In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we learn that
Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD from its inception.
In Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, the team has spent much of the first season chasing the organization Centipede. In S01E17, Turn, Turn, Turn, we learn that the Clairvoyant who leads Centipede
knew of the Hydra infiltration, and was probably a Hydra member.
Does this mean that the entire Centipede organization is a part of
Hydra,
or are they a separate organization?
Producer Jeff Bell has confirmed that Centipede and The Clairvoyant were effectively pseudonyms for HYDRA.
From this interview:
JEFF BELL: We’ve known what Captain America: The Winter Solider was all about since we came together a year ago. And so we knew that we were doing a show called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that in the movie, S.H.I.E.L.D. gets blown up. And it’s full of the “H word” [Hydra.] And so we’ve been working with the studio from the get-go towards this moment. Our challenge was that we couldn’t say the “H word” until after Captain America 2…so we had to have an ongoing threat that we’ve called Centipede, that we’ve called The Clairvoyant, that we’ve called other things, because we could not say the word Hydra. What wasn’t a challenge was coming up with twists and turns, and making you think it was this person, because we work very hard to hopefully hide the ball with who it is.
HYDRA. Arim Zola stole information from SHIELD and stored it on a remote server ship and likely helped to create the Centipede technology.
Centipede has no analog in the canon Marvel comic universe. They are a tech development agency known only to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Centipede Device is an item created by an unnamed agency, to enhance the physical attributes of an individual to a super-human level.
While the Centipede serum may give a person superhuman abilities, it also causes them to slowly lose their minds and eventually burst in anger due to its use of a volatile and unstable substance known as Extremis.
Other components include a variation the of the Super Soldier Serum, technology from the Chitauri for injection, and Gamma Radiation.
Given that the source of all of these technologies comes from interaction with alien life or advanced technologies in the possession of SHIELD, the creator must have access to intelligence from SHIELD databases.
SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER
Their relationship to HYDRA is implied in the Captain America: The Winter Solder storyline where Hydra has infiltrated SHIELD.
