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Marvel Comics: Red Skull
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The Red Skull

Characters in Marvel Comics: Red Skull
"When it comes to bad, the Red Skull is in a class all by himself."

Alter Ego: Johann Shmidt

Notable Aliases: Captain America, Supreme One, Rote Schädel, Dell Rusk, Mickey Flynn, Aleksander Lukin

First Appearance: Captain America Comics #7 (October, 1941)

"His eyes, unfathomably empty, devoid of all compassion... all humanity... No one has eyes like that... no one! All these months I've lived in a fool's paradise, refusing to believe his claim to be the real Red Skull, refusing to believe that my greatest enemy had found a way to cheat death... but he has. The Red Skull lives... God help us all."
— Captain America, Captain America #370

The Arch-Enemy of Captain America and one of the oldest villains in comics, and widely regarded as one of the most despicable. Right-hand man of Adolf Hitler in the Marvel Universe, HYDRA brought him Back from the Dead to plague the world once again. There have been at least three major versions of the Skull. George Maxon, the first Red Skull first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (March, 1941). The most (in)famous Red Skull, Johann Schmidt, first appeared in Captain America Comics #7 (October, 1941). The third Red Skull, Albert Malik first appeared in Captain America Comics #61 (March, 1947). Malik was established as the Communist Red Skull in Young Men #24 (December, 1953). Schmidt was revived in Tales of Suspense #79 (July, 1966).

The established origin of the better known Skull is relatively complex. He was born as Johann Schmidt in a small German village, probably sometime in the 1910s. The Skull's mother Martha died giving birth to him, causing his drunken lout of a father to try and drown him, saying that the infant had murdered his wife. A doctor managed to prevent him from killing his newborn son, but the angry father went on to commit suicide. Growing up alone, the rise of the Nazis backdropping his life, young Schmidt eventually found himself living a hard life on the streets, all while nursing a growing anger and frustration towards the rest of the world. As an older teen, Schmidt managed to get a job as a bellhop for a major hotel frequented by Adolf Hitler. Schmidt was present for one occasion when Hitler was angrily berating the head of The Gestapo (or just some random German officer) for letting a spy escape, and screamed at the man that he could make even the bellhop into a better Nazi than him. He did.

Hitler, who seemed to recognize much of himself in the frustrated, resentful, unsuccessful yet obviously talented young man, became a sort of Evil Mentor and father figure to him, encouraging him to educate himself and grooming him for a powerful position in the Nazi state. (According to one version, to be his own successor.) Subordinate only to Hitler himself, the young, brilliant and ruthless Schmidt was placed in charge of foreign espionage and terrorist activities, playing a key role in Nazi victories in Europe and spreading fear (his red skull mask was intended to be a symbol of terror while Hitler could remain the popular leader in a national version of Good Cop/Bad Cop). He eventually moved onto the United States as World War II continued and sabotaged the top secret Project Rebirth by assassinating Prof. Erskine. Preparing for the inevitable war against Germany, the Americans decided to create their own Good Counterpart to the Red Skull's evil, the sole successful Super Soldier serum test subject, Steve Rogers, and trained him to become Captain America, the man who was to become Schmidt's Arch-Enemy.

However, as the war dragged on the Skull started to see that Germany was not going to win, and instead made plans to escape and build a new power base elsewhere to continue the struggle. In the meantime he assigned rival Nazi Baron Heinrich Zemo to a secret mission to assassinate Captain America, hoping the two would kill each other off. In the event, Zemo was defeated and Rogers's sidekick Bucky Barnes was (seemingly) killed, but not before Captain America tracked the Skull to his secret bunker and engaged him in battle. Cap won and apparently killed the Skull, but in reality he was merely a Human Popsicle, a fate that Cap would shortly suffer too after his battle with Zemo.

Captain America was revived by The Avengers, but not long after their enemies HYDRA discovered the Skull and revived him too. The Skull allied with them for as long as they were useful but secretly he was biding his time until he could steal the Cosmic Cube from AIM, the science division of HYDRA, the Cube being an Artifact of Doom that bestowed upon the user Reality Warping and godhood. He once again battled Captain America and was once again defeated, but subsequently managed to establish himself as a major and continuous threat to the world, with access to considerable resources.

The Red Skull subsequently engaged in numerous more terrorist and mass murder schemes to wreak havoc across the world and kill Captain America, even managing to make himself Secretary of Defence disguised as one Dell Rusk, plus more attempts to possess a Cosmic Cube, before finally being assassinated by the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed, insane and very-much alive Bucky Barnes, but used a weakened Cube to transfer his mind into a Russian general named Lukin, the man who had him killed. Sharing his body, the Skull forced Lukin to go along with his schemes to manipulate the superhero Civil War so as to get one of his puppet politicians elected as President, and later tried to transfer his mind into Captain America's unborn child, before it was murdered by an increasingly rebellious Sin (his daughter). He later allied with Norman Osborn following his rise to power and finally managed to take over the body of Captain America himself, but after wreaking further damage was expelled and killed, this time for good.

This being a comic book, the Red Skull returned in the pages of Uncanny Avengers during the Marvel NOW! relaunch, though as a clone in stasis since World War II... who gains access to Professor Charles Xavier's Psychic Powers.

The Red Skull appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a villainous Chessmaster, Nazi super-scientist, and the founder of HYDRA in Captain America: The First Avenger. The MCU version is bit of a Composite Character of the comic book Red Skull, Baron Strucker (the founder of HYDRA in the comics) and Baron Zemo (mainly the the Stupid Jetpack Hitler elements), although both Strucker and Zemo later appeared in the MCU in their own right. It amused many fans that Hugo Weaving was cast to play yet another powerful enemy named "Schmidt" with an appropriately and enjoyably OTT performance. He later reappeared (Played by a different actor, Ross Marquand), in Avengers: Infinity War, with an essentially entirely-original characterization not particularly tied to any of his comic book characterizations, in a minor (If memorable) role.

Red Skull has appeared in:

Comic Books

Anime

Films

Western Animation

Video Games

Red Skull provides examples of:

