Sam is inspired by Isaiah, a bitter old man who doesn't believe the world will ever change for people like him and Sam. Just as Karli takes the serum to show to the world that she is better and more superior than her oppressors made her out to be, John takes it to show to the world that he is not the awful person that his commanding officers turned him into during Afghanistan. Every time someone defies and rejects his authority and good intentions, he sees it as a reminder that maybe he is truly a bad person (aka an impostor).Īs Zemo said, everybody who takes the serum is on a path of supremacy. So his impostor syndrome presents itself as a superiority complex and he projects his self-assessed, superior image of himself on others and uses Cap's shield, uniform and identity (and later the serum) as proof to show the world that he is the good man that he wants to believe himself to be. On the other hand, he wants to believe that he is actually a good person, but he feels the need to prove that to others and most of all, to himself.

On the other hand, John's impostor syndrom seems to derive from his attrocities in the battlefield during his tours in Afghanistan that earned him 3 medals of honor, which he doesn't believe he deserves because he recognises how horrible his actions were. Instead, he tries to hold on to a symbol more personal to him, his family's boat. Sam doesn't believe he is capable of upholding Cap's shield because he doesn't believe he is worthy of the values that Steve upheld or that he can handle the pressure and scrutiny that the shield comes with, especially for a black man in America. Just like many other African Americans, Sam's impostor syndrome comes from his experience as a black man in the US, experiencing the casual and systemic racial discrimination that is still rampant in the country, and it presents itself as an inferiority complex.

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