MCU: 10 Fascinating Facts Behind Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

7. The Spaceship Names

As well as Chris Hemsworth's Thor having an N and a Z shaved into the sides of his head in honour of Taika Waitit and New Zealand (or so the director claims), there's another reference to his homeland that nobody but natives would have noticed. Well, unless you're a globe-trotting petrol head, of course.

All of the ships featured in the film - like the Commodore, Escort and the Kingswood - are all named in honour of classic cars from New Zeland and Australia. To be fair, they all do sound like spaceship names.

There's more to those ships as well. Beyond being made to look like Jack Kirby's artwork, some of the ships were coloured cleverly too. The Commodore ship’s is coloured in honour of the Aboriginal flag, for instance, while Valkyrie’s ship is colored after the Maori flag. Waititi revealed why he did it on the audio commentary:

“Let’s make the hero’s spaceship in this movie the color of the original people from Australia, the color of their flag. You know, nothing political, just cool.”