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    Tropes A to D 
  • Absolute Xenophobe: One of his stated long-term goals is to conquer and destroy the various alien empires that inhabit the Marvel universe. In one Alternate Universe where he took over, he started putting this into practice. Oddly, he was nicer to his human enemies, whom he didn't try to exterminate — though he deported all black people to Africa and did various other racist things.
  • Absurdly Cool City: In a Stupid Jetpack Hitler sort of way, anyway. New York City, Reichsfuehrer Red Skull's seat of power in the Alternate Universe where the Nazis conquered the world. It looks like a mixture of real New York, Nazi Berlin and the original Metropolis, only more modern with features like giant telescreens and futuristic airships.
  • Abusive Parents: His mother died in childbirth, and his alcoholic father tried to drown him for it. His mother's doctor rescued him, but he just got put in an orphanage and things just went downhill from there... Enough to make Hitler a better father figure. He's often written as a terrible father to his own daughter as well, though exactly how much so varies between different stories; in at least one version, he initially contemplated infanticide, out of disappointment that he would not have a male heir. At best, Sin's upbringing embodies the non plus ultra of Tough Love. Also depending on the writer, she either hates him for it or rationalizes it as necessary to make her who she is — though given who she is that's hardly a good thing.
  • Alike and Antithetical Adversaries: To Captain America, obviously. Cap is the symbol of America and leads a team of Allied/NATO heroes, while the Skull is the symbol of Nazi Germany and leads a multinational team of fascist villains.
  • All Elections Are Serious Business: In Marvel, the 2008 elections were about to be won by a populist third-party candidate whose campaign was secretly financed by Red Skull.
  • All for Nothing: All his efforts, sacrifices and, yes, not altogether inconsiderable villainous victories in World War II were ultimately for naught, since In Spite of a Nail the Allies won anyway and destroyed Nazi Germany, which he fought for.
  • All Myths Are True: Every Nazi-themed conspiracy theory about supertechnology, occult magic, secret societies, Odessa, Hitler clones, etc., is true in the Marvelverse, and most of them are run directly or indirectly by Red Skull.
  • Always with You: An dark, borderline-comedic example, since it's Hitler who promises the Skull this. And it's true, too: he remains in his dreams and gives him guidance and new hope when he suffers his rare bouts of hopelessness and despair, like a short, racist Spirit Advisor.
  • Allegorical Character: Red Skull, especially with his origin story in mind, acts as a living embodiment of all those who succumb to the tempting promises of fascism as a fix for all their problems - no matter how many times it's already been tried, and failed.
  • Anarchy Is Chaos: The late 1980s Red Skull, who went insane after one of Arnim Zola's experiments, turned his back on fascism and became a murderous nihilistic anarchist in the very worst sense of the trope.
  • Appeal to Nature: The way he justifies most of his ideology, from his patriarchal misogyny, to his racism, his ableism, and even his vegetarianism.
  • Arch-Enemy:
    • One of the oldest in comics. He's the Evil Counterpart to Captain America and his most iconic, prevalent, and hated enemy, always scheming to make life harder for the Star-Spangled Hero. The nature of their relationship is not lost on Skull, and while he shares a mutual enmity with Cap, Skull also often finds himself viewing Cap as the only Worthy Opponent around, and their rivalry has always given the Skull more meaning beyond simple world domination. Cap, of course, does not respect him in turn in the ''least"'.
    • He's also one to Magneto. As Magneto is a Holocaust survivor, he takes the thought of a Nazi supervillain understandably personally and is keen to kill him - after making him suffer for what he's done.
  • Armies Are Evil: Red Skull is often supported by rogue military elements, and is effectively a villainous version of a Military Superhero. He was a ranking officer in the Schutzstaffel, who were an Elite Army that also had a preponderance of war crimes under their belt - even by Nazi standards.
  • Artifact of Doom: Cosmic Cubes, in his hands anyway - it's a frequent enough obsession of his and the driver of Secret Empire's plot.
  • Artistic License – Military: When he is not depicted in a fairly plausible pre-1938◊ black Allgemeine-SS uniform◊, he's usually in some bizarre leather faux-uniform.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: His efficiency as an espionage agent and special forces commander was at least part of the reason Hitler was impressed with him and kept promoting him. That, and his sheer evil, of course.
  • At Least I Admit It: He doesn't consider himself evil (at least not most of the time), but he is unafraid of admitting himself to be a racist and Nazi. This ends up backfiring pretty severely when he tries to undermine Magneto's air of moral superiority by asserting that Magneto is less a mutants rights activist and more of a mutant supremacist, a stance functionally very similar to the Skull's own white supremacist beliefs.
  • Avenging the Villain: One of the Skull's major motivations is to succeed where his beloved Hitler failed and avenge his fallen mentor. He wants to take revenge on the Allies who killed Hitler and Nazi Germany, but even more to rebuild it, to show that his Fuehrer was right and that his ideals triumphed in the end.
  • Ax-Crazy: Some versions, definitely. Others are less energetic about it, but no less ruthless for it.
  • Back from the Dead: Again and again - his horrible cruelty and genuinely loathesome status means his Joker Immunity takes the form of frequent resurrections, or else he wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of coming back in a setting where he has this many powerful enemies.
  • Bad Boss: He frequently kills all but his most loyal or competent underlings—and sometimes even them—either for failure or for outliving their usefulness, but just as often For the Evulz. He once killed his accountant, for pete's sake, because "she was a bad accountant". And he usually uses his "Dust of Death" poison, one of the most agonising and horrible weapons in his arsenal, when he feels like doing the deed. Bizarrely, he can still count on the fervent loyalty of most of his followers. Though this depends somewhat on the writing, also, making the enthusiasm of his subordinates less inexplicable. In many stories, he's more "harsh but fair" like a stereotypical German military martinet, in which depictions he may try to lead by example, instead.
  • Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: A very dark, grounded example. In classic Nazi fashion, Red Skull actively detests compassion, empathy, and mercy, and believes them to be the real evils in the world. What brings this beyond Virtue Is Weakness is that he honestly thinks that everyone being so selfish and cruel will make the world a better place - by making it a worse one.
  • Bad Present:
    • Similarly to Captain America, Red Skull is a Fish out of Temporal Water who grew up roughly a hundred years ago. The present world of no-fault divorce, equal rights for all races in so much of the world, and no mandatory euthanasia for paraplegics is a pure nightmare to him, and absolute proof that the Nazis were right: this is what they fought to save the world from. At one point, he compares it to the days of the Weimar Republic, which he recalls as though it were Hell on Earth.
  • Badass Longcoat: Occasionally when shown in real (or semi-real) German uniforms. Also, in civvies, the clone Skull in Uncanny Avengers seems to like these.
  • Badass Normal: Though he may be a thoroughly despicable human being, there is unfortunately no doubt that the Red Skull is a dangerous man in a fight. He's a highly capable fighter frequently seem holding his own against Captain America, one of the best martial artists in the world. He is an expert marksman, a brilliant and imaginative strategist, and like a true soldier is (sometimes, Depending on the Writer) unafraid to put himself in harm's way or use himself as his own best chess piece to see his plans come to fruition. He is considered one of the deadliest threats to mankind in a world that has to put up with regular Alien Invasions, Eldritch Abominations, power-mad superhumans and all manner of catastrophes. While a lot of that has to do with his sheer depravity, there's no doubt it's also to do with his simple competence.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: After being treated to indifference at best and abuse at worst from more or less everyone for most of his life, friendless loner and Hero-Worshipper Johann Schmidt was overwhelmed when Hitler himself not merely deigned to notice him, but thought him a man of worth and personally invited him to join the Nazis. He's been fanatically loyal to Hitler (and after the war, his memory) ever since.
  • Being Evil Sucks:
    • Being a Nazi in the 21st century sucks; you're horrified by all the third-world immigration, affirmative action, homosexuality, etc. To an extent, it's also the reason his supervillain life sucks so much - he's so evil he struggles to even find allies. Being the Evil other Evils have Standards in comparison to sucks.
    • Doubly emphasized when he's dumped in an Alternate Universe where things are a lot like in the main comic, but he's a poor German nobody without connections and Captain America is the US President. He tries to convert his fellow Germans to Nazism, spending all his spare time holding impassioned speeches at a street corner. No one cares.
  • Believing Their Own Lies: Thinks this applies to Captain America. It being so glaringly obvious that egalitarianism and anti-racism are irrational, anti-scientific and untrue ideologies, this is the only possible explanation for why an intelligent man like Rogers keeps championing them. Most writers take this approach to Skull himself, too - he's rarely portrayed as a mere opportunistic adventurer, but a legitimate believer in absurd race science.
  • Berserk Button: Insulting Hitler. In one comic, Captain America called Hitler a coward and boasted of how the Allies had destroyed Germany and the Nazi ideals forever, which produced a near meltdown on the Skull's part:
    Red Skull: No! No! Those are lies, do you hear?? ALL LIES!!
  • Big Bad: One of the major supervillain threats on a planet drowning in them, and one of the most despicably evil.
  • Bigot with a Crush:
    • Inverted in his original origin story by Stan Lee. In his younger days he fell in love with a Jewish girl, whom he then murdered when she rejected him, and became a Nazi afterwards. Red Skull: Incarnate retcons this to him "simply" robbing her instead.
    • Downplayed in Uncanny Avengers when he brainwashed Scarlet Witch (who happens to be Jewish, Romani, and a mutant, prior to a messy series of retcons) to participate in a short-lived Villain Team-Up. He is struck by her beauty and cradles her hair while she's unconscious, before reminding himself that she's still "subhuman".
  • Black-and-White Morality: From the beginning to the present day - Captain America is Good, and the Red Skull is Evil. Full stop. Even today, as morality in comics has largely become more grey, Cap and Skull remain the closest to this trope.
  • Black Shirt: Started out like one of these, before he became The Dragon, and finally a Diabolical Mastermind himself.
  • Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: There was a period of time when he was one, due to coming back wrong. It didn't last.
  • Brain Theft: How he becomes the Red Onslaught; he grave-robs Professor X, steals his brain and transplants it in his own head to gain his psychic powers.
  • Brains Evil, Brawn Good: He's not weak by human standards, but certainly as compared to Cap, and is usually the scheming villain lurking in the shadows. Similarly, while his nemesis Cap is far from stupid, he's able to rely more on muscle to solve problems - and often lacks any other option.
  • Breaking Lecture: Delivers a number of them to his enemies (especially Captain America) over the years, of varying quality. Usually about how rotten and corrupt Liberalism is. One that seems somewhat influenced by the "Occupy" movement was offered in the early Uncanny Avengers run:
    Skull: You imagine that if you fight hard enough, one day you will wrest control from the bankers who own you and return this nation to its former glory.
    But in reality this is, and will remain, your America. An uneducated population fixated on competition, material wealth and voyeurism. Violent monsters doused in antibiotics to offset their diet of sugary sweet drink and mounds of carcinogenic cow flesh! This is what you fight for!
  • Breakout Villain: The original Golden Age Red Skull was intended as a single-issue villain, a native-born American Nazi spy who died in the first story he appeared in. However, the character was popular enough to return, and in the Silver Age revamp of the Captain America title, he got his more familiar backstory (as recounted above) and his status as Cap's Arch-Nemesis. The first Skull was then retconned as an agent of the real one.
  • Broken Ace: An evil genius who rose from the literal gutter to become first a Nazi hierarch and then a full-blown supervillain. Red Skull is both literate and hard as nails, and an inspiring leader for millions of neo-fascists ... But his childhood in the streets and traumatic war experiences have left him deeply scarred in more than one sense, and he's also an unrepentant monster, at the end of the day.
  • Brought Down to Normal:
    • After the Cube Cult caper, he was mysteriously stripped of most of his memories and forced to live as an anonymous nobody in a nightmarish Cyberpunk world. He reverted to his old pattern of life as a downtrodden menial laborer, until memories of Hitler began to reemerge in his dreams and guided him back to his real life.
    • In Uncanny Avengers, Rogue had Beast surgically remove the piece of Charles Xavier's brain from the Skull and orders the Human Torch to cremate it so no one else can misuse it.
  • Bulletproof Vest: He usually wears armor under his uniform, which makes it a little more plausible that he can survive so many gun fights — or fist fights with borderline and not-so-borderline superhumans, for that matter.
  • The Bully: Especially the Nineties Dark Age version. He terrorizes and often kills his own subordinates For the Evulz, routinely; savagely beat and sadistically abused his girlfriend, one of his most devoted followers; big fan of Revenge by Proxy; tends to laugh like a lunatic when causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
  • Calling Card: Of various kinds. Sometimes, he leaves a literal calling card with a red skull symbol on it, at others, a recording of some significant musical score (often Chopin's "Funeral March"). Done much less nowadays than in older comics. In some stories, he also has underlings do it in his name, in order to distract and mislead the heroes.
  • Came Back Wrong: When he was resurrected/cloned by Arnim Zola for the first time, in the late 1980s. This version became anarchistic and erratic in his behavior, to the point that he renounced Nazism in favor of totally egotistical generic villainy. Subverted, in that he ultimately recovered and became a more-or-less sane and idealistic villain again.
  • Cape Busters: The special force he personally trained and deployed to fight the mutants. They were depicted as a small Badass Army equipped with advanced weapons and heavy armor, incorporating special shielding against telepathy and electromagnetism (presumably to protect them against the game-breaking powers of Professor X and Magneto, respectively).
  • Capitalism Is Bad: Because it engenders corruption, greed, materialism, stupidity and "evil" generally.
  • Captain Patriotic: For Nazi Germany, as befits the evil counterpart of Captain America, the embodiment of the very best of FDR's New Deal-era America.
  • Card-Carrying Villain:
    • In the most cartoonish version of his backstory, he joined the Nazis for the thrill of killing and refers to himself as the "Prince of Villainy".
    • The Last Words of the original George Maxon Skull were “I’ll be back…with more murder!”.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Most versions of him don't have any powers. This doesn't prevent him from holding his own in fights with Cap (At least, on occasion).
  • The Chessmaster: Plays this kind of role in plenty of stories, operating from behind the scenes to manipulate people through his various agents - he needs to act this way, of course, given his Obviously Evil nature gets in the way of direct action.
  • Children Forced to Kill: In the most recent version of his backstory, at least, he was forced to kill an antisemitic boy to save a girl he liked from violence. Unfortunately, she was too scared of him because of his willingness to associate with the boy in the first place, and so he punched her and fled. Thus began his Start of Darkness.
  • Classic Villain: He mostly represents Ambition, Wrath, and, most of all, pure Hatred.
