Out of all the people they tested the serum on in First Avenger, why did Bucky survive/have it work?

They couldn't have only tested in Bucky but two kids from Brooklyn survived it. And didn't have any abnormal physical transformation (red skull)

Was it just fate?

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max_vette2025-10-20 02:05

So far as I know it worked almost every time after red skull. It just worked way better on Steve Rogers.

Only the banner serum failed consistently

EfficaciousJoculator2025-10-20 03:19

And the reason it worked so well with Steve was the vita rays being the other half of the process. Also why the Banner serum was so catastrophic (gamma instead of vita) though, arguably, it would've been pretty decent if Banner had good mental health. I guess Erksine's warning was true there too.

BackgroundEngineer112025-10-20 14:08

I wonder if the serum seen in Falcon and the Winter Soldier is partially radioactive or it is just fundamentally weaker because of no vita rays.

EfficaciousJoculator2025-10-21 01:50

I would guess fundamentally weaker simply because we didn't see a physical change in the users. They were stronger, but never bigger.

Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, and President Ross all had a serum plus radiation exposure and all had enormous physical growth as a result. She-Hulk too, if you count the serum/radioactivity of Hulk's blood as a valid example and not a secondary source of powers. Abomination also counts, since he didn't grow with the serum alone. After exposure to Hulk's radioactive blood, he blew up (but that could also be attributed to his double dose of serum from the blood).

Every other user looks relatively the same, but is given enhanced strength/endurance/resistance and all that. It seems the common denominator in the superior version is radioactivity.

Bucky, the Flag Smashers, the other Winter Soldiers, John Walker...none of them really changed in appearance.

We need to see some other super soldiers being made to nail it down. What did Isaiah look like before? Or Alexei? And what did their procedures entail?

Dominant_Gene2025-10-21 16:09

Isaiah is like what? 80 years old at least? and still looks buffed AF. i think that means he got an even better treatment than Steve (who looks a frail old man when aged)

EfficaciousJoculator2025-10-22 01:54

Or maybe Isaiah was buff af before the serum and it just helped him maintain muscle mass in old age.

Also, we don't really know how old Steve was in that scene. He may have been way older than Isaiah.

Or he may have stopped training and enjoyed life long, long ago, allowing his muscles to atrophy, whereas Isaiah is still seen at the gym even in his old age.

A lot of unknowns. I'm inclined to say Isaiah's serum wasn't better, otherwise the US military would've had a lot more super soldiers by the time Cap returned.

Jagasaur2025-10-20 02:06

Maybe Hydra stole the exact recipe that Steve was given and went with that one from then on, especially after they started getting their asses kicked by him.

Didn't Red Skull take a different version before Steve took his?

clocktickmakemecrazy2025-10-20 12:51

They killed Erskine, who had developed the perfect formula that worked on Steve, and tried to steal it but then Steve catches the hydra agent and the OG formula is lost when the test tube breaks. So the one Bucky got was different. And it's possibly clear to see that his serum wasn't good enough when Bucky gets beaten in Civil War by the other WSs, who got the formula that Howard Stark had in his car's trunk

FX1142025-10-20 02:41

We don't know when they used the serum on Bucky. It probably took some time before they developed a new formula.

AmConfused3242025-10-20 15:19

They used it on Bucky before he was saved by Steve.

Ryuugan802025-10-20 02:53

My personal headcanon is that they tried it on him, it "didn't do anything" at the time and he just happened to survive it but the the fall from the train/going into shock triggered it into actually working, similar to the vita rays for Steve.

Kuandtity2025-10-20 13:45

I thought he got it after the fall

Odin0432025-10-20 14:01

Captured by Hydra, injected, freed by Steve, falls from train, loses his arm but barely survives, recaptured, brainwashed into the winter soldier.

CulturalDragonfly6312025-10-21 02:37

The serum is why Bucky survived that fall from the train.

nypinta2025-10-20 03:13

I have a sneaking suspicion that Hydra figured out Bucky's connection to Steve Rogers aka Captain America through their spies and that's why he was chosen to be experimented on by Zola. Because that guy is a nasty POS. It didn't have the same affect on him as it did Red Skull because Zola was still working on the formula or he gave him a reduce dosage. So Bucky had just enough at the time to survive the fall, and then Schmidt accidentally told him right where he could find his pet project, because he knew Bucky would survive, and he was able to get word to Russian allies to Hydra to go find him and keep his secure, but he wasn't able to continue his work on him until after he built up enough trust with SHIELD to be let out on trips abroad, and that's when he gave Bucky the arm and started giving him more of the serum to turn him into the Winter Soldier.

I also think Zola lost all of his notes on the serum to SHIELD and whatever he gave Bucky was the last of what they had already made and couldn't figure out how to replicate it, and he fed Howard just enough to keep him working on it to make the version SHIELD eventually developed (that Bucky stole from him in 1990.

Which does raise some questions about just who had given it to Isaiah Bradley. He knew it was Hydra. But was it Hydra working inside SHIELD but following Howard's orders, or following Zola's?)

shanejayell2025-10-20 04:07

Along with everyone else's comments, the serum Bucky got wasn't the same as the one Steve got.

And (apparently) based on the info we got in Civil War, a fair number of test subject went crazy from it, too

AmConfused3242025-10-20 15:19

The serum the other 5 WS got was not the same as the one Bucky got.

shanejayell2025-10-20 15:26

I didn't say it was?

spider-dog2025-10-20 21:18

It’s the water in Brooklyn that made them able to handle it.

mrbaryonyx2025-10-21 00:31

It's canon that it primarily works best when injected into a good old boy from Brooklyn

emopaint2025-10-22 13:36

It’s the water in Brooklyn that allowed for it to happen. Go up there and try bagels from the neighborhood and tell me I’m wrong.

o-055-o2025-10-24 22:30

Zolla used the tesseract to help with the experiments on Bucky, too, so there is also that.

From what I remember, at least, I will need to check my copy of the Wakandan Files to confirm as Shuri talks about it there.