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The Avengers team member, James Buchanan Barnes (who prefers to be referred to as Bucky), hasn’t had the easiest of lives. He joined the Army when he was in his mid-twenties and fought in World War II. He was held prisoner after being captured by the Nazis and was experimented on. He was luckily rescued by his best friend, Steve Rogers (then already donning the alias “Captain America”, after successfully receiving the Super Soldier Serum), and fought alongside him until he fell off a train and was recaptured by Hydra.
During the next decades, he was kept a prisoner of the Soviet branch of Hydra and subjected to further experimentation. After training him, wiping his memory, and brainwashing him extensively, he was eventually turned into the Winter Soldier, an expert assassin and secret operative working for Hydra under the Soviets and later on under the American branch of Hydra hidden deep inside S.H.I.E.L.D. He was intermittently put on suspended animation during long periods of time, being taken out only to carry out missions. That way, he only aged a few years after seven decades passed.
Whenever he wasn’t frozen alive, he was constantly abused and tortured to remain compliant, alongside having his brain scrambled after each mission was completed, so he wouldn’t remember anything. He was beaten into the perfect asset, the perfect tool; an emotionless killer who obeyed every command from his handlers. The Winter Soldier was used to assassinate over two dozen important people around the world in fifty years, making him one of the most prolific assassins of all time.
The Nazis gave him a variant of the Super Soldier Serum; the Soviets gave him a cybernetic metal arm, to replace the one he lost after his fall; but the Americans, although unwittingly, gave him back his best friend. During the uncovering and subsequent downfall of the Hydra-controlled S.H.I.E.L.D., Bucky was finally able to break free from the grasp of his handlers.
All thanks to one Steve Rogers and his friends, who not only managed to take down a big part of Hydra, but to jostle his memory as well. After that, he went on a well-needed and deserved rediscovering journey, looking for his lost identity and memories.
He didn’t resurface again until he was framed for the bombing of a United Nations ceremony. But at least that put him back on Captain America’s radar. Having been looking for him for the past two years, Steve did everything he could to help clean Bucky’s name as well as get him the help he needed. Which eventually he did, although after raising a lot of trouble. In the end, though, Barnes’ brainwashing programming was successfully removed, making useless the trigger words that activated the Winter Soldier Program and made him reset to his compliant assassin mode.
Yet despite all that, freedom hasn’t been a walk in the park for him. Even after being turned into an Avenger, being accepted by the team, reviving his friendship with Steve, and finding love…Bucky still struggles with a lot of internal and external turmoil.
The trauma he lived throughout most of his life left him with severe mental illnesses such as PTSD. But what suffered the most was his self-confidence and self-trust, which he could only start rebuilding little by little and with the help of those closest to him.
He has been trying his best to prove himself, to show that he isn’t a cold, mindless monster ready to kill at a moment’s notice. That, instead, he wants to make amends and help innocent people like his fellow teammates. Still, he understands that not everybody will take his new status as a supposed hero at face value and that he’ll have to work harder to win other people’s trust. That has led him to attempt to resolve certain tense situations in a particular way.
Humor in the face of a crisis isn’t a reaction unheard of, as it isn’t the use of comedy as a way to deescalate a tense situation. This is the case as well when it comes to Bucky attempting to reassure other people that he doesn’t mean to be a threat to them. And he doesn’t do it only for himself, but for the benefit of some of his fellow Avengers too. Because, sometimes, when people who don’t completely trust Barnes given his past as Winter Soldier, Steve and Blake tend to get upset about it. Even more so than the Sarge himself.
Usually, Bucky can handle whatever’s thrown his way, accepting other people’s distrust of him. Yet when he sees how much it can affect those he cares about, it distresses him greatly. So, in order to diffuse those tense situations, the Sergeant begins to reassure people of his lack of unreliability and instability. Since his new arm, the one Stark made for him, is detachable –for better access when in need of reparations or just to replace it–, the Sarge uses that little perk to his advantage.
Thus, when situations where people feel uneasy or scared around him arise, Bucky slowly approaches the person in question while removing his metal arm. That way, he hopes to make the person more comfortable and feel less threatened.
After all, and despite being the recipient of a variant formula of the Super Soldier Serum, what people feel concerned the most when encountering him is the cybernetic metal prosthetic limb he has. And he’s not only aware of the effect it has on others but on himself as well, since he still has trouble accepting it.
Because of that, and as a way to disperse whatever remaining tension there can be after he removes his arm, he makes a bad lighthearted joke about it. Just as an attempt to ease the mood around him. While holding his own metal arm with his flesh hand, he says “It’s okay, I’m unarmed,” making emphasis on the last word. And although at first, the pun doesn’t register as expected, he still can’t help the laughter that begins to overtake him every time he pulls that off.
The one-hundred-year-old man ends up laughing by himself for up to five minutes at times, which begins as gentle chuckling and ends with him doubled over his knees while hollering in laughter. He can’t help it no matter how crazy and unhinged he can appear to others (which can be counterproductive). But the best part usually is how it adds to the overall scene the fact that he uses the detached metal limb to hold onto something or someone nearby to keep himself steady and standing.
Last time it happened, Sam was the unlucky one to stand next to Bucky when the Sergeant took his arm off, leaving him to support the other. “Seriously, man? Come on,” muttered Wilson in annoyance while looking at the cackling man next to him.
That time, at least, the little boy that felt a bit intimidated by Barnes’ presence, started laughing alongside the former Winter Soldier. Upon seeing her son’s reaction, the boy’s mom felt more relieved, yet remained wary of the small group of superheroes she and the boy had run into on the streets.
Steve, who was also present, was already accustomed to Buck’s strange attempts at defusing such tense situations, so all he could do was grimace in sympathy at the woman’s confused reaction.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
The Captain usually has to apologize for his friend’s odd behavior, which makes him flustered and self-conscious on behalf of the laughing man.
Still, Rogers’ just glad that the other can somewhat cope not only with his past and what that turned his present into but with people’s view of him as well.
On the other hand, Blake, Bucky’s girlfriend, didn’t understand the situation the first time that she witnessed it, which happened to be the last time that Barnes’ made the pun. While still lacking the knowledge and understanding of many social cues, the young lady couldn’t help but feel worried for her partner, unable to comprehend the joke and the man’s sudden burst of laughter.
“Are you okay?” She asked with concern lacing her words, afraid that something bad could have happened that made the man snap like that.
Only when Steve quietly explained the situation to her did she understand that everything was okay.
However ridiculous and slightly disturbing, the trick always works in the end and the concerned people feel more at ease around him after that. They might even begin to joke around him about it, which Bucky sees as a sign of trust and not just mockery. And all in all, it also serves to soothe Steve’s and Blake’s nerves about the matter. So, no matter how silly, his tactic proves to be effective in making everyone feel a bit happier.