  • Colonel Badass: His official rank is never stated, but when he wears a semi-real German uniform, it's often that of a Standartenfuehrer (SS colonel).
  • Color Character: “Red Skull” has a red skull, or at least wears a red skull mask.
  • Commie-Nazis: The 1950s depiction of the Skull joined the Soviets after World War II to continue the fight against American capitalism. This was later rewritten as a psywar ploy by the KGB, using an impostor.
  • Compliment Backfire: When he praised Sharon Carter for her competence and sincerity. By all appearances his admiration was quite genuine, too; the problem was that he said she was like a Nazi in her bravery and dedication. From his point of view, that was a very sincere compliment, but she understandably didn't take it that way.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are pretty much unavoidable for a full-fledged Nazi. That being said, this was actually rarely addressed in older comics, partly because it was more taboo to overtly have a villain be an Politically Incorrect Villain - and in many newer comics, he's too busy being the conspiracy to delude himself into thinking there's a shadowy Jewish cabal there too.
  • Consummate Professional: When not written as a ranting, raving, cackling villain, anyway, Red Skull is eerily cold and efficient in the execution of his duties.
  • The Corrupter: There are several stories which show how the Skull successfully converts decent, more or less ordinary people to his brand of fascism, simply by being a disarmingly charismatic and persuasive speaker.
  • Crapsack World: The Skull thinks the present-day world of affirmative action and homosexual rights is one; most of his enemies think the world he wants to create is the real one, obviously.
  • Cunning Linguist: The Skull speaks at least three languages in addition to his native German: Russian, Hebrew and English. In English at least he can also fake dialects convincingly, from AAVE to Old Stock Yankee.
  • Daddy's Little Villain: His daughter, Synthia/Sin. He contemplated killing the baby for not being a boy, but she grew up into the kind of hateful Nazi maniac even a father like him could be proud of. He still ignored her, but it's the effort that counts.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: The young Johann Schmidt grew up as a homeless orphan in Depression-era Weimar Germany, and survived off odd jobs, begging, and petty crime. Apart from the depredations brought on by financial insecurity, he also suffered horrible abuse from criminals and Communists; even the original Silver Age origin story showed him being savagely beaten by a street gang as a small boy, and later versions have only gotten progressively more violent and disturbing.
  • Dark Messiah: There's an Aryan brotherhood gang called "The Skulls" that worship the Skull as if he was the second coming. Oddly enough the gang and their leader are mainly Wolverine villains. Crossbones also definitely sees the Skull this way. Despite his propensity for sudden lay-offs, many of the Skull's ex-Nazi or neo-Nazi henchmen seem to adopt an almost fanatical loyalty and trust toward him.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • J M De Matteis's Red Skull was largely true to his origins in relatively family-friendly Stan Lee-esque supervillainy through most of his run, but in the last story arc he wasn't just evil but totally insane. Probably justified, however, as by then Skull was in his 80s and seemed to be suffering from acute senile dementia.
    • Somewhere in the darkening of comics in the 1980s, Mark Gruenwald apparently figured Red Skull wasn't evil enough if he was "just" a Nazi villain. So then he started writing him as a sadist and wife-beater as well.
  • Darkest Hour: For him, the Downfall of Germany in 1945 was like the coming of Ragnarok, like it was for his former boss. Unlike said boss, Schmidt evidently found it in him to carry on regardless.
  • Deadly Sparring: The Red Skull is known to have Taskmaster send him students for sparring practice, whom he then kills during their sessions. The only reason he does so is that he savors the horrified realization his opponent has when they figure out he intends to kill them.
  • Death Is Cheap: The Skull has a long history of somehow surviving or being revived from certain death. Writers have employed both Faking the Dead and No One Could Survive That! when needed.
  • Deep Cover Agent: The Golden Age Red Skull's real name was John Maxon, an aerospace tycoon and major American defense contractor. (Basically William Boeing as a Nazi agent; he even looked more than a bit like him.) The more familiar Skull is German-born, but utilizes several fake identities to attain positions of authority and power in America. Notably, "Dell Rusk" became the Secretary of Defense of the United States, a very successful infiltration, to say the least.
  • Dehumanization: In the 1970s, he wouldn't insult Falcon, because giving even that much attention to "black vermin" was beneath his dignity. And in a more modern comic, he makes a clear difference between "humanity" and his racial enemies when expounding on how the world will change under his rule — though whether he's talking about Africans or mutants isn't clear in this instance:
    Red Skull: Genetic pigs, polluting our world, will be relegated to their appropriate stations—servants of man.
  • Democracy Is Bad: He believes that since the Apathetic Citizens only vote for whoever TV tells them to, anyway, it will inevitably be ruled by corrupt demagogues and the greedy plutocrats who bribe them.
  • Demonic Possession: As a result of his meddling with Xavier's brain he was possessed by Onslaught for a time.
  • Depending on the Artist:
    • How the Skull looks under the mask has varied with different comics; some give him a stereotypically Nordic tall, blond and handsome appearance, while in one early story he was dark-haired with a broad, vaguely Central European face. The default now agreed on seems to be a fairly but not extraordinarily attractive Celtic face, thin and somewhat pale with fiery red hair and sharp blue eyes; imagine something like Rorschach unmasked, but handsomer and with straight hair.
    • How the "red skull" mask itself looks. Jack Kirby drew it like a vaguely "realistic" latex mask, with lips, eyelids and etc., but others make it into a bizarre affair with bony excrescences, exposed teeth, a free-hanging jawbone and lidless Glowing Eyes of Doom that must require serious animatronics to work. This is also Lampshaded in one story, where the Skull's supervillain trophy shelf holds an assortment of skulls shaped in all the ways he has appeared over the years, implying that he switches between different masks for variety.
  • Depending on the Writer:
  • Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Like so many other Germans in the wake of their surrender in World War I. By the time the Nazis came into power, he had a regular (if menial) job and was able to support himself. However, he was still depressed, both with the meaninglessness of his own life and the sad fate of Germany under the Republic. Then the Nazis showed the country a new hopeful vision of a better future for everyone, and Hitler (whom he met by chance, at least in most stories) invited him to join them and help make a difference. He did, having finally found his Goal in Life.
  • Diabolical Mastermind: Almost to Lex Luthor standards - in Marvel Comics, he's one of the go-to 'Avengers-level' Diabolical Mastermind threats, one of the few villains that can force a teamup despite being a human with no powers of his own.
  • Did Not Get the Girl:
  • Disappointed in You: In a delirious nightmare, when he was at the end of his strength, his toothbrush-mustached boss appeared to him and told him that he had failed him and the Nazi dream. It was probably the closest he has come to a total breakdown.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: When he noticed a black man seducing a (white) female SHIELD agent, the Skull took time off from his general villainy to kidnap them both and lecture them on the evils of miscegenation.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Originally, Red Skull and Doctor Zemo were pretty much interchangeable as "masked Nazi supervillains who are Captain America's Arch-Enemy". This is probably because Zemo was originally intended to be the Skull's Silver Age replacement in Cap's post-war stories. But Stan Lee decided to bring back the Skull as well, and Zemo got killed off. However, later writers have mined the character for World War II-era stories, and developed him considerably; he was given storylines of his own, an aristocratic origin (he is now best known as Baron Zemo) and a distinctive character. Now, his established position is that of the Skull's chief historical rival in the Nazi hierarchy, a role that plays both on how similar they still are in many ways and how their differing backgrounds nevertheless make them resent each other.
  • Domestic Abuse: The villainess Mother Night is a truly terrible human being... but read the stories where she and the Skull were an item, and cringe. It was one of the most hideously abusive relationships in comics; the Skull beat her savagely, yelled and screamed at her for no reason, humiliated her in front of his subordinates, and refused to let her kill herself (which she requested because she thought, if he was beating her so much, clearly she is failing him somehow) because "you'd like that, wouldn't you?", whereupon he promised to beat her some more.
  • Doom Troops: His modern-day neo-Nazi troops tend to be this, typically wearing imposing, all-black uniforms vaguely patterned on the original (pre-1938) SS design. Some also sport face-concealing helmets, and even low-grade powered armor on occasion.
  • Doppelgänger: The Skull sometimes uses body doubles to confound his enemies. Made easier and more plausible by the fact that he's usually wearing a fully face-concealing mask, so it doesn't require plastic surgery or anything more exotic. Originally, this was invoked to explain discrepancies in his portrayal in older comics, but he has since used it several times as an on-screen tactic.
  • The Dragon: For Hitler during World War II.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: Especially in newer comics, thanks to more widespread history education and years of parody rendering Hitler less intimidating as a villain, the Skull takes the lead role.
  • The Dreaded: Just mentioning his name is a good way to end villain deals, and you'll have to look pretty damn hard if you want to find someone who would willingly work with him. He's not just feared — though he is greatly, greatly feared — he is almost universally despised amongst both heroes and villains. Any character who actually likes him or what he stands for is likely either seriously delusional or an vile, hideous bastard themselves.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: He once claims that as a young, poor man, he dreamed of someone who would show him his true purpose in the world. Years later, he came to remember the dream after he met Hitler.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: When Arnim Zola "improved" him with Super Serum, he went insane afterwards, denounced fascism in favor of anarchy and became an Ax-Crazy megalomaniac (as in, even more than before). It took him some time to recover.
  • Dueling Messiahs: With Captain America, in stories that play up their ideological enmity. Both are champions of their respective ideologies: Captain America stands for an idealistic interpretation of Liberalism and opposes all forms of kyriadchy, including discrimination on account of race, sex, nationality or creed, but does believe in democracy and a regulated free market (Remember, he grew up a poor child of the Great Depression), whereas the Red Skull's unique flavor of Nazism is grounded in a collectivist, hierarchical, deeply racist and "organic" view of the world that distrusts democracy in favor of technocratic planning. Essentially, an idealized-at-best mutation of actual Nazism. Both are totally convinced that their ideological vision is the right one, not just for their own countries, but for all the world, and both fight the other's system to their last breath whenever given half an opportunity. Neither will rest until he has made the world safe for the true way, Liberalism or Nazism, democracy or dictatorship.
  • Dystopia Justifies the Means: His ideal world varies between a violent Police State and a lawless, chaotic hellhole; in either case he believes that the strong should brutalize the weak, commits mass murder on a regular basis, and demands absolute power which he wants to use primarily to oppress and torture people, not simply power for its own sake. And he enjoys it, every minute of it. Also (Though this is very much Depending on the Writer) usually involves some kind of mass genocide, or at least ethnic cleansing.
    • The occasions he has had the Cosmic Cube have given him nigh-omnipotent power; he once used it to hold an apple in front of a starving crowd, just so he could deny them it! Oh, and shortly after, he ate it in front of a starving baby.
    • On the other hand, some versions are relatively nicer. In one early incarnation, he wanted to unite the world under an ultra-totalitarian Nazi government in order to propel the Marvel Earth into a Space Opera setting which thanks to its Super Science it has every potential to be. This might have qualified him for another trope, had he not then intended to use said world-changing supertech to take over the galaxy and remake the Marvelverse into a sort of Imperium of Man-esque humanocentric dictatorship.
    Tropes E to I 
  • Eat the Rich: He hates the wealthy elites who run the world, both for ideological reasons (the Nazis despised plutocracy and "decadent" upper classes), because he used to be poor and starving himself, and because he assumes most of them to be Jewish.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: For a Nazi fanatic, anyway; he's Waffen-SS, of course. Can't have Captain America's Arch-Enemy be some schmuck from the Wehrmacht, after all.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: When he occasionally makes use of supertech such as the Cosmic Cube to empower himself - though this obviously never sticks.
  • Enemy Mine: In one story, he allied with Captain America against the Kubekult, a band of punkish modern neo-Nazis who had somehow obtained a Cosmic Cube. The story, predictably, ended in Red Skull betraying Cap for the Cube - and still being defeated, after Cap busted his way out of the Cosmic Cube.
  • Equal-Opportunity Evil: Played with (and subject to considerable authorial flip-flopping). Though the Skull, being a Nazi, is an antisemitic white supremacist, he is also pragmatic enough to be willing to work with people from other backgrounds. For example, in the Civil Rights riots of the 1970s he cooperated with black militants to bring down the US government, though this was a definite outlier. More commonly, his top officers and agents are shown to include women, Chinese and other non-whites among their ranks, and he seems to hold no bias against them, so long as they agree with his fascist politics. This might be a case of Shown Their Work on part of the writers, since while the real-life Nazis are well-known for their grotesque racism today, they had no trouble working with Arabs, Indians, Japanese and other non-whites, because they were far enough away that they wouldn't get between them and their precious Lebensraum, like their more immediate neighbors. That, and they were ideologically aligned to them as allies against their common enemies. In fact, there were even whole divisions of non-white SS troops during the war - though "white" was less important to the Nazi Germans than "Aryan". The ethnicities they unambiguously hated weren't the more familiar targets of American forms of racism, anyway, but old German "racial enemies". Chief among them being the Slavs, the Jews, and the Romani. They saw the Slavs as a Barbarian Tribe that everyone was better-off with as a Slave Race, the Jews as an existential threat that needed to be "confronted", and the Romani as vermin in need of immediate extermination (That last one not actually being all-that extreme in their day - hence the Porajmos largely occuring out in the open). His view on disabled people are the most inconsistent with the Nazis, as it's rarely a focus point of his characterization in any capacity - in real life, they were the first group the Nazis targeted for outright extermination.
