MCU got their own DB Cooper: Who was DB Cooper? All DB Cooper movie and real-life history explained
Among other fascinating theories, Marvel’s newly released Loki series also suggest that Loki was the mysterious criminal DB Cooper. Though nobody knows who’s the real-life DB Cooper as he was never caught. Disney plus has recently launched its latest original Marvel series which features Tom Hiddleston as the God of mischief one more time. So how is Loki connected to DB Cooper? Who was DB Cooper in reality?
The redeemed version of Loki died in Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos killed him in his quest to find all the Infinity stones but the show follows the Avengers (2012) version of Loki who escaped with the Tesseract during the time heist in The Avengers: Endgame.
The show picks up with the God of mischief getting caught by the Time Variance Authority for breaking the Sacred timeline. The situation is worse as a different evil version of Loki is running around and causing chaos in multiple timelines.
The trailers for the series had already disclosed that MCU’s Loki was the infamous DB Cooper at one point. Though Loki’s address to Cooper was brief, it was still crucial, as the God of Mischief being the explanation to the real-life mystery seems so applicable.
Despite MCU’s interpretation of DB Cooper, the real-life plane hijacker has a more complicated history than that. So what happened to the infamous DB Cooper in real-life, whose escape and disappearance was no less than a thriller movie?
What makes Loki MCU’s DB Cooper? Who was DB Cooper in reality?
The way the Loki series represent DB Cooper’s plane hijacking was quite accurate to what was publicly reported and founded after the real incident in 1971. With Loki getting to know agent Mobius, the latter go through Loki’s history, revealing some fascinating things that we fans had never seen or heard of before. Just like what happened in the real hijacking, Loki was a passenger on a Boeing 727 plane. The sequence features Loki communicating with Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant who thought Loki was flirting with her when she got a note from him. But the note didn’t seem to have a number on it, it revealed that he had a bomb with himself.
According to the real story, Loki would take the plane hostage and demand specific things as the hijacker, but MCU added a few more details to the back story of the incident. The reason Loki committed this crime because he had lost a bet to Thor. However, we may never know the full story behind Loki hijacking a plane because he never explained what the bet was about.
The show demonstrate what happens was that the flight crew completes Loki’s commands and then he dives out of the aircraft with a parachute and a briefcase filled with money. He had Thor and Heimdall on standby to open the Bifrost for him so he could come back to Asgard. Despite Loki being known for his notorious behaviour, it was revealed that Loki wasn’t proud of what he did as he blames this on being childish and having lost the bet to his brother.
Who was DB Cooper and what happened to him?
Unlike Loki, the real life DB Cooper was definitely not a God from Asgard. But that doesn’t change the fact that he hijacked a plane individually and got away without ever being caught. Cooper took a Boeing 727 aircraft hostage on November 24, 1971, and demanded 200,000 dollars in cash along with four parachutes.
According to the flight crew, he gave them odd instructions on where to fly next after refuelling the aircraft in Seattle. It is said that the hijacker has referred to himself as Dan Cooper on his plane ticket, but DB Cooper became his nickname when a Journalist accidentally misread his name during reporting.
Although his requests were weird, the real-life Florence Schaffner played by Erika Coleman in the Loki series narrated that DB Cooper was being very calm and collected during the entire hijacking in her official statements. He threatened to blow up the plane if his demands were not fulfilled, but he was never rude, angry or intense during the entire operation, he was too polite for a hijacker. While this was not the first time someone hijacked a plane, what made him special was his escape that the world is still trying to comprehend to this day.
He reportedly hooked the bags of money around himself, lowered the back stairs of the plane and jumped into the night over the thick forest of the Pacific Northwest. Nobody knows what happened to him after jumping out of the plane. Some signs suggested that DB Cooper withstood the jump, when some of the money was found in a river Tena bar, when the money was traced it pointed back to DB Cooper.
He reportedly hooked the bags of money around himself, lowered the back stairs of the plane and jumped into the night over the thick forest of the Pacific Northwest. Nobody knows what happened to him after jumping out of the plane. Some signs suggested that DB Cooper withstood the jump, when some of the money was found in a river Tena bar, when the money was traced it pointed back to DB Cooper.
In Marvel’s version of the incident, When Loki wandered back to Asgard, numerous dollar bills were dumped into the sky, which could conceivably be the show’s way of explaining why the money was found in Tena bar. But there is one major difference between the two incidents and that is Loki used a briefcase with latches to keep the money, while DB Cooper used secure money bags.
All DB Cooper movie and real-life theories to this day
Since 1971 there have been several suspects in the DB Cooper case. Still, the real criminal has never been found or identified to this day. Well, the major reason behind this was the lack of evidence fetched from the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The authorities even thought that DB Cooper may have had some sort of experience in the Air Force or military, even thought of him as a former CIA agent due to his calm and collected persona during the hijacking. Throughout the years, there were many potential DB Coopers, some even fake claimed to be DB Cooper or related to him.
In July 2011, a woman named Marla Cooper grabbed a lot of attention when she claimed that she was related to DB Cooper. She said he was her Uncle and his real name was LD Cooper. She told that he was planning something with her other uncles when was a young girl. But that’s not where the list ends. Many people resembled the sketch of the criminal that was made in 1971 and others claimed to be him or know him.
For instance, a dying man named Duane Weber told his wife on his death bed that he was the real Cooper. He was one of the many who insisted that they were the real DB Cooper. Another potential Candidate was Richard Floyd McCoy who resembled the criminal and had committed a similar crime in 1972.
Despite many potential suspects, the FBI never caught the real DB Cooper. At last, In July 2016, the FBI investigation on DB Cooper was suspended. It’s safe to say that mysterious man will never get caught if he’s even alive.
The Loki series is not the first one to represent DB Cooper, many tv shows and films have done the same and it won’t be the last time as well. He will remain one of the most mysterious figures in the world.
