S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Life Model Decoys are one of its most genius inventions, so it’s fitting that their original creator is one of the most famous inventors ever. LMDs have, in fact, always been a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., but not the S.H.I.E.L.D. that most readers are familiar with. Their real origin lies hundreds of years in the past. However, in the Marvel Universe, nothing is ever forgotten forever, and one fateful mission brought them into the modern age.

In 2011's Secret Warriors #26, it's revealed that the first-ever Life Model Decoy was created by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. The issue sees a younger Nick Fury sent on a mission in 1961 to secure a mysterious technology by da Vinci, which turns out to be the first-ever LMD, a copy of the inventor himself.

Fury instead steals the technology, claiming that his team never found anything. It’s this singular LMD that allows Fury and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. to mass produce the robots from then on out.

Leonardo da Vinci Has a Long, Long History with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Marvel’s da Vinci is substantially different from his real-life counterpart. Like many other historical figures who appear in the Marvel Universe, da Vinci is a member of the Ancient Order of the Shield, the secretive precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. which has protected humanity throughout history. In 2010's S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, da Vinci time travels to 1956, leaving in his place the LMD that Fury later recovers. From then on, he appears infrequently as a master manipulator behind the scenes, shaping the espionage side of the wider Marvel Universe into the form that readers are familiar with.

Life model decoys, meanwhile, are a staple of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s arsenal. These robotic duplicates are virtually indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts, and there are numerous classic S.H.I.E.L.D. tales with the shock twist that a character was actually an LMD all along. There are almost as many stories where LMDs also prove to be threats, either going rogue, being reprogrammed, or gaining some level of sentience. As Fury mentions in Secret Warriors #26, the first LMDs were highly unstable, which helps to justify this quirk, as well as explain the suicide of the LMD thought to be Fury’s brother, Jake.

Da Vinci is as Inscrutable as the Spies He Recruits

What Nick Fury does in stealing LMD technology from Leonardo da Vinci isn’t as bad as it seems at first. Da Vinci had assembled "The Great Wheel" aka the Zodiac, a council of the world’s top spies and espionage leaders, including members of both future S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA. In exchange for conducting secret missions, da Vinci promised each group technology with which to "win" their battles for global dominance. However, Fury’s"‘betrayal" is the least of the council’s problems. The Russian S.H.I.E.L.D. counterpart, Leviathan, steals an army’s worth of superhuman-creating stasis chambers, which they use to disappear their entire organization.

In essence, Fury just does what all spies do: he lies. It’s clear from da Vinci’s reaction to Fury that the inventor also knows that Fury is lying but chooses to keep quiet. Da Vinci’s actual allegiances are rather opaque. He claims to not care who wins in the battles between HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Leviathan, but he still gives Fury leniency never shown to others, and appears at Secret Warriors’ end in the successor organization to S.H.I.E.L.D. Like the best spies, Leonardo da Vinci never tips his full hand, staying mysterious even as he orbits S.H.I.E.L.D. as they use his LMD design.