All the Dune References in Wing Commander

This weekend was the big Dune premiere on HBO and in North American theaters, and it's been a hot topic on the Wing Commander Discord. Naturally, LOAF took a moment to run down all of the Dune reference and connections sprinkled throughout Wing Commander. Once you get sand in your Wing Commander, can you ever get it all out?

Someone had to do it and let’s face it, it was always going to be me. Here are some (very minor) nods to Dune in Wing Commander!

Privateer let’s you send ‘joke’ one-liner comms to bases. You can tell New Constantinople that “my name is a killing word”, a quote from the David Lynch Dune film.

Wing Commander IV has a scene where Maniac compares the sensor blackout at Peleus to “groping around like some pathetic sandworm on Isis VII!”

Wing Commander Arena’s Star*Soldier manual has a casual mention that the Rigel system has “massive sandworms and powerful dust storms.”

One of the three stars in Privateer 2’s Tri-System is named Irrulan (sic) after the Princess. Note that the guide description is incorrect, Hermes is not in the Irrulan System (I’m sure they meant Hephaestus).

One more: Frank Herbert has a star system on the Universe Map included with Prophecy… in an area of the Enigma Sector full of familiar sci-fi authors.

I’ll add more if I can think of any! Aside from the suspicious similarity between Lynch’s Duke Leto, Commander Gerald of the Tiger Claw, and Xavier Shondi....