  • Establishing Character Moment: For the modern Skull, a scene in his original origin story, where the young Johann Schmidt has just been given his new identity. As a test, he is ordered to gun down an innocent man, a Nazi officer who has failed at some offscreen task. The Skull can't very well refuse outright, so he takes a third option and shoots the buttons off the man's jacket without harming him, arguing that this will teach him enough of a lesson, and killing him would be wasteful. The combination of badassery and pragmatism convinces his handler to pass him, and also essentially establishes the Skull's character for the rest of the series.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It's honestly not too much to say that he loved Hitler, both as "the Fuehrer" and more personally as a sort of father figure. He goes to extreme lengths to honor his memory, and responds furiously when others insult or belittle him. Depending on the writing, he also genuinely does care about his daughter Synthia, though even when written as caring he is poor at showing it.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: No, not him. But most major villains of the Marvel Universe are too disgusted by the Skull to willingly work with him. It doesn't help his case that two of Marvel's most prolific heavy hitters, Doctor Doom and Magneto, are a half-Romani and a Jewish holocaust survivor, respectively. In a crossover, he mutually refuses to work with The Joker, not so much for ethical standards as "artistic" ones. To the Skull, Joker is a useless lunatic. For his part, while the Joker might be a criminal lunatic, he draws the line at working with Nazis out of a surprising sense of patriotism.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
    Joker: You mean that's not just some crazy disguise?? I've been working with a Nazi?!?
    Red Skull: But of course. Why are you so upset, Joker? From what I have read of your exploits, it seemed obvious you would make a superb Nazi!
    Joker: That mask must be cutting off the oxygen to your brain. I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an AMERICAN criminal lunatic!
  • Evil Colonialist: In some stories set before/during World War II, mainly when he attacks the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Captain America, embodying the worst elements of the Axis in the same way Cap embodies the best elements of the Allies.
  • Evil Genius: He's been described as such in so many words in the Marvel Handbook. The same goes on to call his brilliance comparable only to that of Napoleon. And that's merely his political and military acumen, before going into more comic-bookly territory. Say what you will about the Red Skull, he's certainly got brains.
  • Evil Gloating: Red Skull has had many opportunities to kill Captain America, especially every time that he has had the power of the Cosmic Cube. Since he's not the kind of person to spare people out of mercy, the required foolishness on his part comes from arrogance instead. Each time he has allowed Captain America to live so that Skull could torment him with being helpless or attempt to bring Captain America to the dark side (all the while gloating), thus giving Captain America the opportunity to turn the tables on Red Skull (like knock the Cube out of his hand).
  • Evil Mentor: His was Adolf Hitler- it's no wonder Red Skull gets the Even Evil Has Standards treatment directed at him so often.
  • Evil Reactionary: A Double Subversion. He wants the political system and social values (and aesthetics) of Nazi Germany back, but has nothing whatever against the advances of science and technology since the 1940s; in fact, he wants to take those even further, and lead humanity into space. Of course, this is still a reactionary sentiment; as a Nazi, he's an aggressive futurist who is convinced the inevitable future is one devoid of Jews, Romanies, homosexuals, and the disabled - and his dream of space is a Werner von Braun-esque one of conquest, not peaceful exploration or even emigration. The actual presence of this trope in his characterization is Depending on the Writer, mind - sometimes he's been written without any noticeable bigotry at all, as bizarre as that sounds in light of everything else.
  • Evil Redhead: His natural hair color - and technically, literally true, when he has the Red Skull for an actual head.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: He has a huge, Reichskanzlei-inspired office in a New York skyscraper in the Alternate Universe where the Nazis won the war and he is the Governor of America.
  • Evil Vegetarian: Though not too strict about it. Seemingly yet another way in which he imitates Hitler (either unaware or uncaring that Hitler was only a vegatarian for health reasons).
  • Evil Versus Evil: The Skull has an ongoing on-and-off feud with Doctor Doom, and has bashed heads with Magneto more than once. (Most memorably in Captain America #367.) In both cases, this is largely down to him being a Nazi, and both of them belonging to minorities (Romanies and Jews) that the Nazis attempted to exterminate.
  • Expansion Pack Past: Like with Captain America (typically in the same stories, given his status as Cap's Arch-Enemy), writers repeatedly make up new World War II adventures for him, to the point one may start wondering how they all fit into the little more than three years the USA and Nazi Germany were actually at war note >
  • Expy: In many stories, Red Skull functions as one for Hitler himself, sharing many of his character traits (the Bond villain pop culture version, anyway, rather than the paranoid, meth-addicted demagogue from real life). Baron Zemo also originally functioned as one for the Skull himself in the early Avengers comics, before Marvel decided to re-imagine him for their modern stories.
  • The Faceless: For most of the Silver Age, he was this; even in his origin story, before he wore the Red Skull mask, his face was always shadowed or obscured. His appearance was finally revealed in the 1980s, showing him as a fairly handsome strawberry blond/redhead.
  • Facial Horror: When he inhabited a cloned body of Steve Rogers, he was given a non-lethal dose of his own Dust of Death, permanetly leaving his face legitimately stuck in a red-skulled appearance as opposed to the mask he previously wore.
  • False Utopia: In some of those alternate settings where he takes over, he turns the world into something right out of Nazi Propaganda. These tend to be high-tech, clean and orderly police states that look attractive on the surface level, but hold some dark secret deeper down. For example, in one such story, he reimplemented race segregation in America; in another, he deported all Black Americans to Africa. Also averted in some cases, where the result is more immediately and obviously negative - rather like something from anti-Nazi propaganda.
  • Fantastic Racism: Par for the course for such an infamous Nazi in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting like the one he inhabits. In particular, his hatred of mutants has turned up from time to time. His clone in Uncanny Avengers outright starts a campaign to wipe out mutants, going so far as to build a concentration camp for them. He mostly shys away from this anti-Mutant role more than you'd expect, however - the X-Men have their own stable of mutant hating bigots in their rogues gallery, after all.
  • Faux Affably Evil: For the most part, Schmidt is fully and completely this trope - superficially polite and charming, while barely able to conceal his smug sense of superiority and contempt for others.
  • Fictional Political Party: Shortly after Civil War, Red Skull did what no real-life politician for the last 200 or so years had managed and created an apparently-viable American third party, the far-right populist Third Wing Party. Bucky (as Captain America, since this was shortly after Steve's temporary death) brought it down.
  • Fighting for a Homeland: He and his fellow surviving Nazis, who no longer have one, thanks to Germany succumbing to all that dreaded Liberalism and Marxism back in the day and no longer welcoming them. They've even tried to "liberate" Latveria from the rule of Doctor Doom to make it a homeland for dispossessed fascists like them. Given one of Doom's hobbies, this didn't go well for them.
  • First Time in the Sun: A very, very dark example when he attended a big Nazi rally soon after he joined them. For the first time in his life, he was part of something bigger and working together with others for something better. And as he stood in the massed ranks and listened to Hitler's speech with the others, the sun shone down on them. It's a quietly terrifying moment.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: A Nazi born in the early 1900s, now in the 21st century. Depending on which version one is reading, after "dying" in World War II, he was a Human Popsicle into the 1960s, the 1980s, or just recently, giving him varying degrees of drastic change to cope with. In general - and fairly predictably, for a Nazi - he likes the scientific progress, but hates the social changes; effectively, from his point of view the future suffers badly from Low Culture, High Tech syndrome; no constant surveillance of everyone's lives, giant robots stomping down the street to keep the huddled masses in line, mass sterilization of homosexuals, mandatory euthanasia for the disabled, or gassing of Jews, Romanies, and Communists? How unsettlingnote .
  • Fling a Light into the Future: An evil example. At the end of World War II, when it was becoming apparent that Germany would lose, the Skull sequestered equipment and funds and helped a number of devoted young Nazi officers escape the downfall, so they could keep the Nazi cause alive and fight another day.
  • For the Evulz: At his most deranged, he needs no ideological or practical justification for his evil deeds, simply spreading death, destruction and misery for his own sick amusement.
  • Fourth Reich: The epitome of this trope; Red Skull practically is the pop culture idea of a surviving Nazi establishing an underground organization dedicated to bringing about the return of Nazism, to the point he might be the Trope Codifier. In his case, his modern-day goal is usually to turn the United States of America into the Evil States of America from the inside out - though sometimes he'll still just try invading it.
  • Freudian Excuse: Like much else with the Skull, whether he has one varies Depending on the Writer.
    • The original origin story was essentially a somewhat exaggerated version of Adolf Hitler's real-life biography before World War I. It showed the young Johann Schmidt as a struggling orphan who worked menial jobs and sometimes committed crimes against property to survive; other authors (for example, Mark Waid) elaborated on this. In this version, Schmidt suffered abuse from the police and other criminals, but was not himself violent or insane; however, his experiences gave him a very bleak view of the world, and engendered massive resentment on his part against the system. He joined the Nazis because he genuinely thought they'd make Germany and the world a better place, and not least because Hitler was the first person ever to believe in him and treat him as a man of worth.
    • Meanwhile, some later writers apparently thought this made him too sympathetic, and wrote different versions where he was born Axe-Crazy and a lunatic Serial Killer long before he met Hitler.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Schmidt is this for the other villains of the Marvel Universe. They're all are either terrified of him, or they find him repugnant. If you don't believe us, just ask Magneto (a survivor of the Holocaust) and Doctor Doom (a Romani). Even The Joker terminated his alliance with the Red Skull, once he realizes the swastika on his costume isn't for show.
  • Friendless Background: He never had a friend before he met Hitler. Given what kind of man Hitler was, it could be said he didn't have one after, either.
  • Friendship Moment: He and his daughter don't usually get along, and the exact details of their relationship vary with the writer. That being said, in at least some stories they are shown to genuinely care about each other. An example that more-or-less fits under this trope is one almost touching scene in Captain America: Reborn. There, when the Skull is suffering from cyborg depression, Sin comforts him in a very uncharacteristically gentle manner Later, in the same story, she appears sincerely worried when he's ill. The Skull is nicer to her than in some other incarnations, too, finally giving her some paternal approval and respect as he gets better.
  • From Bad to Worse: In Uncanny Avengers, the Red Skull gained Psychic powers at the same level as Xavier. He eventually lost them, of course.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: From poor orphan, to hooky player, to impoverished bellhop, to second in command of Nazi Germany, to one of the most feared and hated villains in the Marvel Universe.
  • Galactic Conqueror: In an Alternate Universe where he succeeded in unifying the planet under his rule, he created an emergent interstellar human empire.
  • Genocide Backfire: Fell victim to this himself, when Magneto went after him for his role in the Holocaust.
  • Germanic Efficiency: Schmidt is consistently shown to have an obsession with mechanical, clockwork efficiency in his problem-solving...to the point of sometimes going in the exact opposite direction thanks to said obsessiveness.
  • Ghostapo: In Fear Itself he had a group of Nazi occultists perform the ritual that ultimately led to the events of that story in an effort to turn the tide of the war. Unfortunately for him, it worked- 65 years later. He had a couple of other experiences with the occult later on, but in general he prefers Mad Science to get results.
  • Glory Days: Recalls his days of service to the Nazi Party as this. Especially the early years of World War II, when both Nazi Germany and he, personally, were at the peak of their power, before it all came crashing down like a house of cards.
  • Goal in Life: Bring on the Fourth Reich... and get his Revenge on Captain America (and that which he's Captain of, while he's at it) for "killing" his hero.
  • A God Am I: His obsession with the Cosmic Cube, which turns up in about half of all his appearances in the comics, comes with an undercurrent of obsessive self-deification.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Very, very evil smoking, cigarette holder and all. It only makes it more evil that, half the time, he isn't even actually smoking; he's prone to using fake cigs to douse victims in his signature Dust of Death poison.
  • Grand Theft Me: He's taken over Captain America's body twice: once in the 1960's, and once more recently. He also spent some time sharing a body with his rival Aleksander Lukin, and in a spare robot body belonging to his underling, Arnim Zola.
  • Gratuitous German: Almost mandatory for a Nazi villain; in some older works, combined with Funetik Aksent. Has gradually become less badly spelled over the years.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The man behind Baron von Strucker, Baron Zemo, HYDRA and most of Marvel's assorted Nazi-themed and ex-Nazi villains. Whenever one of them is the Big Bad or the Arc Villain, this trope is in play for him, even if they're no longer working for him at the time.
  • Had to Be Sharp: He first survived growing up alone in the streets in a country suffering political and economic meltdown. Then he survived World War II, on the losing side. Then he survived spending decades on the run, hunted by the Allies for his role as surviving War Criminal Number One.
  • Hanging Judge:
    • In an Alternate Universe where he was military governor of the occupied United States, he sentenced a young technician named Peter Parker to death by public hanging for his espionage activities on behalf of the underground.
    • In a Bad Future, he sentenced and executed the Avengers, seemingly in an Ironic Echo of the Nuremberg Trials, where the top Nazis were sentenced and hanged by the Allies after World War II.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: According to the Skull, in a story from the 1980's, his brutal training regime organized by Hitler lasted... weeks. Not years. Not months. Weeks. He went from a bellhop nobody to the most dangerous and competent man in the Reich in weeks, despite having next to no formal education, being a human punching bag on the streets, and having worked nothing but the most menial jobs in between scraping by as a beggar and a thief (a bad one- again, his own words). He says he was thirty too, which would mean he literally just never learned anything until then, but subsequent materials say he was in his late teens, which is a bit of an improvement. Of course, the same story has him remembering both of his parents, including their faces and behaviour, despite both of them being dead before he was a day old, as well as what it was like to be pulled out of the womb, so he really can't be trusted on this.
    • The Marvel Handbook writes that his initial training period lasted "months" rather than weeks, and even when it was done he wasn't immediately given huge power. He met Hitler in 1933 (or 1934, depending on the story), so by the time he faces Captain America in 1941, he's had some years of on-the-job training and promotions. It's still an unusually rapid rise through the ranks, but not quite as meteoric as the 1980s story suggested.
  • Hate Crimes Are a Special Kind of Evil: He's a proud Nazi, and a pupil of Adolf Hitler himself. This has made him a pariah among the supervillain community, and not just by those from groups persecuted by the Nazis like Doctor Doom and Magneto. Hell, in a crossover the Joker fought him when realizing he wasn't just trolling people with the get-up because he may be a mass-murdering psychopath but he's still an American mass-murdering psychopath, God damn it!
