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Nicholas Fury (Earth-200111)

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World War II

Nick Fury was a U.S. Army sergeant who witnessed his battalion ambushed by German forces commanded by General Stephen Barkhorn during the Battle of Kasserine Pass. Fury was the only survivor of the company, spared by Barkhorn. Fury wandered the desert alone and suffers from the heat until he was picked up by a British SOE unit led by Peter Kynaston and Billy Yeoman.

Fury, Kynaston, and Yeoman spent the next year participating in classified missions during the war. The trio were given the assignment to assassinate Barkhorn in France. When Fury infiltrated Barkhorn's headquarters one of the officers Han Von Stehle revealed that arkhorn was out to assassinate Adolf Hitler and allow Germany to surrender to the Western Allies to end the war faster. The unit was ambushed by German troops led by Barkhorn and the SS. Fury reunited with Barkhorn who revealed that he was trying to protect Germany from being invaded by Soviet forces and continue to fight on the Eastern front. In a last stand against Barkhorn's forces, Fury killed Von Stehle, but Von Stehle still shot Fury's left eye.

Fury awakened months later to discover that the war was over and Barkhorn had commited suicide. Fury celebrated the war's end with Kynaston.

CIA recruitment

After the war's end, Fury was recruited to the CIA after he saved a battalion from a Chinese ambush during the Korean War.

First Indochina War

In 1954 Fury was sent to French Indochina to assist the French in fighting the communist Viet Minh. He met his partner George Hatherly, Shirley Defabio, the secretary to Congressman McCuskey, and McCuskey himself. While on the assignment, Fury and Defabio started to have an affair. When Fury and Hatherly were sent to a French outpost under the command of Major Lallement, he was introduced to Sergeant Steinhoff, an ex-SS soldier to whom Fury took an instant dislike due to his Nazi background. The two got into a fight and were interrupted by an ambush. They managed to hold back the ambush, but a second ambush massacred all the French troops in the outpost except Fury and Hatherly who were spared by Letrong Giap.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

At some undetermined point, S.H.I.E.L.D. was formed, with United Nations funding and United States backing. Fury was recruited for this organization as well, and participated in clandestine missions in the 1960s against the Soviet Union's organization Hydra, headed by Rudi Gagarin.[1]

Cuba

In 1961, Fury and Hatherly trained Cuban exiles to prepare for the Bay of Pigs invasion. While the invasion was going on he was given the task to assassinate Fidel Castro. However the invasion failed and Hatherly tried to shoot Castro in the field, but missed. Afterwards Fury, Hatherly and a third operative Elgen were captured and tortured. Although the three manage to escape Elgen was badly injured and Fury puts him out of his misery.

Return to Vietnam

In 1970 Fury and Hatherly return to Indochina, and were given the mission of assassinating Letrong Giap, who was running an NVA training camp in Laos. Since Hatherly declined the mission, Frank Castle was assigned to be Fury's partner. The two were spotted by a boy, but chose to let him go. As a result, an NVA platoon tracked them down. Despite fighting off numerous soldiers, Fury and Castle were eventually captured and confronted by Giap himself, who revealed that the real reason the CIA wanted him dead was because he discovered their involvement in the heroin trade, which used to fund their operations. Giap intended to expose the CIA, which would erode American public support for the Vietnam War and thus shorten it. Giap also intended to extract a confession from Frank and Castle about their assassination attempt.

The two managed to escape, and Fury was able to destroy evidence. He was confronted by Giap in the act, who was disappointed with the colonel's actions and questioned why Fury would want to prolong the war. Right then, Giap was shot through the neck by Castle, although he miraculously survived. Fury and Castle flee the compound right before it's bombed by the US Air Force. Fury later tracked down the three CIA agents responsible for the heroin smuggling and killed them, framing their deaths as a mugging.

