Anti-Climax Boss: Prince Thrakhath in the final stretch of Wing Commander III; even though he is flying the Bloodfang, renowned for its unmatched lethal prowess among the Kilrathi, he flies little faster than a Vaktoth and you likely won't need much time taking him out in your Excalibur.
Complete Monster: The Kilrathi Saga: Prince Thrakhath nar Kiranka is the crown prince and the most vicious of all the Kilrathi commanders. Ruthless from his youth, Thrakhath demanded the execution of a minister who showed slight hesitation at the Terran invasion and distinguished himself with titanic bloodshed across the galaxy. As the Kilrathi commander-in-chief and the Emperor's heir, Thrakhath assumes more responsibility with his grandfather's infirmity, masterminding attacks across numerous systems with the intent to exterminate humanity if they will not be enslaved. After capturing a squad of Terran fighters, Thrakhath summarily has them executed on the spot save for the lover of the heroic Colonel Christopher "Maverick" Blair, Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux, whom Thrakhath personally murders with his own claws and saves the video to later taunt Blair with.
Fandom Rivalry: The fandoms of Wing Commander and Freespace have at times butted heads, influenced in part by personal dislikes.
Fan Nickname: "Bluehair", for the Player Character in the main games, prior to his being given a canonical name (which happened to be a contraction of "Bluehair"). Similarly, in Privateer, "Brownhair" for that game's PC, prior to discovery of a magazine ad that gave his canonical name as "Grayson Burrows" (confirmed in the manual for Arena).
Fanon Discontinuity: Depending on who you ask, one or a combination of the following: Prophecy and later games, the novels, the movie, the cartoon, and in rare cases, Wing Commander III and IV.
Growing the Beard: While the main campaign of the first Wing Commander and the first Secret Missions expansion pack were miles ahead of anything else available in the early 90s in terms of graphics and game play, the storyline is little more than an Excuse Plot. In Secret Missions 2 the characterization and plot both become much more engrossing. We first meet several recurring characters in SM2, both heroes and villains.
Wing Commander III opens on the burning, half-sunken wreck of the Concordia, your flagship from the previous game which is then deemed a "total loss". Come 2012 the Costa Concordia disaster took place, with the ship similarly marooned and damaged beyond repair off the coast of Tuscany. Could possibly be Hilarious in Hindsight, considering the comedy of errors that led to the sinking of the Costa Concordia.
In the first Special Operations campaign of Wing Commander II your communications officer laments her failures aboard a vessel named the TCS Kirsk, a carrier that was lost with "over two thousand lives" in a failed attack on the Kilrathi because she didn't decode the Kilrathi transmissions properly. Cut ahead to the year 2000 when the Kursk, an Oscar-class nuclear submarine in the Russian Navy suffered an explosion, resulting in the loss of its entire crew.
Geoffrey Tolwyn was never an especially nice guy, but attempting to genetically purify the entire human race by means of genocide among other means ahead of the next war, and authorizing attacks on civilian targets to justify his efforts to re-militarize humanity is taking it to an all-new level.
Jazz has arguably spent the better part of his career crossing it, but his murder and blackmail of Spirit is likely to do this for many players in the second game.
One-Scene Wonder: A non-human version; the F-104 Bearcat appears as the newest frontline Terran fighter in The Price of Freedom, but the player only gets to fly the craft in about two missions, and only if they choose the Speradon path during the Border Worlds campaign.
Josh Lucas and François Chau in Wing Commander III (and IV in Chau's case)
The Scrappy: Everybody seems to hate Maniac (both in real life and in-universe)... Except for the writing staff, since of all of the cast members who get killed off, Maniac — the most likely candidate given his rank, status, and reckless behavior — isn't one of them.
Squick: From Wing Commander IV, the sight of one of the victims of the biological attack on Telamon. Even Blair and his comrades must look away upon seeing the aftermath of it.
Stoic Woobie: Mariko "Spirit" Tanaka and Michael "Iceman" Casey both have lost loved ones to the Kilrathi (fiance and family, respectively), but don't go wallowing in self-pity over it.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Blair in the video games was portrayed by Mark Hamill, best known for playing a Jedi. Blair in the film is played by Freddie Prinze Jr.., who would go on to play a Jedi. In fact, between that and his role in Mass Effect 3, the years since have seen opinions on Prinze's role in this movie shift from "laughably miscast" to "decent choice made about ten years too early".
Fridge Brilliance: The movie is thick with references to Greek mythology, but it's also worth noting that Blair's main role throughout the film is running messages from place to place bringing news of the outcome of battles so other commanders can plan accordingly. In other words, he's filling the role of Pheidippides running the original Spartathalon.
Fridge Logic: Scylla is a terrifyingly dangerous Negative Space Wedgie that happens to be located in the Sol System. Why isn't the location of this hazard better known, or at least more clearly marked by star charts or the navigational beacon marking its location? It's at least possible that experienced crews are plainly aware of it, and it's just Maniac, an inexperienced pilot, that didn't know of it or think to look it up.
Narm: Matthew Lillard's over-the-top antics as Maniac could certainly qualify; it just doesn't quite work as well as Thomas F. Wilson's memorable portrayal of the character.
Questionable Casting: Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, and Saffron Burrows as Blair, Maniac and Angel respectively. Few found them convincing in their roles, especially when measured up against their video game counterparts. The years since have seen Prinze's casting looked back on a little more kindly, with many now agreeing that he might have been a good choice had the film been produced a decade or so later, but that the role came a little too early in his career for him to do it justice. However, Lillard's and Burrows' casting has received no such re-appraisal, with the kindest thing you're likely to hear being that Maniac's character was too badly butchered in the translation for Lillard or any other actor to save, and that Burrows would probably have been a better choice for a science or comms officer than a fighter pilot.
The Kilrathi are played by guys in suits, but the animitronics running the faces barely work and they flail their arms like bad puppets. The film tries to shoot them in darkness to hide this most of the time, but it only makes the clear views more ridiculous.
The ships and combat look bad, even for the time. The Rapiers, being minimalistic modifications of a small section of fuselage and cockpit from old English Electric Lightning fighters, looked particularly horrible. Babylon 5 was doing better effects on a budget that was famously skimpy even for TV when this came out, and The Phantom Menace would be setting a new bar less than a year later.
A very common complaint, particularly the name of the carrier changing from TCS Tiger's Claw to TCS Tiger Claw due to script editing confusion between editors for the film.
The various ships and starfighters featured do not resemble their video game counterparts at all. Especially egregious are the Rapiers, which are downright ugly compared to those of the games.
Visual Effects of Awesome: At one point, Paladin sneaks up on a Kilrathi carrier and drops four torpedoes at point-blank range. The resulting Stuff Blowing Up still looks amazing decades later.
WTH, Costuming Department?: The Kilrathi look nothing like their video game counterparts and in fact are visibly furless. Chris Roberts himself admits that he was satisfied with neither their look in the games or their redesigned appearance in the film.
, even people who can't stand the movie enjoy this music.