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During Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it's clear that Captain America and the Winter Soldier are able to fight one another on a pretty even level, with Cap's shield frequently negating the advantage Bucky's metallic arm provides.

As I understood it, the super-soldier serum that granted Steve Rogers his powers was one-of-a-kind; major effort went to rediscovering (and failing to find) it.

Did Bucky Barnes receive some off-brand super-soldier serum? Or was the original formula replicated during Cap's time in the ice? How is Bucky able to fight on Cap's level?

Mithical
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WannabeCoder
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    In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it has been clearly stated on their wiki that Barnes has been experimented on and has the same type of physical abilities as Captain America. – Thaddeus Howze May 10 '16 at 01:58
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    @ThaddeusHowze Are you really closing this older, answered question as a duplicate of a newer question that you answered? They aren't even the same question; you've just chosen to use some of the same information in your answer. – Dr R Dizzle May 10 '16 at 11:55

4 Answers4

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Bucky Barnes does not have superhuman abilities.

But neither does Steve Rogers. Instead, Steve is simply at peak physical fitness for a human being (to the point where he may appear to be superhuman). It would seem that after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky also shares these traits.

In Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers (Captain America) rescues Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier) from Hydra captivity, finding him having recently been experimented on by Dr Arnim Zola.

It is theorised that Dr Arnim Zola was working on his own version of Dr Abraham Erskine's Super Soldier Serum, and it is this that was being tested on Bucky when Steve found him.

The fact that;

Bucky survives his fall into the ice in Captain America: The First Avenger before being brainwashed by Hydra and turned into The Winter Soldier

Implies that Bucky did receive some kind of Super Solider serum from Dr Arnim Zola, explaining how he can go toe-to-toe with Captain America.

This theory is further solidified in Captain America: Civil War, when we learn that;

there are 5 other "Winter Soldiers" that worked for Hydra, each of whom had received a version of the Super Soldier Serum that was created by Howard Stark prior to his death.

Dr R Dizzle
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    Also, given the metal arm, it is entirely possible that it's the cybernetic enhancements. – FuzzyBoots Aug 23 '15 at 23:45
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    Exactly. People so very often think Cap actually has superpowers, instead of being "peak" "regular" human – Petersaber Aug 24 '15 at 06:14
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    But what does "peak" really mean here? No human ever has had the capabilities of Cap and, as far as I'm aware, we don't have any reason to believe that one could. That makes him "superhuman" by any reasonable definition of the term. – Ed Swangren Aug 27 '15 at 08:38
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    @EdS. It's the explanation that we are given. If a human was a strong and as fast and as physically capable as humanly possible, with the most stamina a human can have, they would be equal to Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers is the best a human can get. – Dr R Dizzle Aug 27 '15 at 08:39
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    I suppose it's the "If a human was a strong and as fast and as physically capable as humanly possible, with the most stamina a human can have" bit I don't understand. The most X a human can have is an X that has been measured. It makes no sense to believe that we are actually capable of performing at e.g. 10x what has ever been recorded if only we could... magic? How would any unaltered human accomplish such a feat? We can't, so... superhuman. – Ed Swangren Aug 27 '15 at 08:45
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    @EdS. So every new Olympic record is Super Human? People use to think running a mile in under 4 minutes was impossible. – LCIII May 09 '16 at 15:31
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    @LCIII: No, and that's obviously not what I said. We're talking about order of magnitude+ increases in ability, not incremental improvement. C'mon. – Ed Swangren May 09 '16 at 21:13
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    @EdS. ...In the individual fields that each Olympic medalist trains in, they are orders of magnitude better than the vast majority of humans – Izkata Jun 23 '16 at 23:47
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    @Izkata: The comparison was never to an ordinary couch potato; it was Cap compared to the peak of human performance. We do keep getting better at the activities we use to measure ourselves, but like I said, incrementally. No natural person is ever going to e.g. bench press 10x the current world record of 1,102lbs ("the strength of ten men" is the least generous description of Cap's strength in the comics iirc). I understand that Cap's abilities have (recently) often been played down in the comics as being 'peak human', I'm saying it's a dumb and incorrect description. – Ed Swangren Jun 24 '16 at 05:07
  • @Izkata: You're going to have to come up with a better source to backup the claim that a human could attain anywhere near the strength level of Cap. Some random internet article which strings together four unrelated 'facts' does not a conclusion make. – Ed Swangren Jun 24 '16 at 18:30
  • @EdS. I chose that link because it then links to a bunch of findings from more reputable sites (and I did say that their conclusion is bullshit, given what they link to). – Izkata Jun 24 '16 at 18:36
  • @Izkata: Maybe I misunderstood, but the conclusion is what we care about, right? You can't just point to a few things like lack of CNS involvement and arrive at the conclusion that we can be orders of magnitude stronger. What conditions would it take to achieve that? Is it even possible? This is all just conjecture; we have no reason to believe that reaching Cap's strength level is an achievable goal. – Ed Swangren Jun 24 '16 at 19:02
  • Regardless of the debate over "superhuman", this answer could be improved by mentioning that the comics version of Bucky Barnes was injected with a Russian version of the Super-Soldier serum. In fact, the villain Omega Red was enhanced using a prototype of that same serum. Barnes got the more-or-less "finished product". – Omegacron Mar 30 '17 at 01:44
  • @Omegacron Unfortunately, this question is about the films, not the comics. As such, that information is entirely irrelevant to the answer given here. – Dr R Dizzle Mar 30 '17 at 08:00
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    MCU Cap and Bucky are absolutely "SuperHuman" by any definition of the word. It's not feasible that any human under peak conditions could do the things they have done in the movies. This isn't Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile when running experts said it wasn't possible. Usain Bolt at his absolute fastest is about 28mph for a few seconds. Cap was outrunning cars in the 1940's on city streets, for an extended period of time, and not winded afterwards. Even if we low ball that at 25mph its SuperHuman. And the tunnel scene in Civil War is even more proof of that. – Steve Eggering Apr 16 '18 at 21:39
  • @EdS. it's true. At the same time, what humans CAN do at physical peak is often underestimated. This video comes to mind (a soldier with casual physical strength more impressive than anything Rogers shows in a workout room). :) – Wildcard Apr 29 '20 at 11:12
  • Batman is a peak human. Captain America is powered like the Hulk but without the transformation. – lucasbachmann Apr 03 '21 at 18:47
  • From what I gather a peak human in comics/MCU is considered super human in the actual world e.g. Captain America is considered peak human in all categories in both comics/MCU but holding back a helicopter in The Winter Soldier movie is super human to us.