Nicaragua

Fury and Hatherly were tasked with investigating allegations regarding the involvement of US Special Forces, who were training the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua, in the drug trade. There they found that while the training facility was technically under the command of Captain James Costanzo, Barracuda seemed to control it in practice, despite only being a low-ranking officer. Captain Costanzo soon died having apparently committed suicide, but not before conveniently incriminating solely himself in the cocaine smuggling operation. Both Fury and Hatherly were suspicious of this, so Fury sent his colleague to investigate the obvious lead while he secretly hitched a ride on one of the Special Forces helicopters and ordered them to fly to where they dropped off Barracuda. There he spied on Barracuda and his squad and learned that they're involved in the drug trade as well, and about a village they attacked recently. Fury traveled to this village, only to discover that every man, woman, and child in it had been horrifically massacred, including at least one pregnant woman whose unborn child was ripped out of her womb.

Fury was then confronted by Barracuda and his men, who had captured Hatherly in the meantime. Barracuda nonchalantly admitted to murdering Costanzo and framing him, but spared Fury and Hatherly. Fury presented his findings in Washington, D.C. to Senator McCuskey, only to be rebuffed when he requested permission to kill Barracuda and his men. McCuskey explained that the squad was already in the wind, and should anything fatal happen to them, damning evidence about CIA involvement in the operation would be released. Five years later, Fury tracked down Barracuda and battered him with a baseball bat as punishment for the war crimes he committed.

Post-Cold War

Although the Cold War ended and Hydra was no longer a threat, S.H.I.E.L.D. was still operational[1], and over time Fury was given promotions and new titles mainly to keep him out of the loop of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s operations.[1]. In 1999, after attending George Hatherly's funeral and visiting the Vietnam War Memorial, he was spotted by Letrong Giap, who was in Washington D.C. for the Smithsonian's Conference on Cold War Historical Studies. Giap told Fury that while Vietnam won the war, he realized the full folly of the war as his comrades became corrupt and rule people with fear, oppression, and violence. Giap wished Fury well and the two men shook hands.[2]

In stark contrast to his mainstream 616 counterpart, this incarnation of Fury is extremely cynical and jaded. He often has doubts as to the nature of his work in clandestine military operations, feeling that much of his actions don't make the world a better place.[3]

It was also strongly implied that he is an alcoholic, perhaps using liquor as a coping mechanism to deal with the many horrible war crimes he has witnessed in his many years as an intelligence operative. He also seems to have no interest in forming lasting romantic relationships as he usually hires prostitutes for sex instead of seeking out more meaningful intimacy.[1][4]

He also views the military command structure as cowardly and inefficient, openly mocking/insulting a cabal of U.S. Army and Air Force generals. This enmity is not exclusive to verbal exchanges, however, as when he catches wind of a terror plot backed by said generals, he brutally beats the general trying to justify their actions involving killing civilians down with a belt. This could be construed as evidence of a faint moral code that Fury still possesses. This shows that there are still things that Fury will not do. In fact, Frank Castle suspected that Fury got in with the Generals for the purpose of saving a small child.[5]

He also has a begrudging respect for Frank Castle, seeing him as the best soldier he ever served alongside. However, Fury was not above using Castle to take part in clandestine operations that he himself cannot participate in.[4][6]

Abilities

Longevity: Due to him having a bullet stuck in his brain, he seems to be unable to die of old age, having been active since World War II to the present day.[7]

Strength level

Fury has spent decades as a soldier/intelligence operative. As such, he is an extremely skilled combatant, displaying lethal efficiency with all manners of firearms and hand to hand combat.

Weaknesses

For all of his combat prowess, Fury is susceptible to life-threatening injuries such as bullet and shrapnel wounds.

Equipment

Military equipment as appropriate

Transportation

Many vehicles

Weapons

Many Weapons

  • Although Fury says he's been promoted by SHIELD so high that he no longer knows how it operates[1] he still remained a Colonel for decades.[7][8][9]
  • The 2001 Fury miniseries and Punisher: Mother Russia show that Fury worked for SHIELD from at least the 60's to the early 00's, but Fury: My War Gone By avoids referencing any of his SHIELD involvement.
  • Writer-editor Stan Lee, a co-creator of Nick Fury, was critical of the extreme violence and gore of the MAX series: "I don't know why they're doing that. I don't think that I would do those kinds of stories."[10]

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