One of the most recognizable figures from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nick Fury for some time was the glue holding that gigantic franchise together. Played on screen by Samuel L. Jackson, Nick Fury is the quintessential Marvel spy, the man willing to do whatever it takes to enact his vision of peace and justice on the world.
The problem is, sometimes that vision doesn't look much like real peace and justice, and the methods Fury uses to obtain it are far from what we expect from our superhero allies.
This list counts down the ways in which Nick Fury doesn't make sense, aspects of his history or personality that are at odds with the world he inhabits or his character's own image. Some of these are simple plot holes, while others are more fundamental incongruities that hinder Fury from becoming a fully realized, consistent characters.
Nick Fury has been around for some time, starting life on the comics pages of a WWII series beginning in the 1960s. As he graduated to bigger and better things (namely, running S.H.I.E.L.D.). He is a character that has had robot clones, alternate universe versions, and a shady history, giving him plenty of space for stuff that just doesn't hold up under any kind of logic.
Nick Fury may be recognizable now as Samuel L. Jackson, but that wasn't always the case. Even Marvel fans may be surprised by some of the things he's gotten up to.
This is 20 Things That Make No Sense About Nick Fury.
Project Insight
If a character in any normal movie said their plan was to create ships that constantly orbited the globe and had guns that could target individual people and destroy thousands of lives in literal seconds, you would think that character was a supervillain. But in Captain America: Winter Soldier, it's supposed good guy Nick Fury who proposes that exact plan.
Project Insight was always a scary idea (something Cap himself brings up when he finds out), and for one of the protagonists of the film to go along with it was really strange.
Fury created a tool that would allow mass destruction to occur within seconds.
Why was he surprised that it was then stolen by Hydra, who attempted to use it for just that? A better question: why on earth did he create it in the first place?
He never suspected his agency was infiltrated by Hydra
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is generally regarded as one of the best MCU films, but that doesn't mean Nick Fury comes off too great in it.
The movie revolves around authoritarian criminal network Hydra infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. and attempting to attack millions. They almost succeed, meaning the man in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. really had no idea his agency was compromised-- and that man happens to be Nick Fury.
Agents and powerful figures reveal themselves to be secret Hydra plants; some of them people Fury talked to on a daily basis. For a guy who values vigilance and surveillance to the point of paranoia, it's a big stretch to think Nick Fury had no idea Hydra was taking over S.H.I.E.L.D.
Project T.A.H.I.T.I.
One of the most pivotal twists in the entire MCU came when Agent Phil Coulson passed away. Stabbed with Loki's scepter, he faded from consciousness in Nick Fury's arms in one of the most powerful moments in Phase One.
Then, the upcoming Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed a leading man, and they couldn't come up with anyone better than Coulson.
That meant the MCU needed a resurrection, so the writers came up with Project T.A.H.I.T.I.
Tahiti appeared to be where Coulson had vacationed, but it was revealed to be Fury's pet project that harvested blood from a Kree specimen to affect subjects' minds.
It was never sufficiently explained how it worked or why Fury was so adamant it continue, despite Coulson initially urging him to abort it -- mostly because it was a transparent attempt to retcon Coulson's end.
The “alternate” Fury is the famous one
Fans who have only seen the movies may not know this, but originally Nick Fury didn't look much like Samuel L. Jackson. The original Nick Fury looked closer to a grizzled George Clooney. It was actually an alternate Fury who looked like the incarnation we know and love today.
The Marvel Ultimate universe was allowed to take inspiration from wherever to populate its world, and for this character, the artists took it straight from Samuel L. Jackson's face.
This version of Fury was actually based on the actor, and the MCU Fury was in turn based on the Ultimate incarnation. Nowadays, when most people think of Nick Fury, they think of Jackson's face. They may not even know the original exists.
He keeps trusting bad guys
Being a fictional spy is a tough job, as the occasional betrayal is all but inevitable. Even so, the way Fury gets exploited by the enemy has become almost comical.
The most famous of these betrayals came from Alexander Pierce, Fury's old friend who turned out to be a Hydra double agent.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Just in the MCU, there's also Gideon Malick, another head of Hydra on the World Security Council (the group that gives Fury his orders). Even the "innocent" members of the council voted to nuke New York City in Marvel's Avengers.
Fury has also been betrayed countless times in the comics, leading us to wonder: is this guy really as good a judge of character as he claims to be?
His own weapons and projects continually backfire on him
For a guy who seemed so confident and competent in his first few appearances in the MCU, Fury sure does approve the creation of a lot of projects and weapons that end up getting used against him.