  • Hate Sink: Designed to be as repugnant and loathsome a villain as possible. And boy do the writers do a damned good job of making him exactly that.
  • Hated by All:
    • The Red Skull is without question one of the most reviled, despised, detested, and flat-out hated villains in the entire Marvel Universe, loathed by both heroes and villains alike. And it's not just limited to just the Marvel Universe: When even The Joker, himself no stranger to being a pariah among the supervillain community, of all people wants nothing to do with you, you know you're a vile, irredeemable piece of trash.
    • For further perspective, consider that two of the most dangerous villains in Marvel are Magneto and Doctor Doom. For as dangerous as they are, and as villainous as they can be, both of them absolutely hate the Red Skull. It also makes perfect sense from their perspective (apart from, y'know, just hating a Nazi in general) considering Magneto is Jewish and Doom is Romani. As we all know, there was a little event motivated in exterminating Jews entirely, while the Roma were one of the "miscellaneous" groups that were exterminated as well. Magneto in fact survived the Holocaust and witnessed the Nazis' cruelty first hand, while Doom was greatly oppressed for his heritage at the hands of the Latverian dictatorship and certainly would've faced even worse by the Nazis as well had they ever got to Latveria. Neither of these things mesh well with Red Skull's "beliefs".
    • In one issue, Red Skull wants to distribute a deadly drug across New York and seeks out The Kingpin for his influence and resources, believing someone like him would be on board with it, but Fisk simply offers an alternative: beat him in combat and he will agree to his terms. Naturally, the Kingpin wins handily and beats Skull to a bloody pulp, before ordering him to never step on his territory again. Wilson Fisk may be a ruthless criminal, but he's also a patriot at heart and would never work with a Nazi, least of all an unscrupulous monster like Red Skull.
    • In an issue of Runaways, the titular runaways kidnapped future member Victor Mancha after learning of his destiny to be a supervillain. When looking through candidates of who his father could be, they went through multiple candidates including The Kingpin, Electro, The Leader, Galactus, among others, but the villain that made him draw the line? The Red Skull. Keep in mind that he could handle the idea of being Galactus's son, but not the Red Skull. Fortunately for him, he was right — his real father is Ultron, and even that didn't cause him grief like the idea of having a Nazi for a father did.
  • Hates Being Touched: Reacts with profound discomfort even to a friendly touch; sometimes he may strike out in reflexive anger. Presumably connected to his traumatic life experiences, as in real life this is a fairly typical symptom of PTSD and related syndromes.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: This is how the Skull views himself, and all of Nazism: They may have done some Bad Things, but only because they tried to stop the much more villainous international bankers and global Communists who are destroying the world, and got desperate enough to copy some of their methods. Incidentally, this is also pretty much what the real-life Nazis said to justify themselves.
  • Heartbroken Badass: A platonic example, since his great love was Nazi Germany.
  • The Heavy: He has been the most active foe of Captain America since the golden age.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Most would agree that the Skull is far too past the Moral Event Horizon to ever be accepted as reformed, but once he had a chance to die repentant. A the climax of the Acts of Vengeance, he was locked in an abandoned bomb shelter by Magneto in the middle of nowhere. After days of without food, alone in the dark, he finally resigned himself to his fate and for the first and only time in his life, felt remorse for his evil deeds and privately conceded that he deserved this fate. But even this would be denied him, as he was rescued shortly after, and upon regaining his will to live after seeing Captain America and remembering how much he hated him... well, he forgot everything he had considered down there, and after telling Cap as much, began ranting about how he would get revenge on Magneto.
  • Hero-Worshipper: Towards Hitler, massively. In all his secret lairs, expect to find plenty of portraits of the Fuehrer.
  • Heroic Ambidexterity: Villainous example. What to do when a raging mutant cuts off your gun hand and leaves it to his Flying Brick friend to pulp you? Whip out a fantastic Luger in your other hand and take them down at point blank!
  • Heroic Resolve: Or, well, villainous, but he certainly has willpower. Has experienced situations (buried under tons of rubble, trapped underwater, captured and tortured for long periods...) which would leave any normal person a ruined wreck, and not only survived, but kept going. He simply refuses to die until his work is finished.
  • Hidden Depths: The guy you might first think is just a gimmicky Nazi thug is actually a sophisticated thinker and surprisingly artistically minded soul. Doesn't make him any less of a Nazi, though.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: The NES version of Captain America and the Avengers had him be the Mystery Boss that the Mandarin answered to.
  • Historical Villain Downgrade: Not the Skull himself, who is fictional, but Hitler and other real Nazis sometimes get this in the stories where he features. Depending on the writer, Hitler can be made either a raving Card-Carrying Villain or a cold mastermind, but his well-documented bigotry, violent paranoia, and personal cruelty are consistently downplayed in the Red Skull's flashbacks featuring him. Overlaps with Historical Badass Upgrade, in that he's usually portrayed with, frankly, a lot more competence than the real man was known for possessing outside the field of public speaking.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: After coming Back from the Dead with the "perfect Aryan" face of his rival, Captain America, his first major scheme ended with him being disfigured with an actual "red skull" for a face after he inhaled his own "dust of death" while trying to kill Cap.
  • Honor Before Reason: Despite his usual Pragmatic Villainy, he can sometimes exhibit this, almost like a sort of villainous Chronic Hero Syndrome. In other words, he does not go out of his way to do pointlessly Stupid Evil things, but good things—by Nazi standards, that is. For example, in one story he he was diverted from his scheme to destabilize the US government to lecture a race-mixing couple on the evils of miscegenation.
  • Hope Bringer: The darkest example imaginable. He brings hope to the persecuted and marginalized fascists and Nazis of the Marvelverse, and inspires them to continue the struggle against the overwhelming might of liberalism and democracy.
  • Hopeless War: The Skull's struggle against liberalism. He believes he's still fighting for the Nazi ideals and keeping Hitler's dream alive, but the world only gets more liberal with each passing year. It seems nothing he does ultimately matters. Sometimes it causes him to despair.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Has terrified much more superhuman enemies like Kang the Conqueror and Korvac, and even Doctor Doom on occasion.
  • Hot-Blooded: He wants to be cold and calculating, and can sometimes pull off a convincing impression of it, but the mask soon slips. In everything he does, he is actually extremely passionate.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: From powerful politician and general in a minor superpower to terrorist leader. Also his beloved Germany, or at least as he sees things: from Hitler's mighty Reich of power, truth and justice to the gutted ruin of today, infested with immigrants, liberals and homosexuals. In at least one story he even explicitly invokes the trope.
    Red Skull: How far my proud homeland has fallen.
  • Humans Are Bastards: After living out his childhood in the streets of chaotic interwar Germany, the Skull was already convinced of this. World War II with its massive war crimes and atrocities on all sides really hammered home the point. It's one of the reasons he's believes so strongly in a fascistic dictatorship as an ideal government; because it will temper the populous' self-destructive tendencies.
  • I Control My Minions Through…: Most of his people, at least the ones working directly for him, are hardcore fascists who follow him out of genuine loyalty, often quite fanatically so. While often portrayed as a Bad Boss, he can also display admirable loyalty and respect toward loyal subordinates.
  • I Know Karate: Red Skull is a master of martial arts (and has specifically been mentioned to know several styles of karate). He still loses many of his unarmed battles, but that's because his opponent is frequently Captain America.
  • I Should Have Been Better: If he had been, maybe he would have been able to defeat Captain America and save fascist Europe. So now he pushes himself twice as hard to be the best of all.
  • Icy Blue Eyes: Though the mask makes them look red, his eyes are cold as ice beneath.
  • If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: As a young officer fresh out of training, his Nazi masters decide to test his devotion by ordering him to gun down a man in cold blood. The Skull, who apparently still has some moral scruples at this point, refuses, but does it in a creative way that impresses them with his coldness (and shooting abilities) while still leaving the man alive and unharmed.
  • Ignored Epiphany: After being locked in an abandoned fallout shelter for days, starving and alone in the dark, he finally resigned himself to his fate and for the first -and only- time in his life, he felt remorse for his life of villainy and privately conceded that he deserved this fate. He was rescued shortly after, regained his will to live after seeing Captain America and remembering how much he hated him... and after telling Cap as much, began ranting about how he would get revenge on Magneto for putting him in there (though, tellingly, he didn't put much effort into that particular scheme).
  • Ignored Expert: If Hitler had listened to his own strategic advice instead of that of the generals, Germany would've won the war. Or so he says.
  • Impossible Thief: Has acquired a number of quite incredibly well-guarded treasures from the US Government, HYDRA and various other parties over the years. Sometimes in person, and sometimes he merely hires the right man for the job. Later had it happen to himself, when a rival group of villains stole his Cosmic Cube from his super-secure base.
  • Improbable Age: If he was born in 1914, that would make him not even thirty in the early 1940s, by which time he was one of the Third Reich's top generals. Somewhat justified, in that he has extreme abilities that really do make him competent for the job, as well as the backing of an absolute dictator who can keep promoting him however far he thinks the Skull deserves, over the heads of older men.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Back when he was fresh out of training in the early 1930s, he shot the buttons off a man's jacket easily and single-handedly. His aim hasn't gotten any worse since.
  • Inadequate Inheritor: Thought his daughter Synthia would be this, because "All women are too weak." Whether he had a point in doubting her abilities varies with the writing, though he is often portrayed as having been wrong; also, he did come to view her increasingly favorably as she got the chance to prove herself to him.
  • Inconsistent Spelling: The correct spelling of his name is "Johann Schmidt" (two letters n in the first name, a c between the s and h in the second, ending with a d followed by a t), both officially and according to all ordinary rules and standards of German orthography. For whatever reason, many people appear to find this extremely difficult to remember, including some official writers and proofreaders. Especially the variant "Johann Schmidt" (which looks quite ridiculous to native German-speakers) is fairly common.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Pure evil, that is - pure hatred, down to his bones. This was exactly why Hitler was so proud of him, when his special training was done.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Not emphasized, but hinted at. Because he grew up as the lowest of the low in society, and failed at everything he tried for the first twenty or so years of his life, he now drives himself very hard to excel at everything he does.
  • It Gets Easier: In one elaboration on his backstory, he failed to shoot an enemy during one of his early assignments for the Nazis because, despite everything, he still couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. After the war, he doesn't have this problem any more.
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: And not just if you're the chosen one of good ... Red Skull has suffered even more tragic and traumatic events than his Good Counterpart Cap, which is no mean feat; his mother died giving birth to him and his father tried to drown him, then killed himself, so he grew up an orphan and was in and out of prison from a young age. Though it's rather hard to feel sorry for him, since he was always a monster. Becoming a Nazi just made him one with connections.
  • It's All About Me: Skull really couldn't care less about anyone that isn't him.
    Tropes J to R 
  • Jerk Jock: An extreme example when he went insane after his mind was moved into a clone of Captain America.
  • Jerkass: The Skull is a terrorist, mass murderer and would-be world conqueror; but quite apart from that, he is a jerk in the little things too. He bullies his subordinates, was violently and sadistically abusive to his girlfriend, and once sank into a depression that he got out of when Crossbones cheered him up by reminding him of all the evil things he had done in his life.
  • Jerkass Has a Point
    • In semi-cynical stories, he sometimes gets this with Cap. The most common variation has him calling the star-spangled defender out on his Chronic Hero Syndrome tendencies, and in at least one instance Cap even acknowledges the point somewhat. He's also the first to acknowledge the flaws of American culture and the government and how America has degraded into a strong Type II Eagleland since Cap's absence, something Cap himself agrees with to a degree which caused him to quit his identity as Captain America at one point.
    • He's also quick to point out that Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, has no right to take the moral high ground against him, as Magneto turned around and tried to do the same thing Hitler did.
  • Joker Immunity: Red Skull always manages to weasel his way out and even if he somehow finally dies he'll somehow get revived in short order.
  • Just the First Citizen: After World War II, the Nazi underground forces generally viewed him as Hitler's legitimate successor instead of Doenitz, and he assumed largely dictatorial authority over them. Oddly enough, they don't generally call him Furher, presumably out of deference to Hitler's wishes that he be the last one.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Can function as this when guest-starring in comics or adaptations outside the regular Captain America titles. Sometimes in them, too, for that matter, since as an ideological fanatic and ruthless political terrorist who (at least in his post-Silver Age appearances) tends to be deadly serious both in his plans and their execution, he makes for a considerable change of pace compared to some of the goofier regular villains. Add that he's pretty much the most Politically Incorrect Villain in his setting (what with being a totally unrepentant Nazi bitter-ender and all), and it's rather to be expected that his stories usually come in darker tones than is otherwise the norm.
  • Lack of Empathy: THE biggest example in the Marvel Universe.
  • Large Ham: After stealing Xavier's psychic powers, Skull could simply make people do things without a word. But where is the fun in that?
  • Last of His Kind: One of the very few original Nazi leaders who still survive, and possibly the only one who still keeps the flame of the ideology burning. In one comic, he reminisces about the old days when he and the Fuehrer dreamed together of remaking the future. Then, back to the present:
    Red Skull: But now, he is dead! Only the Red Skull still remains to fulfill the Nazi dream!
  • Latex Perfection: To the point that he can convincingly wear another mask over his Skull mask, in some stories. (Mainly older ones.)
  • The Leader: Mainly the first and fourth type, though he has shades of all. At least some writers seem to deliberately base his style of leadership on that of the real-life Hitler, which was also a lot like this.
  • Legacy Character: There have been four Red Skulls. Technically, Johan Schmidt is actually the second; the original Red Skull was a Nazi spy who was retconned into being one of Schmidt's agents. The third was a Dirty Communist, and the fourth is the Skull's own daughter.
    • It's actually rather complicated in publishing terms, since the first three versions were originally intended to be the same character, and only a series of Retcon stories have created the distinctions between them.
