Ever since I first heard that they had chosen "the Mandarin" to be the villain in Iron Man 3, I had been wondering if someone would throw a Wing Commander reference into the mix. Now after having seen the film I'd like to believe they did. The Mandarin character claims responsibility for a number of terrorist bombings in the film. In Wing Commander 2, a group of traitorous humans and friends of Zack Colson, known as the Mandarins, create havoc by using bombs to sabotage Terran forces...
Can it possibly be a mere coincidence that one the henchmen of Iron Man 3's villain is named J. Taggart? The name first shows up on a pair of dogtags as Tony Stark examines them in a lab and again reappears later in the film as Tony examines the man's military file.
Now, some might argue that this is merely a reference to the Firepower character from the comic books. However, while the comic book character is named Jack Taggert, which fits the J. initial, the character bio is completely disconnected from the character in the film. Also the last name of the character in the film is Taggart with an A and not Taggert with an E... Curious! It's not unusual for Marvel character bios to change significantly when they hit the big screen, but for a character with such a small part in this film, it seems strange to me that when randomly hunting for a name for the Mandarin's pawn in their Marvel catalogue, they just happened upon J. Taggert and figured it would sound better with an A. Have you seen the film? What do you think?
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