Smiling Tiger got a namedrop in the latest episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Conrad Mack doesn’t actually make an appearance, but Anthony Mackie does seem to look a lot like him… Okay, so the Marvel character is actually a Fabian Nicieza and Mark Bagley creation. Back in New Warriors #19 (1992), the animalistic hero burst onto the scene as a member of the Folding Circle. Night Thrasher had plenty of run-ins with the villain who smiled when he killed a person. However, Conrad is not always bad, he helped out a group of heroes when faced with an evil sorceress called Tai. But, after the collective threat had been dealt with, the Folding Circle stole a Quinjet and hightailed it to Madripoor. From there, he becomes a major player in the city’s criminal underworld. Funny enough, Conrad becomes a Thunderbolt after Civil War and that could loom larger for the MCU…
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His powers come from his father as the elder Mack served in a unit called the Half-Fulls. Upon discovering a temple of the Dragon’s Breath Cult in the Cambodian jungle, they are enhanced. The same sorceress that Conrad defeated ended up being the reason that the Smiling Tiger was conceived. The character has razor claws on both his hands and his feet. When transformed, the Smiling Tiger gets enhanced strength, speed, and sight.
As for Anthony Mackie’s take on the character, it’s probably just an Easter Egg. None of that would probably faze him as he doesn’t really get those much as the actor told The Direct recently.
“Not really. Nothing about the internet surprises me anymore,” Mackie explained. “There’s stuff that people find interesting, and I just learned what an Easter egg is, so it’s a whole bunch of things going on that aren’t surprising at all. When asked if he really only learned what an Easter Egg was. We don’t go around saying, ‘Yo, you saw that ‘Easter egg’ in Scene 12?’ I mean, that’s not a conversation you have as an actor.”
Sebastian Stan quickly tried to help drive the point home, “I think what [Mackie’s] trying to say is we try not to think as much about it as you think we do. It’s a very strange thing, but we are actually not these characters.”
Do want to see Smiling Tiger in Thunderbolts? Let us know down in the comments!