  • Like a Duck Takes to Water: Despite his very humble background and worse education, his rise was meteoric after he joined the Nazis and got to show what he was really capable of. In less than ten years, he went from a soldier in the line to one of their top generals.
  • Living Legend: Already during World War II, when he was a famous and highly decorated Nazi general, but more so in later decades. In-story, he has become the archetypical image of Nazism in much the same way as Captain America has become that of Americanism.
  • Lonely at the Top: Invoked in some stories, including ones where his world-conquest plans are successful. The Skull rules supreme and imposes his Nazi vision on the world ... but his personal life is still empty. All of his old friends from World War II are still dead, and he can't seem to make any new ones. Devotion to his ideals is all that keeps him going.
  • Loners Are Freaks: In his original backstory, young Johann Schmidt was not crazy, but very much awkward, unsociable and deeply unhappy. This aspect, even through the Retcons, has stayed largely intact.
  • Mad Scientist: More like mad engineer, and even this is pushing it for most interpretations. But even if he doesn't do much mad science himself, Red Skull is an enthusiast for science and technology who often sponsors bona fide mad scientists like Arnim Zola. In an Alternate Universe where the Nazis survived World War II and he succeeded Hitler as Fuehrer, Doctor Doom was one of his science advisors.
  • Made of Iron: Due to supreme willpower. He suffers damage like an ordinary Badass Normal, but can cope exceedingly well with even highly debilitating pain. Once, when he had his hand cut off, he was able to continue directing a battle within seconds, even as he had the wound bandaged.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: Sometimes played straight, sometimes played with. See elsewhere on this page for one recent example.
  • The Man Behind the Man: He has been revealed to be the secret leader, founder, and/or financer of many evil organizations, including the Watchdogs, the Power Brokers, Scourge of the Underworld, the Resistants, and for a while, U.L.T.I.M.A.T.U.M.. (The Flag-Smasher, who founded them, regained control and executed any member loyal to the Skull.) While the Skull cares little for their goals and motives, each group benefits him in some way.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: In some appearances, though usually when he seeks to influence others who might be impressed by such displays. Privately, he's still intellectual, but rather more frugal and unaffected.
  • Manchurian Agent: Brubaker's Red Skull makes heavy use of these.
  • Master of All: At least some versions of the Skull are written like a sort of villainous Batman, and even those that aren't are generally very competent and competitive in widely ranging fields. Typically, he is portrayed as everything from martial arts master and dead shot to brilliant military strategist, and from super-spy and master of disguise to economics expert capable of massive currency manipulations. He also speaks several languages, plays the piano, and can quote more history, philosophy and various obscure lore from one field or another in the sciences and humanities than many of the setting's immortals have amassed. Justified, to whatever extent it can be, in that he is both a supergenius with Photographic Memory, and a fanatical Knight Templar who spends almost all the time he isn't engaged in villainous schemes training and studying to improve himself as much as possible.
  • Master of Disguise: The list of people he's successfully impersonated to run his schemes must be a yard long at this point. And that's not counting the times he's just used other folks' bodies. Notably, in one story he manages to get himself appointed Secretary of Defense of the United States, under the alias Dell Rusk. Not only does this require extreme disguise and cover mastery to pass the background checks, but building up the cover identity to the point where he's not merely not suspected, but considered competent, suitable and sufficiently well-connected for this office ... Well, let's just say it's a bigger espionage coup than anything anyone has managed in real life, and leave it at that.note 
  • Master Poisoner: As part of his spy/assassin tradecraft. His trademark is the "dust of death" poison - which kills the victim within seconds and causes their face to shrivel, their hair to fall out and their skin to turn red thus making them resemble a red skull - but he's been shown to use various other substances over the years, always to good effect.
  • Master Race: Naturally believes pretty strongly that the Teutonic peoples are this - with a handful of other peoples at least not meriting extermination, which is about as close as he gets to a Pet the Dog moment.
  • Master Swordsman: Not something he gets to show off often, since, well, on a modern battlefield, swords just aren't all that practical. But on the few occasions where he wields one, he's deadly.
  • Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: When his mother died giving birth to him, his father said he'd murdered her and tried to drown him, only being stopped by the intercession of the doctor who delivered him.
  • MegaCorp: The Kronas Corporation, which got big and powerful enough to buy out Roxxon Oil and become a serious power in the American economy for a brief time.
  • Men Are Better Than Women: For a European man born in the years before World War I, this is hardly avoidable. His general views on women are old-fashioned at best, and some depictions make him a rampant misogynist. But he's also been shown to respect and admire capable and competent women like Sharon Carter.
  • Might Makes Right: Played with. Red Skull believes this is how the world works, but he doesn't think it's right in the moral sense that it has to.
  • Mildly Military: Red Skull seems to have been SS, but aside from some flair doesn't really run his operations with the full level of formality they had - he doesn't care much for rank or uniform, for instance, though given that most of his 'soldiers' are Right Wing Militia Fanatics, there's a degree of 'beggars can't be choosers' there.
  • Military Superhero: A villainous example, as befits Captain America's evil counterpart.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: On a bad day.
  • Misery Builds Character: Invoked by the Skull (who has one of the most depressing backgrounds of comics characters, himself) when he raised his daughter. Since he's always Had to Be Sharp, he holds any expression of "weakness" in deepest contempt, and believed she would need a very tough upbringing in order to develop to her full potential and (perhaps) become a worthy successor to him, should he die before his work is finished. Depending on the writer, she either hates him for this, is grateful for it, or both. He applies the same philosophy to himself, too, and lives frugally and pushes himself to the very limit in all kinds of Training from Hell in order to realize his own full potential, sorely needed just to stay alive with most of the world's most powerful people his sworn enemies. So at least, he's not being hypocritical about it.
  • Mole in Charge: In one story, he tried to take over the US by launching a third-party populist candidature for the Presidency. In another, he actually became the US Secretary of Defense under a false identity.
  • Mook Horror Show: After inhabiting the Captain America clone, he liked to indulge in "training sessions" that were basically this. He would hire five mooks from Taskmaster, have them dress like Captain America, and fight them. They thought it was just a sparring match. He was out to kill them. When they started to realize this, you really felt sorry for them.
    Mook Number Four: N-no— wait a minute, Mister! The boss said all you wanted was sparring partners! He didn't say nothin' about—
    Red Skull: About killing you? Strictly an oversight on his part, I assure you! (decapitates him with his replica shield)
  • Muggle Power: Like many X-Men villains, the Skull considers the superhuman mutants of the Marvel world an existential threat to humanity's survival. Naturally, his solution is to strike against them first...
  • Multinational Team: The Skull used to lead one of elite agents from different (mostly Axis) countries who had banded together to fight for fascism against capitalism and Communism. (After World War II, they remained fascist bitter-enders and became known as the Exiles.) Known members include:
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Caused mainly by multiple retcons over the years:
    • The original background story by Stan Lee, somewhat based on the historical Hitler's real background, had him as a poor orphan, menial worker and sometime thief without family of friends, a miserable loner who failed at everything he tried and grew ever more angry with both himself and the system. This version was totally despondent and plodded along in life from day to day, until one day (and quite by chance) he met Hitler, who recognized his potential and invited him into the Nazi hierarchy.
    • Later writers then largely adhered to this story, but put in various embellishments. For example, when J. M. De Matteis retold the Skull's origin story, he added a lot of Darker and Edgier material to the effect that he was really a psychotic Serial Killer long before he met Hitler.
    • The miniseries by Greg Pak changes the story around a bit by making the young Johann Schmidt a member of the Communist underground and a hired killer.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: So the Red Onslaught may rise, the Red Skull must die!
  • Narcissist: Sometimes written this way. The Hugo Weaving version definitely stands out.
  • Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: HYDRA is the big, famous one, though he didn't found it and it's not his only organization.
  • Necessarily Evil: Those versions where he recognizes his deeds are evil (and doesn't glory in the fact).
  • Nerves of Steel: When your hand is cut off by a rampaging mutant, do you a) scream with pain for minutes and bleed to death, or b) scream with pain briefly, then apply a torniquet and continue barking orders to your followers?
  • New Era Speech: Several, for example to the Kronas security forces in the Death of Captain America story.
  • No-Nonsense Nemesis: Sometimes, depending on the writing.
  • No Social Skills: Had none in his youth, when he was both uncultured and painfully shy. Has since worked hard to avert this, and by sheer effort seems to have obtained a significant degree of success.
  • Non-Idle Rich: Usually in his modern appearances. With his corporate and crime connections, he is easily a billionaire, who could retire comfortably into obscurity, should he wish it. However, he gives nearly all of his money away to fund his Nazi underground, instead—And of course, spends most of his time taking a very active part in running it.
  • "Not So Different" Remark:
    • A subtle example when he sometimes rails at Captain America for being an unrealistic dreamer with his mind trapped in the past. This from the guy who keeps ranting about Hitler's great vision and trying to rebuild Nazi Germany in the 2010s...
    • When confronted by a furious Magneto who wanted to know if he was the same Red Skull who served Hitler, he calmly pointed out that Mags was also a racial supremacist focused on safeguarding and advancing what he saw as his people's interests, and had done some pretty terrible things in pursuit of his goals:
      We are much alike, you and I, Magneto. Both of us wish to see our Master Race inherit the Earth. You call my Fuehrer barbaric? Am I mistaken or did you yourself not kill hundreds of men by sinking a submarine a few years back? To help realize your minority group's destiny, would you balk at imprisonment of inferiors? The extermination of the unfit? Come, come, Magneto. Do not expect me to be impressed by your sanctimonious posturings of moral superiority!
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Of the second type. The Skull believes himself to be a real Well-Intentioned Extremist ... But the great purpose he's fighting for is National Socialism, also known as Nazism.
  • Number Two: To Hitler, before he became Number One after the war.
  • Obviously Evil: Between his Nazism, his visage, and his hateful personality, it's very clear that the Red Skull is not a good man. The comics sometimes take efforts to justify this: in his original Golden Age appearances, the skull was a mask used by various Nazi agents and fifth columnists to commit terrorism and sabotage under; meanwhile, some later stories claim that Hitler wanted the Red Skull to be as menacing as he feasibly could, which would give Hitler a means to terrify people into submission while he remained the popular leader of Germany.
  • Offing the Offspring: His father tried to drown him after his mother died in childbirth.
  • Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Justified as the Skull is not only having access to hidden Nazi caches, but also frequently running organizations like HYDRA and various factions of AIM from whom he takes resources.
  • Older Than They Look: He was born in 1914 as of the latest writing (and was originally born even earlier, in 1889), so he's over a hundred by now. Various species of technobabble keep him in shape — much as is also the case with his more-or-less equivalently old archnemesis, Captain America.
  • One-Man Army: Doesn't show it off very often, since as a high-ranking officer he rarely does the super-agent stuff himself anymore. But when he does, it's time for the Mook SHIELD agents (and etc) to be very afraid.
  • One-Winged Angel: When Magneto kills the second Red Skull, Onslaught is reborn due to the Skull possessing Charles Xavier's brain.
  • Only Sane Man: Thinks he is this (or nearly, at any rate) as a survivor of better times in an age of universal madness.
  • Opposed Mentors: The Sentinel of Liberty miniseries gives Franklin Roosevelt an expanded role as a mentor of sorts, and certainly inspiration, for Captain America. The Skull's mentor and everlasting inspiration, of course, is Hitler.
  • Oppressive States of America: The Repressive, but Efficient dictatorship he planned to set up together with his collaborators/puppets in the Third Wing Party. The transition into full-blown fascism was to be gradual, going from a modern-style national security state through a more explicitly nationalist one. Also, the Skull himself considers the present-day US to be this, due to affirmative action and various other government-enforced liberal policies.
  • Order Versus Chaos: Ultimately, order. The Skull creates chaos in order to bring down what he sees as corrupt, plutocratic America, but this chaos is only a means towards the end of a new, better and more orderly society. Subordinates who cannot grasp this (such as Viper) are shown to the door in short order.
  • Our Clones Are Different: He's returned in Uncanny Avengers thanks to Arnim Zola having cloned him.
  • The Paragon: A villainous, fascist example. A mainstay of his rhetoric is that things will only keep getting worse as long as people submit to the corrupt system. It is the people alone who can change the world for the better, by being willing to stand up and risk their safety; he will lead them, if they will follow him, but every man must do his part. And because he usually practices what he preaches, he does succeed in inspiring his followers.
  • Parental Substitute:
    • Pretends to be a loving father figure to Kobik the Cosmic Cube girl while teaching her that Hydra is the best thing since sliced bread.
    • Hitler is sometimes depicted as a kind of father figure for the Skull.
  • Patriotic Fervor: Willing to die for Fascist Europe, and leads a Multinational Team of fascists and Nazis fighting for their countries against the Allies.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: And make sure it's paid with interest, too.
  • The Perfectionist: Everything he does is to be done right.
  • The Philosopher: Often alludes to various philosophers the real-life Nazis liked, like Spengler and Nietzsche. Surprisingly, and amusingly, the Disney-villainous Silver Age version often does it better than many more pretentious modern writers manage.
  • Photographic Memory: Whether it is truly eidetic or not, his memory is extraordinary; for example, he has been shown to recall conversations verbatim decades after they took place. This is yet another way he mirrors the real-life Hitler, who often embarrassed his minions by quoting their own words from months or years previously back at them when they failed to adhere to them.
  • Poison Is Evil: He has used a concoction called "Dust of Death" over his career. Similar to Joker's Venom, it kills a victim and causes the skin on the victim's head to shrivel and turn red, making it look like the victim has a "red skull" for a head. The Skull himself became a victim of his Dust, and while he survived due to an antidote, still suffered the secondary effect, making his head a living red skull.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Aside from the fact that he's a friggin' Nazi, he's also pretty sexist, though he has expressed a certain level of respect for certain supervillainesses like Madame Hydra, and Syn when she grew up. Doesn't make up for his treatment of Mother Night, though, which was outright and frequent physical abuse, and he loved every minute of it too. The Skull also denied the Holocaust, and seemed to actually believe it when he said it was all just lies and frame-up.
