Years later, Frank Simpson was sent into the Vietnam War as a black-ops agent. Captured by the Viet Cong, Frank was severely tortured by Logan (who was posing as a Russian intelligence liaison), shattering Frank's still unbalanced mind. While torturing him (even carving the American flag into his face that years later would become part of his superpowered personality), he implanted the phrase "No V.C.!" as a trigger word, along with the compulsion to kill gruesomely, in retaliation for the tortures suffered, anyone who uttered the words. He then allowed Frank to escape, testing his work with a village of peasants, who, seeing an American soldier, tried to soothe his anger and convince him to spare them, shouting the "No V.C.!" phrase, meaning that they were not Viet Cong. Frank, in response to the trigger word, burnt the village to the ground, killing every inhabitant. The experiment being a success, Logan was installed as his handler. Due to his trauma, Nuke often hallucinates that the enemies he is fighting are the Viet Cong.