As a comics fan, watching Falcon and the Winter Soldier has been an absolute joy. It is chock-full of comics references from the obvious to the obscure. I wanted to put together a few of them in case anyone was interested – I may add more later, but for now:
Karli Morgenthau: Originally Karl Morgenthau, aka Flag-Smasher, first seen in Captain America #312. Like Karli, he wants a world without borders, though he didn’t have the Blip to make his ideas relevant.
Isaiah Bradley: The biggest character introduction this series saw, Isaiah was the victim of experimentation the US military performed on a squadron of Black soldiers. He appeared in Truth: Red, White and Black – a name which receives a callback in episode 5 of the show, Truth.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine: She only appeared twice in the show, but had a more extensive (if minor) presence in the comics. She originally turned up back in 1967 as a member of SHIELD’s Femme Force, which… did not age well, let’s be real. She’s the source of tension between Steve, Sharon and Nick Fury, having been a lover of Nick’s who attempted to make him jealous by flirting with Steve. She worked for a few different agencies over the years before becoming Madame Hydra and then finally ending up in prison.
Joaquin Torres: Much like Sam, Joaquin wasn’t in the military in the main comics ‘verse. Instead he was a teenage boy from Arizona who used to leave supplies for migrants crossing the border before being caught up in a plot by Karl Malus that ended up with him getting his DNA spliced with that of Redwing, giving him wings and seriously creepy eyes.
Sam’s family: They’ve taken most of his family pretty well from the comics, though some of the circumstances are different. It’s implied in the show that Paul Wilson died sometime after Darlene, while in the comics it’s the other way around – Paul, a preacher, was killed intervening in a fight between rival gangs, trying to talk them down, and Darlene later died when Sam was in his mid-late teens, leaving him to finish raising his siblings on his own. Though weirdly in more modern comics, Gideon is referred to as his older brother – and we can assume he exists in the MCU as when Sam’s calling around the phone tree he refers to himself as “one of Paul’s boys”. Whether his son Jim, who was a sidekick of the Hulk until he died of AIDS, also exists is up in the air, though presumably if he does the story will be changed up a lot. Sarah didn’t have a huge role in the comics and it’s largely unchanged – she’s still a widow with two children, though in the comics they’re Jody (a son) and an unnamed daughter.
Lemar Hoskins: Battlestar underwent augmentation along with John Walker via a process performed by the Power Broker, and along with two others would stage attacks on Walker’s rallies to build up support for him. The three were termed Bold Urban Commandos, and we all know how Marvel loves acronyms. Of course they got called Buckies. The other two weren’t considered suitable when the group went legit though, leaving Lemar as the one remaining Bucky until someone pointed out that that might be racially tone-deaf given it’s not uncommon for Black men to be referred to as “bucks”. He became Battlestar in 1988. During the first Civil War arc he was anti-registration, and was a member of the Underground when Hydra took over in Secret Empire.
Which brings me to,
The Power Broker: Both a person and an organisation, which interestingly enough counted Karl Malus as a member (the guy who turned Joaquin into the Falcon!) In fact, Karl Malus is the only significant member other than the original Power Broker himself (Curtiss Jackson) and his replacement, whose name is unknown.
Dr Nagel: In the comics, Dr Wilfred Nagel, a contemporary of Erskine who rather than recreating the serum from Isaiah’s blood was the scientist who created the version used on Isaiah and his compatriots in the first place.