10 Things You Didn't Know About Red Skull
7. He Was Italian In His First Movie Appearance
Captain America: The First Avenger was something of a misnomer. Chris Evans' first appearance as Steve Rogers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was actually the third modern Captain America film to be made, following a couple of terrible seventies films where he rode a motorcycle and one direct-to-video travesty from the nineties.
It's the latter film, starring Catcher In The Rye writer JD Salinger's son as Cap, that saw the Red Skull make his feature film debut. And he was Italian, for some reason, instead of the traditional German. This Red Skull was apparently a pal of Mussolini's instead of Hitler's which, to be fair, still makes him a pretty awful fascist monster.
In fact, the Red Skull – here, real name Tadzio de Santis – had a totally different back story. He was an Italian Nazi during the Second World War and then, naturally, became a member of the Mafia in later life. It was really stupid,. And also his head looked kind of like a smashed egg and that's not particularly scary. Especially with a Mario accent.