    On the flip side this could possibly be compared to lifting a car in a time of crisis and adrenaline in the real world. I would define peak human as the sum total of power lifters, iron man athletes, fast twitch athletes on a continuous adrenaline boost + the realization of all human potential. In reality there would be a tradeoff in stats.

     – CleoR Apr 24 '21 at 21:55
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Yes Bucky definitely has superhuman abilities. (SPOILER ALERT FOR CIVIL WAR)

  • he jumped off a bridge and landed on a car roof with little effort, a human would have their legs broken from that
  • strong enough to send grown men flying with a punch or kick (similar to cap)
  • while escaping from the police, he jumped about 5 stories and landed badly, but without any injury
  • during the same scene, he performs several 20ft-ish jumps (one was and lands on his feat easily and continues running.
  • can run fast enough to outrun cars in the tunnel scene, similar to cap and BP
  • evenly matched with cap and BP, both of whom have superhuman strength. (To all the people saying Cap is only "peak", he's actually superhuman because MCU Cap is based on the Ultimate universe cap. That's why he can do insane things like stop a helicopter from taking off.)
  • Bucky also takes quite a beating from Iron Man at the end, still walks away.

All these feats are more than just peak human. A pro boxer couldn't survive a beating from iron man, nor could Ussain Bolt outrun cars at all let alone at a sustainable pace. Also even a pro parkour athlete wouldn't be able to land the jumps Bucky does without 1) rolling and 2) sustaining several injuries.

I don't know how he got his super strength/durability, probably sometime after he gets captured by Hydra. But there's no doubt that Bucky is super human.

L'Carpetron Dookmarriot
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Now that Civil War is out, we have some more solid answers for that question:

In Civil war, we are shown that

Bucky Barnes kills Howard Stark in order to steal a case of vials from him. These vials look much like the super soldier serum.

Then, we are also shown that

There are other Winter Soldiers who have abilities very similar to those of Captain America’s.

From that, it is likely that Howard Stark worked on replicating that serum. He probably succeeded and when that serum came into Hydra’s possession, it was used to enhance Winter Soldier.

Nomenator
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    [SPOILER] Bucky didn't get the serum. The five serums went to the five new Winter Soilders. – Rogue Jedi May 18 '16 at 16:28
  • Bucky didn't get that serum, because he had already been given it during The First Avenger. – KutuluMike Mar 30 '17 at 02:09
  • @KutuluMike: presumably a different serum though, given that First Avenger occurs almost 50 years before the flashback scenes in Civil War. – Paul D. Waite Mar 30 '17 at 11:59
  • true, Bucky's serum was the variant derived by Zola, which was probably based on the version Erskine gave Red Skull before fleeing to the US. – KutuluMike Mar 30 '17 at 13:16
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Its implied that Bucky received his own serum during his first imprisonment and that he received further dosages with in addition to his arm after hydra recovered him.

LongRodVonHugenDong
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