap came about because some janitor who knew about him and didn’t realise he was an impostor saw that Nixon was visiting China, thought America was surrendering to the Commies and awoke who he thought was the real Captain America to “restore its values”.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: It's heavily implied that Steve's moral fiber was very much inspired by that of his mother, Sarah, whom Steve holds in such a high regard due to her love and care for her son.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Steve's power level, which is set at slightly above "the peak of human physical potential" pales in comparison to those of many of the enemies he's defeated, yet he manages to beat them through his keen tactical ability and sheer force of will as well as extensive combat skills in a variety of martial arts including Boxing, Judo, Karate, Aikido, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, Wushu, Wing Chun and Shaolin Kung Fu and Kickboxing,
  • Bucky in comparison to Steve. He manages to hold his own in a fight with Steve, and then later take up Steve's mantle and do well at it despite having no physical enhancements save his cybernetic arm because of his willingness to fight dirty.
• Weird Trade Union: The Serpent Society, a collection of snake-themed villains.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Flag-Smasher. He loathes, almost beyond words, the very idea of national sovereignty, thinking they get in the way of helping people, and thinks the globe should be united in a One World Order. Unfortunately, he uses terror tactics to advance this goal and innocent people often get killed. During their first fight, before he'd done anything too violent, Cap tried to talk him out of this, saying the best way to persuade people to his way of thinking would be to act not as a supervillain, but as a superhero; let people see how his world government ideology inspired him to acts of heroism, just as Cap's own beliefs inspired him. Flag-Smasher didn't listen.
  • Also, Brother Nature, who had been a park ranger until his forest was opened up to lumber companies. He tried to fight in court but lost. Then he gained nature-based superpowers, possibly empowered by Gaia's Vengeance, and committed acts of sabotage against the company. Cap was able to talk him out of it, though.
• Wham Line
  • "You don't understand, Steve. The guy we've been hunting, the man who killed the Red Skull; I've seen him! I think... I think it's Bucky!"
  • And then from Captain America: Steve Rogers #1, we have the 1,000-gigaton wham line:
    Steve Rogers: Hail Hydra.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Cap usually respects all life, regardless of where it comes from. During a crossover with Infinity War, he's attacked by his evil doppleganger, and struggles with him. Then he's told it's not technically alive, and suddenly immediately kicks it into its own shield, killing it. Not even a moment of angst or regret is spent dwelling on this, and the moment never comes up again.
• What the Hell, Hero?: On the receiving end of one from Daredevil over X-23. Steve is obsessed with bringing her to justice, to the point he willfully ignores Matt when he warns him that S.H.I.E.L.D. will just use her as a weapon like the Facility did, and that the only thing Steve will accomplish is stealing her only hope for turning her life around. At first he has none of it, even ignoring Matt's refusal to just hand her over when he appoints himself her lawyer, but finally realizes Matt was right all along just as they're approaching a S.H.I.E.L.D. installation, and lets her go.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • During a fight with some supervillains, Nomad sees one attacking D-Man, who he hates. Nomad seriously considers just letting the villain do Dennis in. He changes his mind... not out of any goodness or realisation, but because he really wants to hurt someone.
  • Diamondback is held captive by Crossbones, and at one point while he's asleep considers seriously smashing his head in with a cinderblock, but relents because apart from anything else she knows Steve would never approve. Several more weeks of brutalization at Crossbone's hands follow, and when they next really fight, he gets set on fire. This time, Diamondback decides she's going to let him burn.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Being a wholesome 1930's boy next door, Steve Rogers HATES any "man" who dares to strike women with a righteous fury. It's established in Remender's run that Steve's mom was abused by his dad, so its possible that this might motivate that.
  • That said, if he's in a fight with a female villain, he knows better than to hold back. He knows a woman can be as deadly as any man, so its more about hitting a woman who isn't capable of fighting back that his problem is.
• With All Due Respect: Steve says this to Val Cooper in issue #350, and knowing Steve, it probably is legit... probably, because on the next page, he and John Walker share a mutual jibe at the CSA's decision-making abilities.
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Steve Rogers turns from an asthmatic weakling into the pinnacle of human athleticism after being given the Super-Soldier serum.
• World's Best Warrior: Has the distinct honor of being considered The Best Warrior in the Omniverse! Captain America is the superhero that all other heroes respect in combat ability, tactics, and leadership.
• Would Not Shoot a Good Guy: Cap is just that pure-hearted.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After over a month of threats, blackmail, abuse and falling right into Stockholm Syndrome, it looks like Diamondback might be getting some good luck when she rediscovers her long-lost brother, who will surely free his beloved sister from the Red Skull, right? Wrong. Danny likes being a supervillain, and worse, a supervillain henchman for the goddamn Red Skull. He decides to go try to murder Crossbones, and protect his position as Skully's top goon. He fails.
• You Remind Me of X: During Avengers vs. X-Men, Tony pretty much calls Steve out on acting exactly like Tony did during Civil War (2006).

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If he's led to a fight, and a duel is due
Then the red, and the white, and the blue'll come through
When Captain America throws his mighty shield!