Frederick Vought

Founder of Vought American

* Former CEO of Vought American

―Stormfront telling Homelander about Frederick's master plan.[src]

Doctor **Frederick Vought** was the inventor of Compound V, the husband of Stormfront, and the founder of Vought-American, later known as Vought International. Before defecting to America in the 1940s, he was a prominent geneticist in the Nazi Party.

Despite the fact that they betrayed the Nazis, Fredrick and his wife never lost their belief in the party's ideology. As a result, the two of them eventually plotted to use Compound V to create an army of superhumans and launch a global race war.

## *The Boys* Series

### Background

Fredrick was born in Germany at some point in the early 20th century. As a young man, he earned his medical degree at the University of Munich and was known for his unprecedented talent in genetics. In 1939, Adolf Hitler personally appointed Fredrick as the chief physician of the Dachau concentration camp, giving him access to human subjects that he used to test his early prototypes of Compound V. During this time, he met a woman named Klara Risinger who would eventually become his wife and bear him a daughter, Chloe. At some point towards the end of the second World War, Frederick injected Compound V into his wife, giving her superpowers and making her his first successful patient.

In early 1944, Fredrick lost faith in Germany's ability to win the war and defected to the Allies. By this point, he had already developed a field-tested version of Compound V while his contemporary J. Robert Oppenheimer was still developing the atomic bomb. Fredrick's serum led to the creation of superheroes like Soldier Boy, who were able to slaughter Nazi soldiers by the dozen, and his wartime achievements were so essential to the Allied victory that Franklin D. Roosevelt eventually chose to pardon him.

Following the war's end, Frederick went on to found Vought-American, later known as Vought International, and became an icon in American culture, with many seeing him to be on the same level as Walt Disney and Thomas Edison.

In 1965, Frederick along with Thomas Godolkin, co-founded Godolkin University.

Later on, he wrote an autobiography that omitted many facts about his Nazi past.

### Season Two

When Homelander threatens Stan Edgar by claiming that he would move on when his contract with Vought was up, Stan asks him about what he knows about Frederick Vought. After giving a Homelander a brief summary of Frederick's life, including the Nazi history that he omitted from his autobiography, Stan explains that Vought International is not a superhero company, but a pharmaceutical one, and that their most valuable asset is not Homelander; instead, it is Fredrick's secret formula for Compound V.

When Stormfront tells Homelander about her past, she explains that she was Fredrick's wife and his first successful patient, making her the first Supe ever created. She also tells him Frederick's true intentions were never for Vought International to become a shallow business company. Instead, it was to create a race of literal supermen to fight back against other races for "grinding them down" and win the war for their culture.

## Personality

As a geneticist ahead of his time, it can be assumed that Frederick was an intellectual. However, despite his immense knowledge in human genetics, he still believed in Adolf Hitler's ideas of racial superiority. At the same time, he was not willing to die for his ideals and had no problem in defecting to the Allies when it became clear that Germany would lose the war, even though he still believed in the Nazi Party's ideology.

## Abilities

* **High Intelligence**: As the founder and CEO of Vought, Frederick Vought was a very intelligent individual. He was able to realize that Germany was losing the war and was also able to negotiate with the Americans in order to flee Nazi Germany. With his intellect, he managed to found Vought and under his leadership, the company would grow and eventually become one of the most influential companies in the world.
	+ **Genius Geneticist**: Vought was recognized by the Nazis for his talent in genetics. He was also the creator of Compound V, the serum that gives people superpowers. While J. Robert Oppenheimer was still developing the atomic bomb, Frederick had already managed to create a field-tested version of Compound V.

## Relationships

### Family

* Chloe Vought † - Daughter

Allies* The Third Reich
	+ Adolf Hitler † - Former Leader
	+ Heinrich Himmler † - Former Associate
	+ Joseph Goebbels † - Former Associate

## Trivia

* Frederick Vought is one of the two overarching antagonists (alongside Stan Edgar) in the Amazon TV series *The Boys*.
* Fredrick shares characteristics with several prominent real-world Nazis. He has the leadership and stage presence of Adolf Hitler, the "Final Solution" mentality of Reinhard Heydrich, the medical criminality of Josef Mengele, and the post-war American commercial success of Wernher von Braun.
* In the comics, Compound V was created by Jonah Vogelbaum. Frederick Vought is also based on the comics version of Vogelbaum in that they were both German scientists who defected to the United States and founded Vought.
* Fredrick is very similar to Marvel Comics' Abraham Erskine, a scientist who helped developed the super soldier serum that gave Captain America his powers. Both were brilliant scientists who worked for the Nazi Party and eventually defected to the USA, successfully developing a chemical that would create superhumans. However, while Abraham never believed in the Nazi ideology and was even in fact Jewish, Fredrick always believed in it, even after he betrayed his home country to the Allies.
* Vought's first name, appearance, and backstory as a German-born physician who immigrated to the U.S. during the early 20th century parallels the life of Fredric Wertham, a child psychologist most famous today for his activism against what he saw as as the corrupting influence of comic book violence and immorality on children, argued in published works such as 1954's *Seduction of The Innocent*. Though simply wanting industry regulation instead of outright censorship, Wertham's writing (as well as the campaigning of other figures) led to the comic book moral panic of the 1950s and the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, a self-regulated industry censorship board that controlled the content of most mainstream comics for decades until its end in 2011.

## References

1. ↑ A to Gen V: A crash course in The Boys' college-set spinoff
2. ↑ Season 2 Episode 1 *The Big Ride*
3. ↑ Season 2 Episode 6 *The Bloody Doors Off*