Even if you disregard the projects that appear on this list (Projects Insight and T.A.H.I.T.I., not to mention the Life Model Decoys), his history is full of him creating weapons that would be used against him.
Twists and turns are expected in these kinds of narratives, but after a while you'd think Fury would maybe stop developing experimental, dangerous weapons and initiatives. The only one that seems to have worked is the Avengers Initiative, and even that has had more than its share of problems.
Nick Fury Jr.
The Marvel comics universe has recently been taking a lot of its cues from the Marvel Cinematic Universe due to the popularity of the films. This means that in the prime Marvel continuity, several characters have changed or reverted to be more like their on screen counterparts, and this has included Nick Fury-- or more accurately, Nick Fury's son.
Marcus Johnson is Nick Fury's son in the prime Marvel continuity, hand-picked to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and take over for his father.
Funnily enough, his birth name is Nick Fury, Jr., and he happens to look a lot like Samuel L. Jackson and the MCU Fury. This means that this comics character is based on the MCU character, which is based on the Ultimates character, which is based on Jackson.
His close relationship with the Koenigs
We're all for Patton Oswalt appearing as a comic guest character (or characters) on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but that doesn't mean his connection to Nick Fury made any kind of sense.
For those who don't know, the Koenigs are a family comprised of an unknown number of brothers (all played by Oswalt) and one sister (played by Artemis Pebdani). Most of them work for S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Koenigs are mostly there for comic relief, and that's fine, but their connection to Fury is illogical. Basically, Fury seems to trust them above almost every other agent in S.H.I.E.L.D.-- even Coulson and his team, at times.
The Koenigs are typically stationed at secret S.H.I.E.L.D. bases -- places only Fury knew about, meaning that he trusted them a lot.
The secret helicarrier
Avengers: Age of Ultron was not the best reviewed MCU movie, as it had a somewhat meandering plot and twists that didn't make a ton of sense. The biggest of these came when Nick Fury showed up to Sokovia on an old S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier to fly the civilians to safety.
The problem? The newest S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers (not to mention S.H.I.E.L.D. itself) were destroyed in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
To cover for this seeming plot hole, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had to pick up the slack.
The episode of the show that haphazardly explained where Fury got the ship (an operation known as Theta Protocol) aired a few days after Age of Ultron released. Ir seemed to have been shoved in there to appease fans looking for some kind of reasoning behind the deus ex machina.
Where has he been?
Nick Fury was one of the most central characters to the first two phases of the MCU, a common thread that linked together all the blockbuster movies. It was a bit of a head-scratcher for fans when he seemed to simply disappear after Avengers: Age of Ultron.
He eventually returned only to literally disappear in Avengers: Infinity War, but there was a conspicuous gap in his timeline before that.
Fury, after appearing in every Phase One movie and multiple in Phase Two, vanished entirely from Phase Three. Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok-- all movies in which fans might have expected to see at least a cameo from Fury-- all went without him.
Fans simply have no idea what he's been doing for the past several films.
The Hasselhoff connection
There are a lot of Marvel characters who had awkward screen debuts, but there may be none stranger than this. David Hasselhoff may not be the first guy you'd think to play an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but it turns out he did just that. In a 1998 TV movie (Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Hasselhoff donned the signature eyepatch.
The film mostly disappeared without a trace with mediocre reviews, but it's noteworthy for bringing some (but certainly not all) of Fury's comics story to the screen, including characters like Alexander Pierce, Baron von Strucker, and Dum-Dum Dugan.
Hasselhoff was a surprisingly good visual match for the original version of Fury.
It's just weird to think of him in the role Samuel L. Jackson now owns.
His stolen war buddies
Nick Fury is nowadays associated almost exclusively with S.H.I.E.L.D., the government intelligence agency that he has run in most of his incarnations.
Originally, Fury was the leader of a different group: the Howling Commandos. As fans know, however, in the MCU the leader of the Commandos is none other than Steve Rogers, Captain America.
Fury seems to have a particular issue with his original character not being the mainstream version everyone knows. This apparently extends to his friends, as fans have mostly forgotten that Fury was a Howling Commando at all.
Fury's allegiance to S.H.I.E.L.D. just took over his continuity, to the point that his origin didn't really make sense for his story.
He doesn’t age
This isn't some figurative, sarcastic entry about how Nick Fury doesn't seem to be feeling his age. It's actually literal; to explain Fury's longevity in the comics (as he'd participated in military operations for decade after decade), the writers decided to simply make the character nearly immortal.
Fury was injected with the Infinity Formula, a special serum that basically just halted the aging process.
