Bucky Barnes Who Knows What It Feels Like To Have Empty Space Where Memories Should Be.

Bucky Barnes who knows what it feels like to have empty space where memories should be.

Bucky Barnes who has had his mind wiped clean so many times his brain has practically developed an immune system against it. Who's possibly the only person whose brain has any hope of even knowing there's something missing in order to then realize he needs to start questioning reality.

Bucky Barnes who remembered Steve even after being wiped, who's determined not to let anymore of his memories go.

Bucky Barnes who maybe doesn't remember Peter but he does know he knew him, he knows there's supposed to be something there and feels this profound absence so he picks at that as obsessively as he did with his lost memories of himself, his life, of Steve and everything that made him him. Just in case there's something huge he's missing about Peter. Even though the two of them barely knew each other, they'd only met twice before, he doesn't know that yet and he's not prepared to take the chance that there isn't something deeper that's been stolen from him again.

Bucky Barnes who also knows what it is to have an earnest, dorky labrador of a man gawp at him in alarmed recognition even though he's sure he's never laid eyes on him before in his life.

Bucky Barnes who looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and whispers "I knew him...". Then deciding to head right back to that stupid cheap pizza place where the strange not-stranger worked and demand to know how the fuck they know each other and work on not to getting too annoyed when he tries (badly) to lie to Bucky through stutters and fumbling.

Post-No Way Home Peter Parker and Bucky Barnes ending up as closer than they ever were before Peter was erased, because Bucky just so happens to know a thing or two about your identity disappearing too.

MCU FACT #180:

Bucky Barnes is Gay & Jewish

(Since He's Mostly Based on Arnie Roth)

it's fucking hysterical that Bucky's cat is called Alpine of all things

Debunking the Claim that Bucky Barnes' Dog Tags "Prove He Cannot Be Jewish"

In 2021 and 2022, when discussing the fact that MCU!Bucky (henceforth referred to simply as Bucky) is based off of Arnie Roth, a gay Jewish man and Steve's childhood best friend, I received pushback from fans telling me that Bucky can't possibly be Jewish due to his dog tags; citing a behind the scenes picture posted by Sebastian Stan to his instagram story.

Transcription of the dog tags:

James B. Barnes (Legal Name) 32557038 (Serial Number*) T41 42 (Tetanus Immunization) O (Blood Type) R. Barnes (Next of Kin) 3092 Stockton RD (Address) Shelbyville IN (Location) P (Religion Marker)

*A serial number starting with a 3 indicated that the servicemember was drafted into the Army, it's important that we do not forget that Bucky didn't chose to fight.

During World War II the dog tags of American service members would have had one of the following regulation religion markers:

P for Protestant (the marker we see on Bucky's dog tags)

C for Catholic

H for Hebrew, this being the marker for 'Jewish'

NO (or left blank) for No Religion

For Jewish servicemembers fighting in Europe, being discovered to be a Jew by your captors–especially if you were captured by the Nazis–carried considerable risk and could mean the difference between life or horrific torture, experimentation and possibly even death.

Some Jewish service members, justifiably incredibly fearful of what could happen if they were found out, would either omit a religion marker altogether or, after getting their tags, would attempt to obscure the 'H' marker in some way so it could not be read by their captors.

While this saved some lives, it was not a perfect and fool-proof system, and we have no way of knowing how many times it failed.

In 1943, the year Bucky was drafted, the Army introduced a more official (and more widely adoptable, and thus widely adopted) option to protect Jews in its ranks:

Through the European Theatre of Operations United States Army, Jewish servicemembers could elect to have the 'H' marker for Hebrew on their dog tags replaced with a 'P' for Protestant.

This would offer Jewish servicemembers a more convincing layer of protection if they were ever captured by the enemy, because, unlike an obscured religion marker (or that lack of one) which could itself draw suspicion, a set of dog tags printed with a 'P' would be entirely indistinguishable from the dog tags worn by a gentile and would be less likely to draw suspicion.

Due to this option being made available to Jewish people serving in the United States Armed Forces, the 'P' marker on Bucky's dog tags not only does not definitively prove that he's really a gentile, in actuality its presence provides even further historical support in favour of him being a Jewish man.

Sources and Additional Reading:

Jewish GIs and Their Dog-Tags by Rabbi Akiva Males - Hakirah

A Star of David for Pvt. Benjamin Garadetsky - Jewish Telegraphic Agency (jta.org)

U.S. Army WW2 Dog Tags | WW2 US Medical Research Centre (med-dept.com)

Do You Know the History of the "Dog Tag" (jcveteranscouncil)

Beyond The Battle: Religion and American Troops In World War II (uky.edu)

World War II and American Jewish Identity

European Theater of Operations, United States Army - Wikipedia

Pride Month 2022, 40 Years of Arnie Roth and Michael Bech - Marvel Comics: The Queer History Behind MCU Bucky’s Backstory

J.M. DeMatteis, the creator of Arnie, confirming the character's use for MCU!Bucky

Full screenshot of Sebastian Stan's post of the dog tag

How to Decode a WWII US Army Serial Number | Amy Johnson Crow

Gay Bucky Barnes and AroAce Yelena would be perfect besties, some of y'all are just so poisoned by heteronormativity that you don't care who gets erased.

Hear me out... an AU where Tony was dusted in the Blip rather than Peter, and Peter kept on growing up. Fast forward to post-No Way Home and he meets Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, again. 10 years since they very briefly met in Germany.

Bucky of course doesn't remember him and honestly there wasn't much history there to begin with, and Peter is just so desperate to connect to anything from his old life and a relative stranger like the Winter Soldier isn't as painful as someone he once knew better and was friends with. Fast forward a few months and Peter finding himself doing some intense math figuring out that because of HYDRA freezings, Wakanda recovery freezes and the Blip, the total time Bucky's actually aged physically and mentally since he was first frozen by HYDRA to modern day is only a few years. By 2026 there's not even a 7 year gap between them anymore.

Why did Peter do this math? No reason 👀 He just really doesn't want to dwell on the moral nightmare he's made for himself.