  • The Power of Friendship: A villainous version. When the Cosmic Cube caught the Skull in a nightmarish mind prison, it was his devotion to Hitler for giving him a chance at succcess that finally brought him back to real life with new powers to boot.
  • The Power of Hate: Hatred is the one thing that fuels him above all else and has carried him through the decades with an indomitable will to infinitely hate his enemies, even after death. When Magneto locked him away to die, he survived and avoided being Driven to Suicide by clinging to his hatred of Captain America, and re-gained the will to live again after seeing Cap in person once more. Skull also once escaped a torturous Cosmic Cube Prison by clinging to his hatred and gained new powers to boot. Cap's fear of Skull's maddening hate is reflected in the page quote.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: He has one standard: pragmatism — if you are killing people and breaking things on his dime, you'd better have something to show for it besides craters (even if it's just that he now owns those craters and they're full of gold or something). He notably kicked Viper out for wasting his money and resources on acts of terrorism with no strategic benefit, violence for its own sake.
  • President Evil: In those continuities where he succeeded Hitler as ruler of Nazi Germany, or otherwise acquired a position of formal political power. He's even become U.S. President in a Bad Future.
  • Professional Killer: The original (i.e., Golden Age) Red Skull is introduced as one, a German spy and assassin. As a youth, the current version was one as well - back before he properly joined the Nazi Party.
  • Psychic Powers: He now has this ability after using Xavier's brain in Uncanny Avengers.
  • Psycho Prototype: In both Captain America (1990), he is the first test subject for the Super Serum that eventually creates Captain America.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Type C with some Type B traits. Very few of his goals are pragmatic like those of an evil politician or a Corrupt Corporate Executive should be, profit for him is a means to doing more evil, not an end. From a certain point of view, since the moment he met the Führer, the Skull never grew up. Which is even more chilling when one sees how well it matches his below-quoted Real Life counterparts from the Reich.
  • Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": While he is usually a serious and often pretty angry villain, when he is doing what he loves- outplaying his enemies, screwing over his minions and allies, Cold-Blooded Torture, mass murder- he'll at least be sporting a good Slasher Smile, and on occasion laugh like a maniac when he is doing something really evil.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: His men used to be immaculate Waffen-SS commandos, but since most of them are now long dead (and comics editors want more toy-friendly supervillains) those who remain are more like this.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: By circa 1942, he was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, being a sort of plenipotentiary agent-at-large for Hitler as well as the omnipotent dictator's best friend. Also one of the few Axis agents who could credibly take on Allied heroes like Captain America hand to hand.
  • Rapid Aging: This happened to him once, due to the gas that kept him young wearing off.
  • A Real Man is a Killer: Surprisingly, averted; when the Skull is called upon to kill a man as part of his training as a Nazi agent, he manages to avoid it, in a way that still establishes respect for him with his handlers. However, he does believe that a man should be prepared, not just to die, but to kill for his country in times of war.
  • Real Men Take It Black: Granted, if the Skull has his way women will be forced to drink black coffee too
  • Recruited from the Gutter: Almost; he wasn't quite in the literal gutter when Hitler recruited him (though he came from there), but his station was still very lowly.
  • Recurring Dreams:
    • Of his traumatic failures, which continue to haunt him.
    • When he was exiled to an Ironic Hell where he was stripped of his conscious memories, recurring dreams of Hitler and his struggle for the Nazi vision remained with him, and eventually brought back his full personality.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Especially when wearing a black SS uniform, or even a black suit when in civvies. Probably deliberately symbolic, as it fits with the Skull being Captain America's antithesis: Red, white and black are the traditional colors of Germany, and also of Nazism's swastika banner, just as red, white and blue are those of America. So, like Cap, he is sort of wearing his flag, only a little less obviously.
  • Red Baron: His real name is Johann Schmidt, but it's very rarely that anyone calls him anything other than the Red Skull.
  • Red Right Hand: When his red Skull for a Head is a genuine physical defect rather than a mask, it definitely qualifies as this, reflecting his utter lack of human warmth and kindness.
  • Red Scare: Played straight with the Communist Skull in the 1950s. However, most versions (but especially the original, Golden Age one) rather represent the anti-Nazi "Brown Scare" mentioned on the page, which by 1941 had the US up in arms about supposed Nazi spies, saboteurs and fifth columnists. The Skull and his various henchmen led various fantastic schemes to subvert America, frequently aided by disloyal German-Americans; and indeed, the comic encouraged the children who read it to report suspicious activities to the authorities.
  • Related in the Adaptation:
  • The Remnant: Leads the hard core of Nazi diehards in the Marvel universe, who refused to surrender when the Nazis were defeated.
  • Renaissance Man: Historian, musician, martial artist, strategist, occultist, engineer, art-lover, master rhetorician...
  • Repressive, but Efficient: His idea of utopia, at least on a good day. A high-tech, ultra-totalitarian civilization patterned on Nazi Germany, free of deviants and inferior races. Interestingly, one early comic suggested that he wanted to unify the world in order to end wars and use humanity's pooled resources to colonize space, thereby securing infinite Lebensraum for the race.
  • Retro Universe: The Alternate Universe where the Skull took over, a high-tech dictatorship where it's reasonably nice to live if you fit in, but not if you don't. For example, there are maglev trains and flat screen TV, but people still wear hats.
  • Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The Skull isn't one himself, but sometimes sponsors them because they share many of the same goals and ideals. For example, he bankrolled the Watchdogs, a Christian militia of fundamentalists who crusade against "indecency, immorality, and sexual perversion" in all their manifold expressions.
    Officer Wally Layton: "They're an extremist right-wing group, they hadn't been seen for a while. Organized, well funded, violent... They were known for attacking abortion clinics, pornographers, homosexuals... mostly moral issues. They got a lot of support, playing on people's fear."
  • Risking the King: As a senior officer, Red Skull should ideally be far way from the battlefield, but is somewhat often found leading the operations he has planned in a very hands-on fashion. Obviously this is a dramatic conceit, but it may also be justified in many cases. Post-war, he simply might not have all that many men to spare on short notice, if his neo-fascist cells have recently taken a major beating, and during the war he might be fighting as a propaganda stunt, or possibly because the mission requires a Super-Soldier of his caliber, even if this also means risking a high-ranking staff officer.
  • The Rival: In some stories, has traits of this with Cap. A straighter example would be fellow Nazi supervillain Baron Zemo. They are similar in many ways, including wearing face-concealing red masks, but while the Skull is a Self-Made Man and villainous Working-Class Hero from the humblest of backgrounds, Zemo is Doctor Heinrich Zemo, 12th Baron Zemo, a well-educated Gentleman and a Scholar from a long line of wealthy titled nobility. While they share the same national and ideological loyalties and aims, their differing backgrounds (and methods, to some degree) make them natural rivals: To the Skull, Zemo is a Sheltered Aristocrat who does not truly understand the world, while Zemo thinks the Skull still has far too much of his Lower-Class Lout origins in him. Consequently, each wants to show the other up and demonstrate himself the better. However, both are man enough to grudgingly respect the other's abilities and accomplishment.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When he got ahold (again!) of the Cosmic Cube back in the 1990s. This time, his first priority was revenge against America. In the nightmarish Bad Future which showed how it worked out, he made the US suffer everything the Allies did to Germany in World War II and starved the people, destroyed the cities, dynamited the monuments, put the military-age men in prison camps and had the superheroes executed like the Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg Trials.
  • Robot Master: While it isn't really his hat, the Skull has been shown occasionally to tinker with robots. For example, he once built an android replica of Bucky, and is said to have had a hand in the design of the original Sleepers.
  • Rogue Agent: In the movie and some other adaptations, where he leads the Renegade Splinter Faction HYDRA rather than the Nazis. Averted in the comics, where his loyalty to Nazism is his defining character trait, except for a period in the 1980s, when he was acting out of character for both in-universe and out-of-universe reasons. Indeed, in the comics he sometimes fights renegade Nazis, who seek to usurp the Nazi dream of which he considers himself the protector.
  • Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Like the real-life Nazis, an odd mixture. Like the Nazis, he values order, appreciates modern technology and tends toward utilitarianism, but his ideals are largely nostalgic and "heroic" (in the Carlyle/Nietzsche sense, not as in "heroic" as opposed to "villainous").
    Tropes S to Z 
  • Sadist: Surprisingly, usually averted, as Red Skull leans more toward ideologically motivated villainy and its coldly rational execution. However, some writers portray him like this, particularly when Darker and Edgier is in style. Also seems to be Sin's default characterization.
  • Scary Dogmatic Aliens: In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the Skull was sent by Beyonder to a planet of humanoid aliens. In a couple of years, he somehow made himself dictator of one of its powerful nations and turned it into a carbon copy of Nazi Germany, making its citizens this.
  • Science Is Bad: Well, Red Skull mostly thinks Science is Good - so yes, when he's involved, Science Might As Well Be Bad.
  • Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Magneto once imprisoned him in an abandoned and long-forgotten fallout shelter with no provisions other than ten gallons of water. His time down there nearly broke him.
  • Self-Made Man: Subverted a little, in that he owes his one chance in life to the Nazis, and specifically Hitler personally. However, this was precisely the one favor he got in life; everything else he has managed, including his meteoric rise from junior officer to Nazi oligarch, is due entirely to his own effort. He is equal parts proud of that and grateful to his mentor, whose encouragement and course in life (a Rags to Riches story vaguely similar to his own) inspired him to believe in himself and make the effort.
  • Shades of Conflict: The Skull has obviously never been portrayed as a good guy, but just how repulsively evil he is varies a lot between different depictions. At his "nicest" he's basically just a Nazi general who believes in his cause and is prepared to do whatever it takes to win the war. This version is fanatical and totally ruthless, but not personally sadistic or murderous. On the other hand, some versions are nothing but sadistic and murderous and believe in no principles or ideals, Nazi or otherwise. Similarly, his enemies can be portrayed as all-American, "apple pie" crusaders or more cynical government agents. Or the writer can have him fight the Commies or the evil mutants for a change.
  • Shadow Archetype: The Red Skull is the Nazi counterpart of Captain America, and has the rank to fit.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: It doesn't come across in the most exaggeratedly crazy versions, but many of the Skull's depictions display a lot of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: vivid memories and nightmares of traumatic episodes, avoidance symptoms, sudden outbursts of irrational anger... Probably caused both by his horrible childhood and what he's been through since as a soldier.
  • Shrinking Violet: When he Used to Be a Sweet Kid...sort of.
  • Sink the Lifeboats: Surprisingly, averted; when his wolfpack sink an Allied convoy, he orders the commodore to rescue the survivors. Possibly justified, since they might provide valuable intelligence.
  • Skull for a Head: Used to be a mask, now is a deformity.
  • Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: The Skull believes in fate, and, like Machiavelli, that one should try to work with it rather than against it. But if fate is wrong (as he sees it), he'll fight it every step of the way — even if he knows it's hopeless.
  • Slobs Versus Snobs:
    • Despite (or maybe because of) his own poor background, Red Skull hates lower-class slobs almost as much as he does the wealthy elite. May be psychologically justified, in that he has worked very hard to better himself in spite of his humble origins, and is disgusted with people who won't even try.
    • Stories set before and/or during World War II sometimes give him this dynamic with Baron Heinrich Zemo. Skull was a working-class man who used one of the few lucky breaks he got to make a meteoric rise through the ranks, while Zemo was an elitist Nazi Nobleman with one of the best educations one could ask for.
  • The Social Darwinist: Either in boorish, brute-force terms or with relatively sophisticated philosophical justifications, depending on the story. Also averted or subverted in some versions, where he champions a more collectivist racialist ideology. Notably, in one comic he even called Social Darwinism "hogwash" in so many words.
  • The Sociopath: Good God, yes. He's got all the symptoms (no regard for other life, manipulates often, has a god complex and has insane risky plots), all of which quite extreme compared to most examples.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: Varies between sophisticated eloquence and quite vulgar language, sometimes in the same comic. Probably accidental, but fits the character's background as a former Lower-Class Lout who has acquired his cultured sophistication as an adult: When he's thrown off balance, his old dockworker manners slip through.
  • The Spymaster: This was basically his job under the Third Reich.
  • The Starscream: Sometimes, he's said to have had no real loyalty to Hitler and was planning to usurp him when the time was right. Obviously, he never got his chance.
  • Start of Darkness: The Red Skull miniseries by Greg Pak has shown most of how the Skull spent his childhood in Germany and how he began his path to ruthlessness.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: He's predictably big on the Kinder, Küche, Kirche slogan, having a dismissive-at-best attitude to women in general.
  • Still Fighting the Civil War: Or rather World War II, in his case. He believes that the war never ended, and that his side was not completely defeated, until and unless he and his followers are destroyed. To him, it really is the same war he is still fighting, even though the main action took place a literal lifetime ago. Most of his neo-Nazi followers, these days, are people born long after the war. They have never seen the Nazi utopia they are fighting for, only heard him describe it.
  • Storming the Castle: On that occasion when he briefly allied with Cap and Sharon Carter, they stormed a heavily defended military complex in the Nevada desert while chasing the Cosmic Cube. It was guarded by a regiment of US Army troops, but of course, they had three armies attacking them...
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: As deadly with a bow as with modern firearms, as part of his polymathic combat training. Believe it or not, but when he bothers with it, he can do much the same style of trick archery as Hawkeye.
