He is believed to have personally led uprisings in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other trouble spots, while being held responsible for kidnapping scientists, businessmen, and military leaders, forcing them to reveal their top level secrets.

To celebrate, Hasbro created three boxed sets of brand new figures, featuring modern sculpt and updated and increased articulation (including the replacement of G.I.

His only known relative, an older brother named Dan, enlisted in the military during the Vietnam War, and volunteered for repeated tours to spare his younger sibling from conscription.

From Springfield, Cobra's agents spread throughout the world, overturning or subverting unstable governments to establish criminal networks and profitable arms trades.

He created a "High Command" of his most skilled lieutenants, which included Zartan, Baroness Anastasia DeCobray, Scottish arms dealer James McCullen Destro, and Australian mercenary Major Sebastian Bludd.

[28] This led to frequent power-struggles within the organization, and ultimately the Baroness and Major Bludd enacted a plot to assassinate the Commander, and seize control of Cobra.

Cobra Commander was depicted as an average, physically fit Caucasian with a pony tail, large round green-spectacle sunglasses, and a long slender mustache.

After an encounter with the Blind Master and Storm Shadow's cousin Jinx, Billy recovered his memory and immediately rejected his father, whereupon the Commander renounced the organization he had founded, declaring that his ambitions had cost him the only things that truly mattered.

The hospital had been burned down by a patient, but the judge ruled that it was insurance fraud; Dan lost everything and turned to drinking, which led to the crash that took his life and the lives of Snake Eyes' family.

[50] Meanwhile, Cobra Commander, who has been rebuilding his forces since the end of the previous series, infiltrates the U.S. government by disguising himself as White House Chief of Staff Garrett Freelowe.

As a warning, Cobra Commander detonates a nuclear bomb in The Empty Quarter, and then broadcasts an ultimatum on television for world leaders to accede to his authority, or he will start choosing populated targets.

[59] The competition becomes a contest of who can kill the most Joes: competing Cobra agents include Baroness, Dr. Vargas, Major Bludd, Oda Satori, Tomax, Krake, and Raja Khallikhan.

[65] Writers Chuck Dixon and Mike Costa have said that while the previous Commander allowed his subordinates to "pursue their own goals so long as they kick back to him" and was content to "profit invisibly", Krake "wants to be known and wants to be powerful, and wants to rule the world in the most supervillainy sense... With his leadership, Cobra shifts from a sneaky, shadowy cabal to an actual military presence.

[67] In the UK Battle Action Force comic, Cobra Commander was originally known as Baron Ironblood, leader of the Red Shadows, a ruthless terrorist organization.

Going into hiding, Ironblood relocated to Southeast Asia, where he had plastic surgery on his face, constructed a new mask and costumed identity (that of Cobra Commander), and underwent extensive treatment to give him immunity towards all forms of snake venom (a process known as mithridatism).

[71] He had a knack for concocting creative schemes for world domination – including cloned dinosaurs, giant amoebas, miniaturized troops stowed away inside Christmas presents, and using a super-laser to gleefully carve a picture of his face on the moon – plans which his immediate subordinates, particularly Destro, often blasted as ridiculous.

Cobra Commander spends much of Season 2 trying to reclaim his former glory from under Serpentor's domineering shadow, assembling his own secret society called The Coil to that end.

[34][72] This origin stands in contrast to the episode "Twenty Questions", where the Commander told an interviewing journalist that he was responsible for spearheading a mutiny at his military academy in his youth.

In light of Cobra's constant failures, Golobulus decides to put the Commander on trial, via a kangaroo court,[73] and punishes him by forcing his further exposure to the spores; their effect begins to devolve him into a snake.

[81] Set in the then-future year 2006, a trench-coated underground weapons dealer going by the name "Old Snake" is approached by crime lord Victor Drath, who wishes to purchase synthoid technology (as seen in a few episodes of the G.I.

Old Snake transfers the minds of Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, Arcee and Springer into synthoid bodies, leaving their robotic shells for Drath's use in criminal activities.

Although it is never explicitly stated that "Old Snake" is actually an aged Cobra Commander, his raspy voice is again provided by Chris Latta, he wears the character's distinctive silver mask, and has visible traces of his blue uniform underneath his trench coat.

In the miniseries, Cobra Commander is portrayed in a darker incarnation than the one in Sigma 6, revealing the attributes of cowardice and hysterics to have been only a mask for weeding out traitors and such among his organization, as well as to motivate his followers to think for themselves.

He is portrayed as utterly ruthless, casually destroying all of Moscow just to demonstrate the beam's power to the United Nations and killing anyone in his organization who shows incompetence or threatens his command, such as Sebastian Bludd.

Over the course of the story, Cobra Commander becomes more unhinged as his scheme unravels and his underlings are killed/captured, choosing to strike cities randomly instead of waiting for the United Nations to respond to his demands.

Ordering his troops to defend the Springfield base where he has hidden himself, Cobra Commander slaughters his control team for the particle superweapon and takes shelter in a bunker as Duke arrives to disable the weapon, now aimed at the U.S. capital.

While he is more ruthless and less incompetent than his previous versions, Cobra Commander still has an affinity for big, expensive schemes such as building a transcontinental, maglev train network to move weapons and resources across the country, making armies of Bio-Viper soldiers, and later the M.A.S.S.

Upon seeing concept art of the role he was being offered, Gordon-Levitt signed on because; "I saw the designs and drawings of the way they interpreted my character for this movie – the costume, the whole getup – and I was like, 'Oh, wow.

Although he is arrested and placed in a high security prison aboard the USS Flagg, Cobra Commander's master plan has only begun, with Zartan disguised as the President of the United States.

In the movie, Cobra Commander has been transferred from the FLAGG to another high-security prison in Germany alongside Destro, where he is being force-fed a paralyzing drug whilst floating in a water chamber.