In later issues, Fury ran out of the serum and finally began to age, but for decades of comics Nick Fury was seemingly eternal, fighting on without any kind of wear or tear. It's unclear whether the MCU's Fury got a similar treatment, though it seems unlikely.
He didn't get involved in Civil War
Captain America: Civil War was a huge event in the MCU. It changed the dynamic of the universe on a level equal with the Avengers films. It had a metric ton of superheroes involved, yet one figure was noticeably absent: Nick Fury.
Fury even appeared in Age of Ultron after S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed, so why didn't he try to mediate his former team's argument in Civil War?
This question is never really answered, and it is further complicated by the fact that in the comics version of the event, Fury actually sided with Captain America (the Anti-Registration faction). This is somewhat awkward, given that Fury has been a government agent for decades, and the government supported Tony Stark's Registration movement.
He fought in every major war for nearly a century
Nick Fury was Marvel's war hero; a guy who got thrown into seemingly every major conflict. Helped along by the fact that he didn't age normally, he kept fighting in war after war until it honestly got a little weird.
Starting with World War II, Fury was involved in basically every major conflict for decades and decades.
Since WWII, Fury has canonically fought in the Spain's Civil War, as well as the wars in Vietnam and Korea, and the Cold War, not to mention the smaller skirmishes and clandestine conflicts he oversaw in his time as a spy.
This would make him just about the longest-tenured and most-decorated soldier in history, but the comics act like fighting in endless war is normal and expected for him.
He is The Unseen
If you thought Nick Fury was a confusing character when he was an unaging spy, just wait till you see him as an immortal observer with the powers of a deity. Ever since the original Fury was essentially replaced with the Samuel L. Jackson-inspired Nick Fury Jr, he has had an eventful time.
After seemingly passing on, Fury returned as The Unseen, a kind of Watcher similar to the better known Uatu. That's right, Fury is now an immortal Watcher, who sees everything that occurs in the universe and also appears to live on the moon.
If this makes sense to you, chances are you're more desensitized to the ludicrous goings-on of comics. For the rest of us, this just seems silly.
His unsavory methods
Nick Fury, whether his original comics incarnation or the on-screen Samuel L. Jackson version, has always been marked by his willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. While that has gotten him in trouble more than a few times, as ruthlessness generally isn't the marker of a great person, nothing was quite as disturbing as the comics' reveal of his "secret history."
In the Original Sin series (in which he terminates Uatu and becomes the Unseen), Nick Fury revealed that he has used mass destruction, torment, and crulety to hinder and destabilize any and all forces he deems a threat, both earthly and otherwise.
The heroes found piles of lifeless husks that were apparently all created by Fury.
Those are not exactly the admirable actions of a hero.
Life Model Decoys
What do you do with a character with a tricky backstory and fluid morals who relies on deception? Why, make him even more confusing by adding eerily accurate robot clones to the mix.
Nick Fury has a long history with Life Model Decoys, a kind of human duplicate android created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Originally made by S.H.I.E.L.D. to protect Fury, later storylines saw Fury watch his own agency get overtaken by the LMDs. The Decoys actually replaced several agents, both from S.H.I.E.L.D. and from Hydra. Fury didn't realize this until too late, and had to go on the run.
That's how you know a spy is doing a great job: when his own robots are so good they trick even him.
George Clooney was Marvel's first pick
It may seem unthinkable now, but Samuel L. Jackson was not Marvel's first choice to play Nick Fury. Originally, the studio wanted to hew closer to the prime continuity version of the character, and that meant casting an actor like George Clooney.
Clooney eventually passed on the role, however, because he read some of the source material.
In particular, he came across an extremely gory scene that involved Fury choking an enemy soldier with the soldier's own intestines. Naturally, after reading that, Clooney thought the character wouldn't be great for his image in Hollywood.
Maybe it's disappointing that Clooney didn't take the role, but we doubt he would have filled it out as well as Jackson.
His relationship with Spider-Man
Nick Fury is the head of a secret intelligence agency, and that means he doesn't treat people well-- even people he's supposedly mentoring. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Ultimate universe, specifically Nick Fury's relationship with Spider-Man.
In that comics universe, Fury led the Ultimates (an alternate version of the Avengers), and essentially considered Peter Parker S.H.I.E.L.D.'s property because of that.
Not only does Fury basically claim he owns Parker, but he also has The Tinkerer create the Spider-Slayers, robots made to put down Spider-Man. Fury eventually has a change of heart, but this dynamic was uncomfortable, as Fury's callous approach to the situation just felt wrong.
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What else doesn't make sense about Nick Fury? Let us know in the comments!