  • Straight Edge Evil: The Skull leads a very temperate and austere private life, avoiding alcohol, frivolous sex and other similar vices (occasional smoking seems to be the one exception, despite the Nazis historically being against that sort of thing). He also submits to a grueling regimen of studies and physical training to preserve and improve body and mind. Justified by his Social Darwinist philosophy that personal worth depends on ability: He must "be all he can be" or become unworthy of his station.
  • Strategy Versus Tactics: Presents an aversion of the regular stereotype that Germans are good at operations but bad at grand strategy. Red Skull is good at both grand-scale, long-term strategic planning and tactical improvisation, but weak on the intermediate level of operations; this is where most of his schemes tend to fail. Interestingly, this is also how military professionals tend to judge Hitler's conduct of World War II, though this is probably pure coincidence.
  • Strawman Political: For the pro-Trump crowd, the Red Skull (a Nazi) gives out an unscripted populist speech against illegal immigration in one comic, with a focus on what he clearly views as Political Overcorrectness:
    Red Skull: Your entire culture is under siege. The principles your country was founded upon lost in the name of "tolerance." Your religion, your beliefs, your sense of community — all tossed aside like trash. And you cannot even speak out against it, lest you be called a bigot!
  • Street Urchin: His childhood and youth.
  • Strong and Skilled: While he may not be a super soldier like Cap (at least not most of the time), he's in excellent physical condition due to rigorous training and regular combat duties as a soldier and is an excellent martial artist who knows Boxing, multiple forms of Karate, Judo, Jiujitsu and Wrestling, allowing him to fight Cap on an even level.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: With Sin. They are both lightly built, of average height or slightly below, and redheads with piercing blue eyes and somewhat thin, attractive faces. Though given the medium, this varies somewhat with the portrayal.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Turns out the Skull financed the research into a lot of sci-fi technology in the 1940s.
  • Super-Intelligence: Not outright stated, but pretty much a requirement for explaining how an ex-street urchin could pick up several foreign languages and learn how to design and program autonomous military drones in a few years' time.
  • Super-Soldier: Basically, the Nazi version of Captain America. The original Red Skull has no overt superhuman powers (just Charles Atlas Super Power and Training from Hell), but some versions (including the movie adaptation) use something similar to Cap's Super Serum.
  • Superhero Trophy Shelf: Rather, super-villain trophy shelf, but otherwise it fits. When depicted, usually doubles as Continuity Porn by showcasing mementos from obscure adventures.
  • Survivor Guilt: The original Skull "died" in Berlin in 1945, shortly before Hitler's death. Thanks to technobabble, it turned out he was merely a Human Popsicle for two decades. In at least one comic, he curses fate which left him alive and let the Fuehrer die.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Averted; despite his tragic origin story, Captain America cuts him no slack. Presumably justified, given his villainy.
  • Sympathy for the Hero: He can relate to many of Captain America's troubles, since in at least some ways the two of them are similar. Notably, both miss the good old days and feel out of place in the modern world.
  • Take Over the World: His goal, and in one alternate universe, he succeeds.
  • Taking Up the Mantle: He considers himself the executor of Hitler's legacy, who will fulfil the dead Fuehrer's dream.
  • Tautological Templar: The Skull is at least usually a Nazi diehard, who thinks democracy is evil and a front for Jewish Power, and Nazism the last and best hope of humanity. In his own moral universe, he is fighting to save the world, and his hatred of Captain America and his other enemies comes in large part from his belief that he's trying to save them, too from the Capitalist-Bolshevik-Multicultural conspiracy. They ought to join him, but instead everyone hates him, even though he's only trying to do what's right. In some comics, he even views himself as a kind of martyr because of this.
  • The Teetotaler: Well, not quite, but almost. In his youth, depressed over the fate of Germany and his own failures, he would often get drunk to dull the pain. Since he sobered up, he never has anything stronger than an occasional glass of wine.
  • They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: When his face is a mask rather than a disfigurement, he's generally depicted as looking normal and even fairly handsome underneath it.
  • This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Sometimes averted, sometimes played straight. As he's typically the leader of his operations, he often stays out of the fights, but when It's Personal (for example, often when facing Captain America) he'll make an exception.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: One of the most horrific examples in comic book history.
  • Token Trio: The main villains in the Brubaker run, with a little humor: An immigrant (the Skull), a lower-class white man (Crossbones) and a girl (Sin).
  • Tom the Dark Lord: The Red Skull's real name is Johann Schmidt, the German cognate of John Smith. In German it makes him sound like a bit of a country bumpkin — which is precisely what his family were!
  • Torture Technician: His hobby, apparently. At least on one occasion he even had his own Torture Cellar, which he said was for "recreation".
  • Totalitarian Utilitarian: The "nicest" interpretation of the Skull. One of his stated motivations for his villainy is a wish to unify the world, end wars, waste and inefficiency and instead use the freed-up resources to colonize space.
  • Training from Hell: One Skull-centric story (originally in one of the last issues of Super-Villain Team-Up) depicts some of his ordinary, everyday routine in between the world-conquests. He rises early in the morning, and begins the day with a tough run of calisthenics, gymnastics, target shooting and other training; once done, he turns to planning and studying. His thoughts: He must be tougher than all his myriad enemies, or else be found wanting by Nature. Note that the training isn't sadistic or over-the-top, so much as simply mind-numbingly boring and exhausting, and about the equivalent of a full-time job in terms of the time he spends on it. Keeping up with the superheroes requires effort when you don't have the benefit of super-serums...
  • Truth in Television: Hitler sometimes did hand out the chevrons and Golden Badge to late-enlisting but exceptionally worthy followers, which could explain why the Red Skull often has an Honor Chevron for the Old Guard and a Golden Party Badge.
  • Übermensch: Nazi-style, too. Red Skull doesn't really give a toss about what other people think of him. He is wholly and completely dedicated to his ideals and will stop at nothing to achieve them.
  • Underdogs Never Lose: Averted, and/or subverted. Like the real-life Nazis in World War II, Red Skull has only a fraction of the resources his enemies can bring to bear, which means he has to be a lot smarter and more audacious to keep up. Even so, with rare exceptions he still usually loses in the end.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Hitler and Nazism, at least most versions. He has devoted his entire life to avenging Hitler's death and making his dream of a reborn Nazism come true.
  • The Unfettered: There are absolutely no limits in his evilness.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: He once claimed to have searched for years for the physician who pulled him out of the womb... so he could kill him for dragging him out of the darkness and into the light, and for saving him from his father's attempts to murder him.
  • Unholy Matrimony:
    • When he was with Mother Night. Though Skull was always abusive to her, even if she was completely loyal to him.
    • He tried it briefly with Madame HYDRA/the Viper and their romance was mutual, but she turned out to be too crazy for him.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The Skull's own version of his life story includes the claim that he remembers every detail of his birth, knows in-depth what his parents were like despite never really meeting them (he claimed to "feel the hatred" of his father for him - yes, when he was just born) and some other stuff like being thirty years old when he committed his first murder and met Hitler, despite subsequent versions portraying him as a teenager. This, on top of his claim that he completed his intensive super-training in weeks, whilst also being a complete failure at everything in his life up to that point. In addition to being a known liar, there's also the simple fact that the Skull who told this version of the story was ancient and rather obviously senile. In fact, when he first related his origins to Captain America some forty years earlier, the tale was very similar in broad strokes, but notably free of all the extravagant and shocking details.
  • Villain by Default: Even when written at his "nicest" he's obviously a villain, by virtue of being an unrepentant Nazi.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • Less megalomaniacal takes on Red Skull have been known to give criticisms of modern society that hold at least some water - usually relating to how Capitalism Is Bad and how Democracy Is Flawed. His answers to these problems rather undermine any chance he has of winning people over, however.
    • In Captain America #367, he points out that he and Magneto are similarly ruthless, and have fundamentally similar motives - white supremacy and mutant supremacy. Magneto is understandably furious at this "Not So Different" Remark from someone who helped a genocide of his own people, a genocide he barely survived.
  • Villain Respect: Most versions can respect and even admire the competence and determination of Captain America - a sentiment that is very one-sided, to his chagrin.
  • Villain World: Some alternate universes show worlds where his schemes succeeded and he took over, one way or another. Usually they look a lot like Nazi Germany.
  • Villainous Breakdown: When he was locked up in a shelter by Magneto and slowly starved, doomed to die while completely helpless at the mercy of one he considered subhuman.
  • Villainous Crush: Only hinted at, but for a while he seemed to develop an attraction to Sharon Carter, Captain America's on-and-off girlfriend.
  • Villainous Friendship: With Hitler.
    Red Skull: -sigh- Days like this, I wish Hitler was still alive. He always knew how to cheer me up. God, I miss that guy every day.
  • Villains Blend in Better: He makes for an unusually complicated example of this with Cap, the other half of their Terminator Twosome. On the one hand, he's very good at keeping a low profile, something Cap is not particularly happy doing, but something he's fully capable of doing. On the other hand, Cap is able to be...well, himself in public, and people generally cheer - Red Skull only generally gets that with a certain kind of crowd.
  • Visionary Villain: Wishes to remake the world, and when given leeway by sufficiently fantastic technology, the universe. On the more down-to-earth level, he seeks to establish a Nazi world state, high-tech and orderly, with a place for everyone and everyone in his place (which, however, for some people means six feet under). When dreaming bigger, he aims for massive space colonization and outright techno-utopia. All this, at the low, low price of countless billions of human lives, whole cultures, and any sense of real freedom of expression.
  • Voice Changeling: As a Master of Disguise, he's fully capable of altering his voice (along with accent, body language, etc.) to fit with the person he impersonates.
  • War Is Hell: A firm believer in this and War Is Glorious at once - he sees it as a crucible that purges weakness and replaces it with strength.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: Usually courtesy of Arnim Zola, and before him, AIM, as part of his Back from the Dead schtick. One version even had his mind transplanted into a clone of Captain America.
  • We Can Rule Together: Not often, but on occasion he does offer this to his foes.
    • Red Skull tried to persuade Captain America that they are really fighting for the same goals: to rid their countries of present-day corruption and decadence and restore their former glory. Specifically, he played on the fact that they both grew up before World War II, and so share a common viewpoint in seeing a lot things in America having changed for the worse since the 1940s. While Cap might think Nazism is bad, isn't it still better than the bankster capitalism and lunatic identity politics of the 2010s? It ends up failing thanks to Cap's Heroic Willpower - even with Red Skull cheating via attempted Mind Control.
    • A Cosmic Cube-powered Skull tried it with Sharon Carter, implying that he wanted her by his side as he assumed the authority of God-Emperor of the local galaxies. Unsurprisingly, Sharon wasn't all that interested; surprisingly, the Skull accepted this and showed no inclination to force her compliance via the Cube.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Not weak by human standards, but when compared Captain America and the like. Thanks to Training from Hell and martial arts mastery, he can still credibly fight low-tier super types hand-to-hand (though he usually still loses to Cap when the odds are even).
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: The one person whose approval he cares about (and indeed, eagerly seeks) is Hitler. Even decades after World War II, the highest praise he can give for anything goes along the lines, "The Fuehrer himself would have been proud!"
  • Western Terrorists: Of course, the Skull and his men don't view themselves as this, but they absolutely are; starting out as a bunch of "Werewolves", evolving into modern Neo-Nazis/"Alt-Right" types with a Cult of Personality around Hitler and the Red Skull himself.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: Since the Skull's minions tend to be, well, Nazis, they are among the few enemies it has always been OK for Captain America to kill in action, even back in the Silver Age when he generally adhered rather firmly to the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule otherwise. The Skull, of course, feels the same way about the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and assorted Red Shirts on Cap's side, though that is to be expected, given that he is the villain.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: As a Nazi inhabiting a comics/scifi universe, he puts his own species first. Aliens, mutants and other such creatures are Not Even Human to him.
  • Wicked Cultured: His theme tune is Chopin's Funeral March. He used to play it whenever he dosed someone with his Dust of Death poisoned gas.
  • William Telling: Done occasionally to demonstrate both his coolness under fire and his marksmanship. One variation (in a surprisingly serious context, not at all played for laughs) occurs in his Silver Age origin story.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Depending on the Writer, he either admires "strong women" or despises them - either way, they're fair game.
  • Would Hurt a Child: More than once, he's tried to kill children - and as a participant in the Holocaust, he definitionally helped in their mass extermination. He also tried to kill Bucky back when he was Captain America's Kid Sidekick back in the day, plenty of times. The Ultimate Marvel version literally kills babies, directly and sadistically. He's also perfectly happy to be a cruel bully to small, helpless children - it amuses him greatly.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: A very, very dark example. The young Johann Schmidt was a miserable loner who had failed at everything he tried and felt completely worthless, to the point of considering suicide. But then he met a man who saw in him a "man of worth" and persuaded him that the new World he was building needed men like him. It was the great turning point of his life - the moment he met Adolf Hitler. He sensed in him great hatred, and such hatred gave him the potential to be something amazing - the best Nazi of all time!
  • You Are Fat: As to be expected of a Nazi, he despises anyone he sees as physically unfit. One story had him pitted against The Kingpin for control of the New York City drug trade. He repeatedly insulted the crime boss's girth, but Kingpin got the better of him, beating him in single combat and making it clear that even he thought the Skull was a deplorable excuse of a human being.
  • You Cannot Kill an Idea: A villainous example; he has asserted, time and time again, that the hatred he embodies will always come back, even if he's killed.
"But I have farther-reaching ambitions. For I have become an American dreamer. I now embrace the American dream for what it is- the realization of one's personal ambitions by whatever means necessary! My American dream is no less the denial of everyone else theirs! To achieve it, I will have to enslave every American citizen and destroy America itself!"

Alternative Title(s): Red Skull

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